Thursday 25 September 2008

Motorway madness

Sometimes Government moves much too slowly. One of Rugby's assets is it's location at the heart of the motorway network with the junction of the M1, M6 and the A14 just a couple of miles away at Catthorpe. However this junction was designed to accomodate much less traffic than currently passes through it, and there are often accidents in stationary traffic on the M1 on what has become known Rugby's Mad Mile, as vehicles queue up to change roads. This has caused 14 deaths in the past 5 years and regular closures of the motorway leading to gridlock in Rugby as traffic seeks another route and massive delays for many of our local businesses involved in logistics. It has been obvious for years that the junction needs re-designing. We are in the middle of yet another consultation on proposal to do that with work not due to start until 2011, and presumably a constuction period of 2 years. This all means that a solution won't be availalable for another 5 years. This is on top of a 10 year delay in getting Rugby's Western Relief Road under way. Why can't we sometimes just get on with things?