A WATER main has burst twice in three weeks in the same place, causing chaos on a busy Poole highway.

Traffic has queued from the entrance to Turlin Moor at Blandford Road well over a mile through Upton to the bypass, at peak times.

“The traffic is horrendous,” said John Donnelly, who runs a convenience store in Hamworthy. “Hamworthy is almost a no-go area.”

He said it was bad enough the first time when, over the Easter holidays, four-way traffic lights resulted in huge queues of traffic backing up along Blandford Road.

“Now they are digging the road up in the same place again,” he said.

Upton councillor Fred Drane said: “The traffic is all the way from the hole, past the double roundabout and down Poole Road to the slipway from Upton House.”

He said the traffic lights were being manually operated during the evening rush hour because they could not cope with the volume of traffic.

“Blandford Road south is very bad at the best of times,” he added.

A spokesman for Wessex Water said they were unsure why the main had burst again and were carrying out investigations.

“We are manually controlling the four-way traffic lights during busy periods, to minimise traffic disruption,” he said.

“Work is expected to be completed by the end of this week before the Bank Holiday.

“We apologise for any inconvenience the repairs may cause.”

The spokesman pointed out that after the repairs had been completed, they would have to wait for the road surface to set before removing the lights and opening it to traffic – as happened last time, resulting in complaints.