MORE powers over roads should be devolved to councils so that traffic problems can be dealt with more quickly, a council leader said.

Oxfordshire County Council leader Ian Hudspeth’s comments came after motorists were forced to put up with chaos on the M40 and A34 on Friday night.

An accident between Bicester and Ardley on the M40 brought vehicles on the southbound carriageway to a halt and shortly afterwards there was also a traffic light fault at junction 9.

The lights fault with sequencing – the second of its kind in 16 weeks – caused hour-long delays, made worse by a rush of travellers at the end of schools’ half-term.

The Highways Agency, which was carrying out works at the site, sent engineers to fix the problem, but by 5.30pm it was still ongoing.

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Police ended up switching the lights off so they could temporarily run the junction as a roundabout instead.

The Highways Agency this weekend said it was unable to comment on Friday’s issues, or on how long it took to get police officers in to solve the problem.

Mr Hudspeth, who has called on the Government to give the county council more powers, said the situation could have been dealt with faster locally.

At the moment the Highways Agency is responsible for most motorways and important trunk A roads and the county council for most others in Oxfordshire Mr Hudspeth said: “The Highways Agency does a great job, but in this case if there had been local control then there could have been a quicker reaction.

“It comes down again to the arguments for devolving more powers to local authorities.”

Queues on Friday afternoon were reported to have stretched down the A34 from its junction with the M40 all the way south to Abingdon.

Later on Friday the Highways Agency apologised to drivers and added: “We are continuing to work with our suppliers and our partners at Oxfordshire County Council to ensure that similar problems do not happen again.”