In the first of a two part series, we look at whether the current roadworks in Norwich city centre are having a detrimental effect.

I never imagined I could be quite so resourceful on getting into my Qashqai.

Instead of switching onto auto-pilot to meander home after a hard day at the office, I now embark on a challenge requiring military-style precision and performance - asking myself which convoluted route can I take to evade the city's roadworks tonight?

Getting in, out and about the city from Rouen Road is indeed rather like driving around a maze and with just as many dead ends.

Last night I found myself weaving through the back streets of the Golden Triangle from the EDP building, at the heart of the roadwork pain, to get home in north Norfolk - driving miles out of my way to take the only route not totally snarled up bumper to bumper with the city's workforce exodus.

I know I, as a motorist, am deemed the bad guy but all I want to do is my job and deliver my son to school. As a fully employed worker, I pay my taxes, aiding the local economy.

I need my car not only to get to work but to do my job so the park and ride is no good for me and neither is a bicycle. And yet I'm being frozen out, it feels, in a bid to make our pavements the widest in Europe.

I understand the need for people to walk around safely but this is Norwich, not New York; when you walk down Cattle Market Street, you are not swept along by a herd of pedestrians, 10-deep, sprinting down to the train station - in fact, very few people actually walk in this part of the city.

I feel strongly that motorists are not being taken into consideration with the new scheme planned for the city and also the effects of all the inconvenience suffered by so many while it is being implemented.

Are the decisions being taken by those who do not have to drive through the city every day? And just what do visitors to Norwich think, now met with a complete spaghetti junction of confusion in terms of where they can drive and park as well as the eyesore before them of perfectly decent roads and pavements dug up along with small trees, plants and shrubs and a city littered with red warning signs?

How many working hours are being lost to companies whose employees are faced with leaving early or getting in late because of the traffic snarl ups?

And then there are the football match days when the city grinds to a traffic halt for several hours.

It follows a summer of disruption last year when we were diverted for months around Tombland, only for the pavements to be made wider outside Cathedral Close and a roundabout removed at a junction which now proves perilous for motorists trying to exit Palace Street onto Tombland.

Then there is the constant act of reducing two lanes down to one - look what that decision some time ago on Cattle Market Street has done every single morning at commuter times - the pavement may be wider but there is a bumper to bumper queue almost right down to where Rose Lane meets Prince of Wales Road.

Few people are using those pavements, dozens and dozens sit in their cars with the exhaust fumes filling the air with pollution.

As a motorist you now queue all around the inner perimeter of the city and on weekdays after 5.30pm, most of the shops are closed so why can't arterial routes such as St Stephens' leading down Castle Meadow be opened at certain times to alleviate the traffic chaos?

It seems the humble car user is being squeezed out of the city centre altogether which may enable more people to enjoy walking around but what on earth are they going to be walking to when shops, businesses and homes exist only on the outskirts?

A workforce needs to get in and out of the city, for homes to be created, supplies and materials need to get to their destination; Norwich needs to retain its beating heart but right now its main arteries are dangerously clogged up.

• Tomorrow the city's property professionals give their view on the roadworks