Airfield bottleneck in need of addressing

THE MANY regular users of the Airfield Industrial Estate will doubtless have been thrilled to hear of plans to build a new link road into the town’s bustling business park.

Queues at the Blenheim Road junction with Derby Road can be horrendous as shifts change and workers squeeze their way out to the only road currently serving it.

Traffic along Blenheim

Road can be more than a bit sticky, as lorries queue to enter factories and depots.

And all this is before the new Co-op store was built, which has added another element to the Blenheim Road bottleneck.

So it’s about time something was done, especially given the plans to expand the number of businesses there and, eventually, add new homes into the mix.

The siting of the new link road, close to the notoriously dangerous Osmaston crossing, didn’t sit comfortably with everyone, but we must accept that this road is a necessary evil and the growth of the airfield is stunted without it.

But this week we await a decision by the district council’s planning committee to start work on the new business units without the new link road being built first.

Setting aside the construction traffic that will inevitably be thrown into the mix during the construction of these units, more businesses will mean more traffic.

And as has been said, infrastructure should always be prioritised over development.

On the plus side, as soon as any of these new units is occupied, a clock will start ticking and the developer will be obliged to deliver the new road within two years.

There will be an assurance that the new road will come – and that the traffic problems will finally be eased.

And that’s got to be good news, at least for some people.