READER LETTER: Millhouse - Surrounding roads need sorting as well

The Millhouse roundabout, Worksop, which is getting new signals installed.

We have tended in the past to make light of our road achievements. The east Lancashire road (A580) was very similar to the German Autobahns, built at the same time, but the Nazis got all the publicity and this gave a propaganda gift to the road lobby in the 1950s.

I’m also aware that the construction of the M1 was rushed to give a boost to the Tories for the 1959 election and then had to be extensively rebuilt shortly afterwards.

However, concerning the A57 and the Millhouse roundabout we are talking about a relatively minor link road between Sheffield and Lincoln and not a motorway, in spite of a report in the Guardian that it was to be uprated as the M57 and diverted up Potter Street - April 1 issue. A week is a long time in politics so one can hardly blame the planners for not anticipating traffic problems 30 years down the road, which, in any case mainly affect the evening rush hour and may hopefully be alleviated by a traffic light system which equalises the traffic flows.

I don’t wish to be an apologist for the highways department. Since they always give the impression of enthusiastically adopting any fashionable or politically correct scheme, average speed cameras come to mind, I’m sure that they were aware of Mr Colohan’s strictures back in the late 70s, but if you remember the economic conditions back then we were probably lucky to get a bypass at all. You have only to travel to Manchester over Woodhead and experience the conditions between Tintwistle and the M57 to know what not having a bypass is like.

Newcastle Avenue has not been well served in other ways though. At times it seems like a linear carpark for the disabled, which hardly improves traffic flow and is causing problems for local businesses, and there ought to be traffic lights at the junction with Westgate. Makes you wonder if the planners ever actually leave their cosy offices to see what things are like on the ground. If they did they wouldn’t have made the whole of Norfolk Street ‘residents only’ parking, because the residents only park up the top end of it.

Andrew Airey

Newcastle Avenue , Worksop