THERE are few things in life more frustrating than waiting in traffic. But waiting in traffic because of seemingly pointless roadworks is one of them.

I think we can all agree that the roads won’t repair themselves.

And I think we all agree that Huddersfield’s potholes need to be eradicated.

But what on earth is happening on some of the other roads around our town?

On Monday I had the misfortune to drive from the M62 at Ainley Top to Waterloo at 5pm.

When you type in Ainley Top to HD5 0AL into Google it tells you the journey is 5.4 miles and should take a trifling 11 minutes.

To be fair, having done this journey on a regular basis it never takes 11 minutes at 5pm.

But on Monday as I queued to get onto the Ring Road I wondered what the hold up was.

Then as I queued in the Unna Way that takes me under Bradford Road I wondered what the hold up was.

At Shorehead I wondered why we were moving so slowly.

Along the section of Wakefield Road through Dalton I wondered why I wasn’t moving at all.

After taking nearly half an hour to get from the Tesco on Wakefield Road at Moldgreen to the traffic lights at Waterloo it became clear what the hold up was.

Wakefield Road, already excessively festooned with traffic cones along its length, was topped off outside the shops at Waterloo with some cones that made it one lane.

Yes one lane.

Ah I can almost hear you cry, but what pressing piece of road maintenance or improvement necessitated this.

Was it a cavern discovered under the road which needed filling? No.

Was it a pothole which was responsible for swallowing three cars, two dogs and an errant paperboy? No.

Was it some red tarmac. Yes.

I only had the briefest of glances at the coned off spot so can’t confirm more than a seemingly empty space, red in colour, surrounded by cones.

A bit like the ones on Bradley Road near Examiner HQ.

And obviously there was no-one working on it. Whatever was so pressing that it required one of Huddersfield’s busiest roads to be taken down to one lane, was insufficiently important to require being worked on at half past five.

As a motorist this is where my frustration comes from. I’d like to ask the people who work on the roads to let us know what’s going on.

I don’t mean a Road Resurfacing sign – I mean a sign that actually tells me what’s going on, ie We’re building X here because of Y. Except with less chromosome names and more information.

Don’t worry too much about the word count – I only moved just over a mile in 30 minutes.

Frankly, I could read a few chapters of whatever potboiler tops the paperback chart at that speed.

You never know, that information may stop me from seeing red (tarmac).