How many times have you sat in your car wondering “why on earth is that lane closed off, there’s no work going on?”
Hundreds of motorists had that feeling recently as they approached the old Perth Bridge – only in this case there really wasn’t anything going on or even expected to happen.
A communication breakdown was blamed for the phantom closure with a message failing to reach the appropriate people that the lane didn’t need to be coned off.
In the great British tradition of queuing most people heeded the signs, patiently waited their turn and endured a thoroughly miserable traffic jam radiating out in every direction, adding the best part of an hour to their journeys.
A few free spirits became so fed up at the obvious waste of time that a little bit of anarchy broke out with the non-conformists disregarding the signs and weaving their way through the cones.
This didn’t go down well with the rule obeyers and fractious exchanges ensued between the two sides.
The whole debacle might have been swept under the carpet and the hundreds of people involved might have been none the wiser that they really had wasted their time in a far from essential traffic jam if one man hadn’t asked the council what it was all about.
In a spirit of openness – or at least being well and truly caught out – the council held up its hands and admitted that the whole closure had been an unnecessary farce.
Fulsome apologies ensued and a thorough investigation was promised, but it leaves me with a rather unsettling feeling that the next time I am confronted with a stretch of coned off and seemingly worker-free carriageway impeding my progress it might transpire that the delay really is pointless.
