Opinion : Desborough Road may be busted but how many more ‘Masterplan’ roads will crumble too?

Damage to central reservation stones at the junction of Desborough Road and Bridge Street. (Archive picture)

Just a few months after a triumphal opening as part of the Wycombe traffic ‘Masterplan’ it now transpires that Desborough Road is in need of repair due to traffic damage.

According to an article that appeared in the news section of this site today entitled ‘Desborough Road to close for repairs after traffic damages kerbs and central reservation on new ‘Masterplan’ road‘ it seems that two closures will be necessary to undertake all the repairs.

It didn’t take long for the first of the ‘Masterplan’ roads in High Wycombe to crumble did it?

Now the motorists and bus passengers of the town will be faced with diversions, delays and yet more misery when the repairs are carried out later in October 2018.

The first road closure, lasting for five days from Monday 29th October 2018, is to allow contractors to safely repair short sections of kerb work, and some granite channel and central reservation blocks.

The second road closure on Monday 5th and Tuesday 6th November 2018 is for repairs to the drain covers in the middle of the road and a granite channel that forms the outline of the informal pedestrian crossings.

Surely the road should have lasted longer than this?

How many more repairs are going to be needed in the future on the other sections of the ‘Masterplan’ roads in the town?

It’s not as if Desborough Road is a busy road, it used to be however since being ‘Masterplanned’ there is visibly less traffic using the road presumably due to the fact that the new road layout is viewed by many as a disaster.

Years ago roads never crumbled so quickly, indeed surely the only reason for a failure so quickly is either poor workmanship or poor design. Or maybe both?

In fact the road started crumbling soon after opening and my good self even took pictures, accompanying this blog, showing the central reservation stones starting to crack a few months ago.

Why on earth Wycombe was ever subjected to such an infernal road layout one will never know. Lots of people in Wycombe are now of my opinion that the ‘Masterplan’ is a waste of time and money.

Why couldn’t the money have been spent on something useful such as the rejuvenation the Frogmoor area of town?

Now the ‘Masterplan’ debacle has taken another turn, rather than re-organising local government in Buckinghamshire surely the priority is to hand out redundancy notices to those who dream up, plan and see through such wasteful, useless and unpopular schemes as the ‘Masterplan’?

The plain truth is that no amount of public consultations, propaganda and ‘talking up’ of the ‘Masterplan’ in order to sell it to us can hide the fact repairs are required to Desborough Road after such a short time.

Your humble servant fears that rather than being a useful improvement to High Wycombe the ‘Masterplan’ is actually more like a ‘Titanic’ mistake, indeed many of my friends think of the ‘Masterplan’ as the ‘Spruce Goose‘ of highway improvements.

My good self sincerely hopes that nobody associated with the ‘Masterplan’ fiasco is handed an OBE in the next Honours List.

Rather than wasting money on putting right the traffic damage would it not be better to send in the bulldozers and rip the whole lot up then put everything back to how it was before it was messed up?

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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