It’s easy to criticise planners and politicians when you find yourself sitting in a traffic jam, waiting to navigate the latest unanticipated set of roadworks.

It’s a temptation I usually resist but I’m going to make an exception when it comes to what’s happening at the Aquarium roundabout and the Old Steine – the ‘Third Phase’ of Brighton’s Valley Gardens project.

This is not the usual squeal from a frustrated motorist who has sat fuming in the long traffic jam along Marine Parade – I only ever take the bus or walk.

It’s the considered concern that much time and money is being spent on a scheme that might make life for visitors and residents alike, more, and not less, problematic.

First, was there a traffic problem at the Aquarium roundabout that needed solving?

I’ve been regularly passing that roundabout for the past 13 years and – given that the A259 is a major coastal trunk route – it seems to me that it works reasonably well.

The traffic queues were rarely horrendous, in any direction and for pedestrians it only involved a couple of minor diversions to navigate – though I do accept that for cyclists the roundabout can be more challenging.

In future, the junction will be controlled by traffic lights and, I suspect, this will lead to long queues in all directions.

If the road was used mainly for just local trips that would be one thing – alternative routes can usually be found – but the A259 is an important cross-county route linking communities stretching from Peacehaven to Shoreham.

And it’s not just concern about the impact of the scheme on the traffic.

It’s the pedestrians and bus users I am equally worried about.

The area that stretches across the sadly burnout out Albion Hotel and the YMCA is now being completely pedestrianised with an array of benches and trees – and perhaps some flower beds at a later stage.

Sounds like a great place to sit and enjoy – but enjoy what exactly?

Views of the sea? Not possible, or at least not as far as I could tell.

What strollers and sitters will experience will be the meeting point of two major trunk routes – the coast road and the Brighton to London route – and the experience will be ‘enhanced’ by the queues at the traffic lights and the plethora of buses swinging round the bottom of the Old Steine Gardens.

It’s hardly going to be a veritable urban delight – and I dread to think what pollution levels will be like.

And it’s also going to be a considerably longer walk for bus users coming in from either the Lewes or London roads and needing to change to buses going to the east of the city, and beyond.

The project, like most such projects in the UK, is coming in over-budget and late.

Although to be fair to the Brighton and Hove planners (and politicians) there are good reasons why implementing major works in the city is particularly problematic.

Space is very limited – the city being hemmed in by those pesky South Downs to the north and that stretch of water across to France in the south.

And there is little free space to utilise along the highly developed coastal communities to Brighton’s east and west.

Within this limited space there is very dense road use – cars, buses and bikes – and the roads are mostly narrow, offering limited options for alternative routes.

It also has a very high level of ‘community engagement’ as the planners call it.

Lots of residents and amenity groups, campaigning organisations and concerned individuals, all (rightly) wanting their voices to be heard when it comes to major changes in the city’s public spaces.

And, as the first constituency to elect a Green MP, there is also a strong tradition of environmentalism in Brighton and Hove – people care about the environment, not just what it looks like but how healthy, or otherwise it is.

So maybe, just maybe, my fears are unjustified.

Maybe the new traffic management scheme at the Aquarium roundabout will work well.

And perhaps I might even find myself, having walked along a quieter Marine Parade to the Aquarium, sitting outside a newly refurbished Albion Hotel, admiring the view (and the trees) and saying to myself, or anyone else who might be passing by, “Do you know what? It was worth the money and worth waiting for after all.”

Ivor Gaber is Emeritus Professor of Journalism at the University of Sussex (and a non-car owner living in Brighton)