THE boss of a leading Hull firm says how people cope with the looming upgrade of Castle Street will be a test of the city's ambitions.
Construction work on the £160m improvement scheme is scheduled to start in 2016.
The scheme on the city's busiest road could take at least two years to complete – taking up a large early chunk of the period covered by the new City Plan for boosting economic growth in Hull.
However, advanced preparation work starts next week when a series of bore holes will be sunk to test ground conditions in the area.
Some of the test drilling will take place on land owned by safety workwear and equipment firm Arco, whose headquarters overlook Castle Street.
Joint managing director Thomas Martin said: "When the main work starts in Castle Street, it's going to be noisy, dusty and inconvenient and there is going to be a lot of chuntering about it.
"However, as a city, we have to acknowledge it as a temporary inconvenience and find ways of putting up with it."
Mr Martin, who is a member of the City Leadership Board overseeing the implementation of the City Plan, said firms needed to come up with imaginative ways of working around the inevitable disruption.
One idea, he suggested, was to look at flexible working hours for some employees.
"We can make this happen and we will make this happen because we must make this happen.
"We have already had three meetings with the Highways Agency and they want to take a significant amount of our real estate for the scheme.
"We want to work with the Highways Agency and the city council to agree a way forward on this land because it is vital for the city."
Speaking at the launch of the City Plan, Mr Martin said the proposed upgrade of Castle Street was desperately needed to address a flawed original design.
"We have got a fantastic city here and all great cities have a heart and soul.
"We have three hearts – the New Town, the Old Town and the waterfront – while our proud heritage is our soul.
"So what did we do? We made it impossible to join them up by building Castle Street. It's been perfectly badly designed."
He said improving the east-west flow of traffic along the route would give Hull an enormous economic advantage.
"The east-west route is a major opportunity. If we crack that, it will provide easy access to the UK's largest local enterprise zone.
"Yes, we need help from Government but I think we also need to make our own luck and I think this is something we can achieve.
"The City Plan is a pretty big deal.
"Raising aspirations and major transformational change will all be about joining things up with the public and private sectors working together more closely than ever before."
Hull West and Hessle MP Alan Johnson said the Castle Street scheme was the key to unlocking the city's potential.
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