THE multi-million pound upgrade of Greenbridge Roundabout is every bit as necessary as Network Rail’s forthcoming alteration of Stratton Greenbridge.

In addition, and some might say unusually for Swindon, there is no suggestion that the projects might have been somehow combined or co-ordinated in order to minimise their wider impact.

The work cannot be shirked or delayed, so we must all do what we can to minimise their impact.

The Greenbridge project will begin scant weeks after the conclusion of the Stratton Greenbridge work. By the time it is complete, road users will have endured the best part of a cumulative year’s disruption.

As always in such circumstances, those road users have no control over whether that disruption will happen, but do have opportunities to reduce the resultant misery.

The best way of dong so, obviously, is to avoid the areas concerned for the duration of the projects, but for most people using these major routes that notion is a non-starter.

However, in most cases there will be little to prevent drivers from factoring some extra travel time into their daily schedules.

Neither will there be much to prevent any but the most unreasonable employer making allowances for the odd late arrival, especially during the early stages of the projects.

Anybody using the roads for something other than business would do well, assuming there are no practicable alternative routes, to keep their journeys for non-peak times.

Anybody who suggests that travel during the projects will be easy is naive, but things do not have to be utterly chaotic.