POOLE’S road congestion has been so severe that buses linking the town centre with Upton and Hamworthy have been up to an hour late.

Resurfacing road on Blandford Road (pictured) came to an end at the weekend – but a planned 14 weeks of roadworks on the Upton bypass starts today.

Morebus, which has been using Twitter to update passengers on the hold-ups, has warned of “severe delays across out network due to traffic resulting from multiple roadworks in the Poole area”.

Its managing director, Andrew Wickham, said the Blandford Road closures had meant more traffic in the town centre.

But he said Poole council had let buses continue using the affected stretches of Blandford Road as far as possible.

“I’ve been very critical about this sort of thing in the past. It’s a pain to us and I apologise to our customers for the delay,” he said.

“We’ve been running extra buses on the 8, 9 and 152, which are the effected services, to try and keep the service running but the buses sit in traffic there.”

Buses were delayed by up to an hour at the height of the congestion.

Last week, some motorists said they were stuck in traffic for up to two hours, as roadworks on Holes Bay Road coincided with the continuing Blandford Road work.

Mr Wickham said: “To be fair to Borough of Poole, they’ve really worked hard planning this work.

“We do accept the road needs to be resurfaced from time to time – we’re critical of roads that are not resurfaced because they give a poor ride to our customers.

“We know that the council has done their best to complete the work in the smallest time.”

Work is due to start today on installing concrete barriers to protect the A350 bridge over the A35 Upton bypass.

Dorset County Council expects the work to take 14 weeks and is warning people that there will be delays.

There will be lane closures, with a 30mph speed limit through the roadworks area and a 50mph limit approaching it.