THE rash of traffic-route alterations currently bedevilling the St Helens scene is causing frustrated motorists to froth at the mouth and tug out their hair in dismay.

But what's the reasoning behind that nightmare of new signposting, the fresh one-way restrictions, large-scale Tarmac lifting and pavement re-shaping?

The tightly-packed terraced area behind the town hall is perhaps the most heavily afflicted. There, the welter of one-way restrictions and blocked-off side-streets are calculated to entrap even the local-born motorist (let alone any hapless stranger) in a maze-like muddle.

I speak from bitter experience. Attempting to skirt major roadworks outside the town hall, bound for Peasley Cross, my car encountered so many twists and turns that it was in danger of ending up its own exhaust pipe.

There's even a tendency to dig up sections of certain of those side-streets to form unexpected, and totally useless, little garden features that form a solid barrier to vehicular progress. I hear that the official line for all this barmy blocking-off, preventing the likes of milkmen and parcel-deliverers from performing their tasks efficiently, is to stop motorists from 'rat running' (whatever that may mean) through the side-streets. But does it really make sense to restrict the flow down certain of the side-streets while, as a natural consequence, pushing an increasing volume of traffic on to those remaining side-streets still open to two-way traffic?

All this follows the ridiculous chicane system along Moss Bank Road, forcing traffic to weave from one side of the carriageways to the other. And there currently seems to be the promise of a new bottleneck along Scafell Road where the carriageways are being narrowed, and the pavements expanded, at its busy T-junction with Washway Lane. Meanwhile, the traffic-hammered Woodlands Road- Haresfinch Road junction genuinely cries out for construction of a mini roundabout to keep traffic flowing at peak periods.

One is tempted to imagine that a lot of this traffic re-scheduling arises from doodles on the blotting paper of some empowered road planner or other.

Or could it perhaps be a cunning plot to keep St Helens folk gridlocked within their own town, thus depriving them of a smooth exit to shopping pastures further afield - Liverpool, Wigan, Warrington, perhaps - taking with them a chunk of the town's faltering economy?

I REMAIN to be convinced that all this traffic-meddling will be to our ultimate good.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.