THEY are routinely derided as the pen-pushers who don’t understand the reality experienced by the road user.

But is that a fair way to see the council staff responsible for our highways? And can anything to be done to improve congestion when the number of cars on the roads is always increasing?

As part of our series of reports on congestion, the Daily Echo met some of Bournemouth’s highways officials.

Jamie Griffiths, traffic manager at Bournemouth Borough Council, says his department does keep in touch with conditions on the roads.

“We’ve got a control room where we monitor traffic and CCTV covers a large portion of the borough. That enables us to monitor what’s going on out there,” he said.

The timing of traffic lights can be adjusted in response to conditions on busy routes such as Castle Lane East. Naturally, people only remember the occasions when this goes wrong.

A couple of decades ago, there were still plans for building relief roads for areas like Wallisdown, Branksome and Highcliffe. But since then, the consensus view has been that new roads only attract more congestion.

In recent times, government money has mainly been directed at alternatives to the car.

Bill Cotton, the council’s executive director for environment and economy, said: “We’re working within a Victorian infrastructure and in the UK we don’t tend to make massive changes like trying to put through new motorways through existing communities – and that’s physically something we wouldn’t be wanting to do.”

Nonetheless, Gary Powell, Bournemouth council’s head of traffic management, says there is still scope for some road improvements. “There are opportunities where we do need to improve or increase our networks in order to support economic growth,” he said.

Cllr Mike Greene, Bournemouth’s cabinet member for transport, said work was planned to widen and increase capacity on the Wessex Way. “We’ll be looking where there are opportunities for significant growth, both economically and residentially as our population continues to increase,” he said.

“We want a mixture of transport. Some of that will be road,” he added.

Bournemouth and its neighbours are applying to the government’s Transforming Cities fund, which will would secure money to ease congestion, but mainly via alternatives to the car.

Bill Cotton said: “We’ll be able to start upon some solutions around corridor improvements, better access for people to use buses, cycling and just managing the corridor.”

Council leader Cllr John Beesley said: “The whole provision is underpinned by the latest technology, which I would hope would be able to make the difference longer term. Part of that is a comprehensive travel app.”

Cllr Mike Greene said: “The choice really to me is whether we spend hundreds of millions building new relief roads etc or whether we put those same hundreds of millions into developing alternative forms of transport which are sustainable.”