I SAW an item in the local press the other day in which Councillor Les Jones puts forward the suggestion of having a bypass around Stourbridge to save the town from being choked by traffic congestion.

He is pretty vague on detail but it seems that the proposed bypass centres on the A499 being upgraded into some sort of motorway with link roads (shades of the Western Orbital!).

Existing carriageways (his quaint terminology, not mine) will be improved to provide a backbone for the route. Quite which ones these are, your guess is as good as mine.

He mentions the long and frequent queues on the A491 corridor caused by traffic funnelled onto the route from Kingswinford, Wordsley, Wollaston and Amblecote. Presumably this route is earmarked as part of the backbone.

But quite why he thinks the ring road should be downgraded, should the bypass be built, defeats me. The ring road may be getting on in years but it has coped remarkably well - and continues to do so - with the ever-increasing volumes of traffic.

Traffic flow improvement schemes have limited success. The ones designed to relieve congestion particularly so. Invariably they simply shift the inherent problem from one area to another. Think sleeping policeman, or maybe road humps as some people know them, and you will grasp what I mean.

With rush hours both morning and night it is inevitable that - as with every other city and town in the country - there will be hold-ups and delays.

Roads can no more cope with volume at peak periods than that of drains when severe flooding occurs, for most of the time outside peak hours traffic movements on our roads progress with minimum fuss.

The local authority highways planning department is partially to blame for the present congestion of traffic on the A491. They were responsible for passing plans that resulted in the building of the high-density apartments on the Old gasworks site.

There must be many motorists (most of whom in all probability work in the town or in the vicinity and have no alternative but to use the route) who vent their spleen and curse at the traffic and pedestrian lights that have been installed on this section of the Lower High Street since the apartments were built.

From the underpass just before the ring road (the subway serves a similar role to that of pedestrian lights) up to service drive by the side of the apartments it cannot be much more than 150 yards. Yet there are two sets of pedestrian crossing lights and two sets of traffic lights in operation on this short stretch of the road. Each set functioning independently.

In other words, when one set of lights is on green you might find the next on red, and the following one on red again. And if you are really unfortunate you might then encounter a pedestrian using a crossing. The permutation is endless. And let us not forget the lights at the junction of Vicarage Road. They add further little piquancy to the capricious nature of orchestrated traffic lights that have to be endured at the bottom of the Lower High Street.

Without a doubt they are a contributory cause in the frequency of so many tailbacks stretching as far back as Brettell Lane, and of the queues backing up onto the ring road. So why cannot the lights be synchronised to keep the traffic flowing? It wouldn't be the complete answer to the problem but it would be a step in the right direction.

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