It’s now time we thought again about the town’s traffic lights

WE’RE often given a brutal illustration of just how stressed the town’s infrastructure is, and how little it can take to cause absolute chaos.

Five sets of roadworks was one of the more extreme examples of the volatility of our little road network, which is congested at the best of times during the school runs and the commuting times, and it certainly led to flared tempers on Tuesday, as people were caught up in two-hour queues to travel a few miles.

Obviously, we need a bypass. And, obviously, a bit of careful planning of roadworks to ensure they do not coincide would be a big help, but as we let the fact we’re one of the most polluted town centres in the country sink in, we all find ourselves desperate for a more immediate solution than a relief road that could still be years away.

And our thoughts turn to the traffic lights. As motorists sat and waited at the lights on the Park Road/sturston Road junction, while Sturston Road was reduced to one way, no traffic whatsoever was travelling towards Belper Road. This meant, that for a few minutes at a time, vehicles were at a red light for no reason, during the times when nothing was coming from the A517. Add up all those wasted minutes.

And then there’s the lights at the top of Dig Street. Nothing is turning into Dig Street at the moment, and the crossing in St John Street might as well not be there because it’s blocked by bollards, so do the lights really need to be there?

If we remove the lights at these intersections, it doesn’t mean everyone’s suddenly going to have a crash. They just need to filter sensibly, like they do at every other noncontrolled junction on the road network.

With our tweaked one-way system now a permanent fixture, is it perhaps time to rethink the traffic lights?