Road To Nowhere

They have been replacing the gas main on the main road in and out of town for the past few weeks, controlling the traffic flow with temporary traffic lights.
The first couple of weeks, the queues were bad, but at least they moved, albeit slowly. But as the roadworks got closer to the junction, there was less and less room for traffic to queue at the temporary lights without tailing back to the main lights. As you can see, the lights are on green but the traffic can go nowhere. Indeed, whilst I watched, the lights cycled from green to red and back to green three times before any of those cars could move. Unsurprisingly, by that time, the queue was back into the one way system. And bear in mind this is after rush hour so theoretically there is less traffic!
Why on earth they didn’t just switch off the main lights at this stage and move the temporary ones to the junction to obviate this issue is beyond me. But considering this bunch have been causing chaos all over town for the past twelve months whilst they replace gas mains, it doesn’t surprise me.
In the meantime, I have resigned myself to allowing an extra half hour, or taking a very convoluted route, whenever I need to go out of town.