AS another long-standing (long suffering?) resident of London Road I have to take exception with last week's letter accusing the 500 residents who signed the petition calling for traffic calming on London Road of being selfish.
This petition calls for traffic calming, and not road closure. This means that vans servicing Leftwich businesses, ambulances and fire engines can still use the road, but articulated lorries and boy-racers looking for a rat-run are encouraged to use the spine road. In fact, response time for the emergency services may actually be reduced as these drive unhindered over the specially designed sleeping policemen and find London Road relatively traffic free.
The spine road is an excellent facility for vehicles, bicycles and pedestrians alike, for which the relevant authorities need praising.
However, few of these facilities exist on the older, less maintained and mainly residential London Road. I fear that without any form of traffic calming measures, London Road will become a dangerous or fatal rat-run. I was also amazed to discover that the 'resident of London Road' believes three quarters of the traffic for Northwich is now using the spine road. Anyone just needs to drive or walk down both roads to see that this is clearly not the case. The spine road resembles a ghost road while London Road looks more like the M25 on a Bank Holiday Monday.
As for the poor shopkeepers who will miss out on the passing trade, the only business that could possibly loose out on the passing trade is the post office. This is the exact location where the petition to introduce calming measures is located.
The arguments over who is or is not being selfish will no doubt rumble on.
However, we should not lose sight of the basic argument that too much traffic is driving too quickly down London Road and if something is not done to reverse this, I fear that the front pages of your paper will be reporting on something sadder than selfish residents.
NAME
and address supplied.
Via email
Converted for the new archive on 13 March 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.
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