P A Crowson (September 12) complains about the length of time required to carry out the A19/1237 Rawcliffe roundabout improvement.

It would be possible to complete the works much faster but the means to achieve this would, from experience, be unacceptable to the public and involve much disruption and inconvenience.

A regular nightshift could be worked to increase the output. But this would make life intolerable for local residents and push up the costs. Night working has been minimised to times when working during the day would create severe disruption to traffic.

A balance has to be struck between keeping traffic flowing, reducing the effect on local business and residents and completion of the works in as short a time as possible. The safety of workers and road-users has also to be carefully considered at this junction which deals with 43,000 vehicles a day.

This often means breaking areas of work down into small packets which is time consuming.

The works themselves are complex involving the diversion of all utilities such as national BT cables and large sewers entering the Rawcliffe Waste Water Treatment Works.

Works started in March not May as P A Crowson claimed. Therefore, more than 60 per cent of work has, to date, taken place outside the holiday season.

The length of queues are also little different to what they were before work started. The anticipated date for completion of the project is late November.

It is also important to underline the benefits that will accrue from the completed scheme - primarily, a higher degree of safety for road-users and greater convenience for all with less queuing, less congestion, noise and air pollution.

Gary Frost,

Project Engineer,

York Consultancy,

St Leonard's Place, York.

Updated: 10:30 Thursday, September 20, 2001