Politics: We really do understand the pain roadworks cause

With work to improve the junctions at Wolvercote and Cutteslowe now on the horizon and the Frideswide Square project still in full swing, we want to assure you that all at the county council is fully aware that the congestion caused by roadworks is difficult.

Ahead of the Wolvercote and Cutteslowe work from July onwards, we would ask for your patience and encourage you to use alternative routes, adjust your travel times or public transport.

We can assure everyone in Oxfordshire that we know how frustrating roadworks can be. Some of those people sitting on the delayed bus with you or in a car in the same traffic queue will almost certainly be county council staff or councillors.

At the same time we also know that Oxfordshire’s population and economy are both forecast to grow in coming years and that we already have a road system that is operating close to capacity.

We need to expand capacity on our road network to cope with the demands currently placed on it and plan for coming decades.

During July we will make clear what projects and improvements we wish to see achieved during the second half of this decade and the 2020s – that will include road improvements and public transport changes.

However it’s about the present as well as the future. We are currently working hard to make tangible improvements from which road users can reap more immediate benefits.

Evidence of what can be achieved is not hard to find – you only have to look at the improvements on the bypass where hamburger roundabouts have been constructed at Headington, Heyford Hill and, most recently, Kennington.

We’ve also recently completed improvements at London Road in Headington.

The difficulty is that such projects cannot be completed overnight. How we wish they could. We do work hard to optimise our programmes to ensure that all the work we need to do in an area is undertaken during these major projects. Sadly the technology has not been invented that would allow complex improvements schemes, such as those that took place at Kennington through the second half of 2014, to be completed in the space of a matter of days.

I know that the phrase “short term pain for long term gain” is of little consolation to people sitting in their cars or on a bus in a traffic jam. However that really is what it is all about.

We need to plan for Oxfordshire’s future and improve our transport networks. We at the county council really would be due criticism if we had not made any attempts to improve our road network.

The work at Wolvercote and Cutteslowe will create delays but we believe the finished product in 2016 will be worth your patience. We are very grateful for that ongoing patience and we share your frustrations as regards the delays.