Opinion : Is there more to town improvements than upgrading the roads?

If there’s one thing the people of Wycombe are likely to complain about it’s the roads.

Indeed there is nothing more likely to start a lively conversation that the mention of a pothole, traffic light or traffic jam.

Did you see the article that appeared in the news section of this site recently headlined ‘£6.32m of Government funding for two road schemes in High Wycombe and Aylesbury‘?

Apparently the London Road from the town centre to Loudwater is earmarked for an improvement scheme costing £4.13m. The upgrade works will  include proposals to improve journey time reliability along the London Road, better pedestrian crossings and state-of-the-art traffic control to ease congestion.

But hang on, we can all remember the time when the London Road was a breeze to drive along, there were no queues, no jams and no delays.

Then two things happened to make the road synonymous with a traffic jam nightmare.

My good self is of course referring to the installation of a bus lane on the carriageway leading in to Wycombe and the removal of the roundabout at the junction of London Road and Micklefield Road.

The bus lane is a total disaster, taking up a whole carriageway many think it’s literally a waste of space. How many buses do you see actually using it? Very few the last time yours truly ventured down that part of town.

Those traffic lights at the Micklefield Road junction are a total disaster too. Traffic flowed far better when there was a roundabout there and journey times were far less.

It’s not just ‘better pedestrian crossings‘ and ‘state-of-the-art traffic control‘ that are needed in London Road. A total rethink is required and possibly a reversion back to how the road used to be before the ‘improvements’ came along that many think did anything but improve the situation.

There’s more to a town than traffic and in my opinion there are more important projects that need to be done before the roads.

Indeed if there are all these ‘Government funds’ surely there must be a ‘Government fountain fund’ that could perhaps give Wycombe some money to put a proper fountain on Frogmoor?

It’s no use having a town that people can get to easily if when they get here they find the place is a concrete wilderness full of tramps and drunks as is the case of Frogmoor.

Isn’t it about time money was spent improving the town in terms of the environment and facilities? And I don’t mean putting up some hanging baskets or a few metal benches for the tramps and drunks to sit on?

Let’s some some real improvements to Wycombe, the sort of improvements that make people want to come here.

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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