Plea to axe relief road plan
Tuesday 19th May 2009, 6:00PM BST.
Shrewsbury’s proposed £100 million North West Relief Road would “carve a destructive swathe” through the countryside and should not be built, campaigners claimed today.
And the Campaign to Protect Rural England, which made the comments, has called on the government to throw out calls for funding which would be vital for the long-standing project.
The CPRE says the planned road would only save 10 minutes for people driving at rush hour, describing it as a “damaging and out-of-date” scheme.
Shropshire Council has previously said that if funding is secured for the scheme from the Government, the road could be built by 2017.
Bypasses for Shrewsbury, Hereford and Lincoln are among projects included in the Regional Funding Advice 2 submissions from the West and East Midlands, which the Government is looking at. A decision is expected in the next month.
Dr Katy Anderson, of the CPRE and the No Way! action group, said: “This road is both destructive and unnecessary.
“The proposed road will cut through and destroy some of the most valuable landscapes and wildlife habitats on the outskirts of Shrewsbury.”
A Shropshire Council spokeswoman said: “The development of a relief road would remove traffic on Smithfield Road as well as Ellesmere Road and enable further works to be done on these routes.”
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I doubt very much that these people live and drive in our town !
To get from Harlescott lane, via Ellesmere road to the A5/ Welshpool road roundabout can take as long as 35 minutes, not only during rush hour. This amount of time to cover 5.5 miles is ridiculous. The air pollution in the town during peak periods is catastrophic.
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and the southerly by pass was driven through brown field sites,? rubbish, the northern bypass is needed.
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I agree with Colin, the CPRE seem to have a rose tinted view of how the countryside should look. Of course in an ideal world we would not need to build such a new road but the traffic jams that occur every day in the town centre are unpleasant for the residents there.
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I agree with the comments above, the new link road has been needed for many years,at the moment the poor old B5067 is used as a short cut by traffic traveling from Harlescott and the north of Shrewsbury to the A5 ring road, and the same coming from the A5,during which time there have been many accidents some fatal along the B5067,(Huffley Lane) near Harlescott and at the junction where the A5 meets the old Hollyhead road, also lets face it Shrewsbury needs a boost, many large employers are shedding staff or moving away, Im sure better access would encourage business and bring much needed jobs to our town.
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I fully agree with the comments posted. It is about time that Shrewsbury was taken out of the dark ages. You cannot preserve everything in aspic. The NRR is desperately needed to ease the traffic congestion that the town suffers and will ease the Baschurch corridor and the accident black-spot that is “the ship”. Once it is built everyone will wonder what on earth the fuss was about.
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