THE Hereford City Link Road is wonderful when you are on it.

Driving on the freshly-laid surface, motorists just get into third gear until they meet a set of traffic lights – and normal service is resumed.

The two accidents – on successive weekends – close to the Widemarsh Street junction have shone an unwanted light on the £34 million road which opened last year.

Many were already questioning the point of the road which links Edgar Street and Commercial Road when it is often so free of cars.

The reason why so few drivers choose to travel along the new road could be down to just how difficult it is to get onto the route.

Traffic lights illuminate both ends of the road while stopping the flow of traffic.

This is particularly true of the Commercial Road side where the constant stopping and starting looks like harming the future prospects of the proposed transport hub outside Hereford railway station.

The road layout on Commercial Road, which sees traffic now back up in a single file onto Blueschool Street, also does no favours to those drivers stuck on Aylestone Hill.

The one benefit of the road is that it will open up disused land around Widemarsh Street, but this is not yet visible and so all Hereford’s frustrated drivers can see are the growing queues and more lights on red.

It all means that motorists will avoid the bottlenecks and continue to drive along Newmarket Street as they did before millions were spent removing Rockfield and building the new link road.