At last the traffic has started to flow around Bingley rather than crawl through it. It has been a long, long wait for the relief road to become a reality, with the Telegraph & Argus among those who campaigned for it all the way to secure the transport improvements which we believed would make a great deal of difference to the quality of life of many of our readers.

The events of yesterday vindicated those who supported the idea of a road to bypass the Bingley bottleneck. Traffic now travels from Crossflatts to Cottingley in far less time than the frustrating 20 or 30 minutes it used to take.

The benefits to Bingley itself immediately became apparent. Relieved of much of the relentless grind of cars, vans and lorries, the town took on a more relaxed ambience. The way has now been paved for its redevelopment and rebirth as a place that people enjoy rather than endure.

The opening of the relief road in the week before Christmas did not, of course, present it with its toughest test. The schools are closed. A lot of people are already on holiday. It remains to be seen how Cottingley and Saltaire will fare when the road is subjected to a full load of traffic on the first Monday morning of 2004.

It is likely that there will still be some hold-ups and bottlenecks until problems presented by the next stretch of the route have been tackled to enable traffic to flow smoothly from the Aire Valley into Bradford and on to the motorway. The campaign is far from over.