People who know about these things – for which read all of us with eyes in our heads – are aware that roadworks in Oxford are running at an absurd level and being carried out badly.

Slap down the cones, get digging and to hell with the travelling public – these appear to be the principles actuating the highways engineers.

Why do so much work at once?

Motorists and bus passengers stuck for weeks on end – since last December, in fact – in the long queues stretching along London Road in Headington will perhaps have noticed the pitifully small workforce being employed on the resurfacing at this crucial section of road leading out of town.

Would it not have been sensible to have held back for a while on the largely cosmetic job being done at the busy junction on The Plain so that the gang could be redeployed where it was more urgently needed?

As I mentioned in this column earlier in the year, I pass through here almost every day on my bike and really saw no problem with it as it was.

Another set of roadworks creating major problems are those on the A420 just past the Botley interchange.

These arise from a landslip and can’t be avoided.

What could be avoided, though, are the huge queues of traffic that extend every night along the entire length of the Botley Road, through Frideswide Square and on to the roads leading towards it.

A woman I met on a Witney-bound S1 bus said these were adding 90 minutes to her working day.

The bus driver told me the trouble arose from motorists’ confusion on reaching Botley and discovering the right turn up to the A420 was ruled out. In the old days, a policeman would have been on duty there.

Signs might also be used to direct drivers away from the Botley Road. They could, for instance, turn up Hollybush Row and escape the city along Abingdon Road.