Frustrated commuters who have complained they are being “held hostage” in a High Wycombe business park at rush hour because of a £750,000 roadworks project have set up a petition calling for change.

Drivers have raged that hundreds of people are being forced to sit in hours-long queues on Cressex Business Park because of improvement works at the nearby Cressex Link.

The 19-week project, which started on January 21, will see new pedestrian crossings, improvements to traffic lights and a ban on heavy vehicles and traffic light improvements will give north-south priority to traffic from the business park in a bid to cut queues at evening peak times.

However, commuters say the work is making the roads “gridlocked” and after dozens of complaints to the Bucks Free Press and Transport for Bucks, a petition has been launched calling for Bucks County Council to create another exit to the business park to ease congestion.

The petition says: “Traffic in the Cressex Industrial Estate has been steadily getting worse for the last few years. Now we are at the point where it can take hours to leave the estate. Just a few hundred metres.

“The problem is exacerbated with there only being two exits to the estate. What is needed is a third means of exiting. This can be achieved a number of ways, but so far the council is not interested because of the costs involved.”

The petition has so far garnered almost 450 signatures – with commuters saying “enough is enough”.

Richard Welch said: “This problem is getting worse and is being ignored by the council, people’s lives are being made a misery. Business is suffering… it needs looking at.”

Richard Pulley said: “I work on the estate. I should leave about 16.30 but the traffic can be so bad that I cannot leave until 19.00.”

Atia Nazmin added: “I am a resident from the area and I’ve slowly seen the carnage unfold. We need more exit points and councillors who actually frequent the area to make decisions. A third exit point could potentially be an exit onto the top of Chairborough Road which is currently a dead end with a small alley way.

“We have lost our town centre due to poor planning and I fear big companies will move away from our industrial estate too.

“Cressex Link Road would work better with a roundabout rather than lights as this will allow traffic to flow better.”

Mark Shaw, Bucks County Council deputy leader and cabinet member for transportation, said: "The work currently being carried out by Buckinghamshire County Council on behalf of the High Wycombe masterplan partners on the Cressex Link Road seeks to address the known issues with traffic congestion in the area around the Cressex Business Park.

"The Business Park is an important part of the local economy, and the masterplan partnership is always open to working with businesses based there to consider ways in which access to the area can be improved.

"Meetings were held with them in the process of developing the current road improvement works. We will continue to explore the longer-term possibilities of creating a new access route into the Business Park, although we recognise that the options for implementing this are limited, and additional finance for such a project would have to be secured and land acquired.

"The current works to improve the traffic flow in the area including access to and from Cressex Business Park are currently on schedule, and are expected to be completed in early May.

"The necessary roadworks and associated road restrictions do unfortunately cause delays at busy times, and the county council is actively looking into ways to reduce the impact of this work while maintaining the safety of work crews and road users and ensuring that the project is completed successfully."

To sign the petition go to www.change.org/p/wycombe-district-council-cressex-gridlock.