Reader’s Response: “The road to nowhere”

[dropcap]U[/dropcap]nless you’ve been living in the Tora Bora caves, or Coventry, for the last few weeks, you may have noticed there have been a few roadworks around campus. Whilst the university’s aim to constantly expand into new territory with Putinesque bellicosity is almost quite breathtaking, the digging up of already-built parts of campus is causing some consternation.

The roadworks were supposed to be finished by the start of term. No, not after Christmas, before term one had started.

To say that this represents a bit of a small cock-up on behalf of the university, council and building companies is probably a bit like saying the Vice-Chancellor is a universally loved figure.

In first term I was happy, but that was before my life had been bedevilled by my two least favourite words in the English language: Academic Loop.

Hundreds of Leam-dwellers stumbling round the muddy field behind Maths and Stats may have been amusing to onlookers, but it wasn’t very funny to experience. Also, what’s the point of bus-stops in the middle of nowhere? The post-Pop! stagger to the bus stop is bad enough without needing to read an impenetrable campus map as well.

Yes, the decision to undertake what looks like open-cast mining by the SU (apparently because they only put down a temporary road surface, which was exhausted because of delays) has led to a bus service that does neither of its two jobs: get you to campus on time or in the right place. Leamington’s not much more than ten miles from campus, but journey times of forty minutes make it seem like another planet.

I don’t blame the drivers, or the builders, who are doing a difficult job with even less information than we have – and crowd-controlling hungry, mutinous students during rush-hour can’t be easy – but the management of the work who don’t appear to have planned ahead.

Combined with roadworks at the top of Kenilworth Road, sometimes I feel like I may as well hike.

Despite this, I still don’t regret living in Leamington: I’m very fond of the town, and I like the decompression time a commute gives you – I just wish it wasn’t quite that long. It also feels like a bit of a double whammy after the plumbing works last year meant getting off at Pizza Express and walking all the way into South Leam, which was hardly convenient.

With no end in sight we could always try the Bowater solution of destroying Kenilworth, but I fear the red tape involved. Monorail, anyone? It worked so well in Ogdenville and North Haverbrook.
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Photo: flickr/iancv55