It is a common phenomenon that you come across bits of road that are coned off, sometimes several miles of motorway, and see no sign of anything actually happening. I don’t know a lot about roadworks, but can think of possible reasons. I can certainly see how, if the work comprises several separate tasks you might not want to remove all the cones, and then put them back in a week’s time when the next gang come in for the next bit of work. In any case, I just assume there is work being done, even if nobody is around just at the moment. But this week I found out that it isn’t always the case.

We had a lane closed on London Road in Crawley for a couple of weeks, just by the Manor Royal junction. There were cones, signs warning of lane closure and everything. The cones only went on for a few metres, but it did mean that traffic had to merge into one lane at that junction. Jayne was getting very pissed off with it because it is on the route her bus takes and so she has to go past it many times each day. Being aware of it she would always be in the right lane, but a couple of times a day she would have car drivers coming up on the inside, realising at the last minute that the lane is closed and causing near-misses as they cut in.

Anyway, Jayne knows that I walk near there most days and asked me to see if there were any contact details, because she had not seen a single bit of work going on over the whole time. I had a look and saw a notice about work being done on behalf of Southern Water, giving an emergency contact for the contractors. I could see that there was a water-related manhole in the bit of road that was coned off.

I took a picture of the sign, and Jayne sent it to her bosses. They phoned up Southern Water and asked about it. The water people said they had no record at all of any work being done, or scheduled to be done in that location! They said they would get it sorted urgently.

A day later and the cones were still there. Jayne was losing patience and decided to stop off after her shift, at midnight, and move the cones herself. I decided to go along and help, so went out late in the evening and found that everything had been cleared away already. I won’t lie. I was a bit disappointed. I had been looking forward to a bit of vigilante cone-clearance.

A happy ending, but I wonder if the hundreds of car drivers, bus drivers, bikers, cyclists and lorry drivers who spent a couple of weeks being inconvenienced realise that it was all for absolutely no reason at all?

And now we have signs at the Fleming Way roundabout with advance notice of Southern Water work starting in September for a week or two.