Opinion : Roadworks in Desborough Road : Can you spot the workman?

Have you seen the terrible traffic jams at the Desborough Road / Desborough Avenue junction caused by the roadworks in the area?

The junction in question happens to be a main artery into Wycombe, a route to the Motorway and a road used by many of the towns bus services.

Not only do the roadworks affect deliveries for local businesses but ordinary people are being delayed as they try to go to work in the morning and home at night.

The junction is currently controlled by temporary traffic lights, the positioning of the two big holes that have been dug in the road mean that traffic on only one of the four roads feeding into the junction can move at a time exacerbating the delays.

Surely you would think that being such an important and busy junction the roadworks would be carefully planned to be over as soon as possible with the minimum amount of delay? Of course this could be achieved by the contractors working longer hours, possibly with early starts and late finishes, as well as ensuring that all parts of the job followed on quickly with no wasted time whatsoever.

The other day someone happened to mention to me that despite the road being dug up there didn’t seem to be much work going on. Naturally my good self was keen to investigate.

After taking a very late lunch, so as to arrive at the site at a time that work should be taking place, your humble servant made my way through the town centre and up to Desborough Road.

By George! When I got to the roadworks the equipment was all there but nobody was around to operate it indeed it was like the Mary Celeste!

Just look at the picture above. How many workmen can you see in it? Perhaps the contractors on this job are relatives of the Invisible Man or maybe rather than high-visibility jackets the workers have been issued with invisibility cloaks so as not to stand out?

After carrying out an inspection of the scene it appears that two large holes have been dug. One is on the town side of the Desborough Road junction and the other is on the side leading towards Green Street.

A big yellow pipe, pictured above, appears ready to be laid. From the look of things the pipe will join up the two big holes that have been created.

A dumper truck was parked beside one of the holes with a new pipe attached on a trailer however there was no sign of the driver or anyone else connected with the works.

Surely the powers that be should be ensuring that when main roads are dug up the disruption is kept to a minimum? Jobs like this should be over and done as soon as possible and not left abandoned during daylight hours in perfectly good weather.

It wasn’t as if my good self was there at an unearthly hour or even at lunch time in fact I have received reports from others about the apparent lack of workmen in the area.

Of course all this comes on top of the apparent bungle over the start date of the works, originally planned to start on Saturday 26th March 2016 the traffic lights appeared two days early and the ‘advance warning’ boards (pictures below) was hastily changed to reflect a revised start date.

If the equipment is left stationary beside the road for much longer I fear cleaners will need to be employed to dust the equipment so it stays clean!

What do you think?

*My blogs are published every Tuesday and Friday evening around 8.00pm here on the WycombeToday.com website.

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