Proposed Colne bypass can’t come soon enough

I know some of the nay-sayers believe the bottlenecks in the North Valley Road area of Colne only happen at peak times of the day.

But if they do cling to that belief, they clearly don’t use that route as often as I do – or at as many different times of the day.

I regularly make the trip from home, close to the Pendle/Burnley boundary to, for the purposes of this column, the wrong end of Colne.

And while I fully appreciate new traffic lights at various points on North Valley Road have helped smooth the flow of traffic, it is still a nightmare trip on most occasions.

Clearly, I am not talking about the sort of traffic chaos you see in big city centre.

But when you are used to free-flowing traffic wherever you go, the daily grind on either of the two main routes through Colne is a nightmare.

And the same is true of the main road through Barrowford which at many times of the day is nothing short of a car park as people use an alternate route to simply avoid Colne.

It is a nightmare that has been 30 years in the making.

The M65 was never meant to end where it does.

It was also meant to be a second trans-Pennine route of some description and that is the only real problem with the outlined plans for the new bypass – they don’t go far enough.

One of the fears surrounding the new scheme is the problem will just be shifted a few miles up the road.

There will also be qualms about the environmental impact, although I am sure they will be fully investigated before we actually see any new roads.

But those factors in themselves are not enough to oppose the plans and I am sure the vast majority of people who live in Colne, make a daily commute that passes through the town or heads of towards Yorkshire for any reason will agree that the proposed bypass just cannot come soon enough.