Opinion : Do you think the proposed improvements to the A40 London Road will make things better?

London Road, High Wycombe outside former Homebase store. (Archive picture)

By George! No sooner have the ‘Masterplan’ works in Queen Victoria Road been completed than the next batch of road works is about to hit High Wycombe.

My good self is of course talking about the improvement work that starts on Monday 7th October 2019 on the A40 London Road, as described in the article that recently appeared in the news section of this site headlined ‘A40 London Road improvement work in High Wycombe to start on Monday 7th October 2019‘.

Of course by it’s very name the whole idea of ‘improvement’ work is to make thing better. So you do think after all the work is completed that the A40 London Road will be better?

In my opinion, after carefully studying the plans for the infernal scheme, the problems created by the new road layout will be probably worse than what is currently there.

Surely there have been too many road works in Wycombe over the past few years?

The ‘Masterplan’ road improvement works were stretched out over many months and now it seems the work on the A40 London Road will also be ‘phased’ with completion due in Summer 2020.

After carefully reading the previously mentioned news article is seems that detailed traffic management works will be used to try to minimise the disruption from the work. So I ask you a question, ‘Do you think the traffic management will work and there will be no major disruption to traffic from these works?’

Only time will tell but I fear that from next Monday it’s very possible that if traffic jams build there may well be some very angry motorists sitting in the long tailbacks. In fact if this scheme goes wrong then rather than a traffic jam I fear Wycombe could be the first town to experience a ‘traffic treacle’ which is surely the next stage above a ‘jam’?

In my opinion the A40 London Road improvements are totally necessary just like the ‘Masterplan’ improvements that came before them and the works are only taking place to keep the people in jobs who dream up the daft schemes in the first place.

Personally yours truly had no issues with the previous road layouts in High Wycombe town centre. In my opinion rather wasting money making improvements that probably didn’t need to be made, the money would have been better spent improving roads in residential areas where speeding and reckless driving is causing a menace to the residents who live there.

Do you think that the traffic jams and traffic flow problems on the A404 Amersham Road and in Totteridge and Terriers areas are more worthy of rectification that those on the London Road?

Only time will tell if the A40 London Road improvements will actually bring an ‘improvement’ to that notorious road, sadly I fear they won’t and things may well be worse than before.

What do you think?

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