News that Council leader Margaret Eaton has called for an investigation into the delay in completing roadworks in Cottingley New Road is welcome but already well overdue. For what seems a simple matter of road realignment and widening, the work has taken an inordinate length of time to show any progress.

Meanwhile, legions of frustrated commuters have been forced to sit and seethe as intolerable traffic queues build up and delays become more and more ridiculous.

The appallingly slow rate of movement on the roadworks, however, merely exacerbates problems that will still be there when the work is finally completed. There is a fundamental difficulty caused by traffic using the junction between the entrance to Nab Wood Grammar and, on the other side, Manor Road. Combine that with the extremely busy junction with the main A650 Bingley road and at peak times there is little short of traffic chaos.

It's no good hoping the problems will go away when the relief road is built. The bypass, essential to take some of the pressure off Bingley, will do nothing to ease difficulties at Nab Wood, Saltaire and Bingley.

Thanks to the huge increase in the number of commuters into Bradford and Leeds from the towns and villages of the Aire Valley and almost uncontrolled new house-building along the route, there is simply too much traffic and the road systems is wholly inadequate to cope with it.

The entire issue needs to be thought through. It's no good hoping that bus lanes and guided tramways elsewhere in Bradford will improve things. It is time some quality thought was put into this specific issue which threatens to strangle the district.