Decision due on £100m relief road
Tuesday 2nd June 2009, 8:44AM BST.
Government officials are expected to make a decision on whether to grant funding for Shrewsbury’s near £100 million North West Relief Road within the next few weeks as the project approaches a crunch phase.
Guidance given to Shropshire Council, which has submitted a bid for the proposed scheme, said a decision was expected to be made before the summer recess for Parliament.
This means its fate should be clear either this month or within the first few weeks of July.
The scheme, which is predicted to cost £99.98 million, has been on the cards for years but has been heavily criticised in some sectors.
Just a few weeks ago, the Campaign to Protect Rural England, urged the Government to throw the scheme out claiming the road would “carve a destructive swathe” through the countryside and should not be built.
But supporters say it would help ease traffic problems, as roads in Shrewsbury can get badly clogged up with jams, particularly at rush hour.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.
Today Martin Allard, head of strategic highways and traffic at Shropshire Council, said: “The latest advice from the Department for Transport was they would expect a decision before the summer recess of Parliament, so during the course of this month or early July. We were pleased when it went forward with a recommendation from the Region to be included in the programme.
“We would hope that the department endorses the Region’s decision which would enable us to move forward with the project.”
He said the project also included work in the Welsh Bridge and Smithfield Road corridor that would support the prime purpose of the scheme, which is to reduce the amount of unnecessary traffic going through the Frankwell, Welsh Bridge, Smithfield Road and Coton Hill area.
Mr Allard said this would lead to improvements for the town to air quality. He said work in Smithfield Road would also be carried out to ensure unnecessary traffic did not migrate back to the town centre over time.
The authority has said that if funding is secured for the scheme the road could be built by 2017.
By John Kirk
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Many local groups, politicians and individuals have written to Lord Adonis to urge him to reject this road.
We believe that the road is not needed.
As research after the controversial Newbury bypass showed, new roads only relieve congestion in the short term.
We need to start thinking in longer time frames, if we are to create an affordable future for our children.
The Council’s policies of encouraging cycling, walking and public transport within Shrewsbury have led to a 21% fall in traffic entering the town centre in the last 10 years.
We need to build on this success, and start to encourage Smart solutions to traffic problems (more walking, more cycling infrastructure, responsive public transport at affordable prices, car-sharing and car clubs) rather than investing resources, which everyone knows we cannot afford, on an expensive, environmentally destructive project, which will destroy Shrewsbury’s green wedge and increase CO2 emissions by 13%.
Resources like this £100m and money earmarked for other unnecessary and unsustainable road projects would be better spent on a Green New Deal to create a million jobs in energy conservation, home insulation and renewable energy.
If politicians are serious about climate change and sustainability, then surely this is the way forward.
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What a load of rubbish Huw. I am sure you do not have to commute from one side of Shrewsbury to the other every day.
Let’s get this road built and save millions in wasted time.
As we all know to move from one side of Shrewsbury to the other is now a nightmare. How long can you spend on Coton Hill to name but one location.
As for Newbury that is a very good example of how a by pass can save you hours of wasted time. I have just been there, and it’s great
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Many local groups, politicians and individuals have written to Lord Adonis to urge him to support this road.
We believe that the road is needed.
As research after the controversial Newbury bypass showed, new roads do relieve congestion.
We need to start thinking in longer time frames, if we are to create an affordable future for our children.
The Council’s policies of encouraging cycling, walking and public transport within Shrewsbury have led to a 21% increase in traffic entering the town centre in the last 10 years.
We need to build on this, and start to encourage Smart solutions to traffic problems (more roads, less cycling infrastructure, irradicating unresponsive public transport, cheaper and more economical cars) rather than irrating so-called green projects, which everyone knows we cannot afford, on an expensive, environmentally destructive project, which will destroy Shrewsbury’s padestrian pathways and increase cyclists by 13%.
Resources like this £100m and money earmarked for other necessary and sustainable road projects should be spent on a New Deal to create a million jobs in energy usage, home improvements and renewable road surfaces.
If politicians are serious about climate change and sustainability, then surely this is the way forward.
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Oh come on Huw what a load of green political nonsense – the road is needed and it will actually reduce pollution.
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Thanks for responding, road hog and itsallajoke.
I obviously do not accept your points and feel that £100m of tax-payers’ money (not mentioning the millions on consultancy fees and rigged questionnaires) could be better spent on visionary, forward-looking policies which speed up the trip from one side of Shrewsbury to the other and make it easier for us to get out of our cars and use cheap (subsidised), clean and frequent buses, cycle or walk.
Shrewsbury is a Cycling Demonstration Town after all, and the investment in cycling infrastructure will have an effect if we all embrace it.
Aylesbury is taking climate change, peak oil and sustainability seriously and has started the process of this modal shift from private to public transport, cycling and walking.
The success of the Aylesbury model is what Greens in Shrewsbury will try to emulate.
Thanks for mentioning Newbury, road hog.
Arguments like yours abounded at the time of the Newbury bypass controversy. The powerful road lobby said that building the bypass through 4 Sites of Special Scientific Interest (SSSIs), two Scheduled Ancient Monuments, and numerous wildlife habitats and ancient woodlands would reduce congestion in the town centre.
Your journey to Newbury may have been ‘great’, but research in 2006 carried out 10 years after work started on the bypass, showed that
1) The additional road capacity had fuelled traffic growth of just under 50%
2) Congestion was as bad at rush hour as it was prior to the bypass opening
3) In 2003, 5 years after the Newbury bypass opened, traffic levels had already massively exceeded the Government predictions for traffic levels at 2010.
Could Itsallajoke, who believes against all evidence to the contrary, that a NWRR will ‘actually reduce pollution’ please comment on the evidence from Newbury?
Surely we have to grasp the nettle and embrace proven, sustainable, relatively cheap solutions to transport problems rather than sticking with the delusion that we can build our way out of congestion.
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Huw -
I have asked before what you do for a living, and I don’t think you ever replied to me.
Could it be that:
You have a very convenient local job (possibly in the public sector?) where you have the time and limitation of distance, (and don’t have to carry any heavy “tools of your trade” to work?) therefore, to consider cycling /using public transport etc as you suggest, as a viable option?
Trouble is Huw:
For those of us working in the real world, that HAVE to earn a living, usually by travelling large distances to keep the community /economy running, carrying large volumes of goods, tools spare parts etc etc , that is providing a SERVICE from PRIVATE resources …..
just WOULDN’T be able to function using a bike or public transport! – It just wouldn’t work!
There is a major problem in getting around in this country.
We have, as much as you (or we) may dislike it, fashioned our entire economy, and way of life around a system of transport that relies mainly upon private transport.
IF we really wanted people to bike to work, and only ever use public transport, and share resources such as car sharing etc etc, then we wouldn’t have built housing seperate, and away from, places of work.
Perhaps we should consider building rows of terraced houses alongside factories.
That way we can all walk to work – But of course that was tried in the 19th Century – My aunt lived in one such building (known as the the “slums”) in south East london.
Perhaps there’s a lot of things we could do.
But as things are, I NEED to , along with thousands of others, EVERY day, to be able to travel around quickly and efficiently to keep you, Huw, and others, serviced in what ever your needs may be.
Efficient road systems that route traffic away from town centres form an integral part of this requiremnt
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Efficient road systems that route traffic away from town centres and send them off to Tesco’s and other out-of-town supermarkets are unsustainable, increase car-dependency and are killing off town centre trade.
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What about people who do not NEED to go to the town centre but just need to go on to the next town or village, or home? Why send them through the town centre – that’s where the pollution comes from!
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Huw,
In #6 – are you replying to me?
If so:
I never mentioned Tesco, or out of town supermarkets. (In fact I’d rather keep to local stores that really serve the customer and provide a real service to the community …. but thats another story, and of course such stores would STILL need goods and services!!!
….
I did mention how effective road systems can serve the local community though, by providing effective transportation for essential services.
Also – again if you are replying to me – can you answer the question I put to you ?
kind regards
AskEric dotcom
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Research by sustainable transport writer, Lyn Sloman shows that:
- 40% of car trips could be made by bike, on foot or by public transport without the need for any changes to existing bus services, cycle tracks or streets.
- 40% of trips are too far to walk, too difficult to cycle, or do not have a bus or train service. These trips could be made without using a car if such options were improved.
- 20% of journeys have to be made by car: typically for uses such as carrying a heavy load or transporting an elderly relative.
Lyn Sloman also found out from her research that 30% of total trips in the towns she surveyed were already being made on foot, by bike, or using pubic transport.
Comparatively cheap policies like education, public awareness campaigns, travel plans by schools and workplaces, easily understandable cycle and walking route maps and signposts are already helping to tackle the first 40% chunk, and we need to keep investing in all this as a sustainable alternative to a NWRR. Good behaviour is contagious as the local walk-to-school policies have shown.
Encouraging the second 40% tranche to leave their cars behind requires political will and investment. We need million-pound investments in public transport in Shropshire.
You clearly fall into the 20% category, askeric, and I sympathize with your frustration at congestion.
But would you not agree that tackling 80% of the journeys (the first 2 tranches) would make your life easier and speed up your and road hog’s journey from A to B?
As you rightly say, ‘we have … fashioned our entire economy, and way of life around a system of transport that relies mainly upon private transport.’
For how many years and in how many countries in the world do you think this way of planning oil-based, carbon-emitting transport systems can be sustained, askeric?
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Perhaps you ought to be lobbying the likes of Tesco then, Huw and telling them not to build stores out of town? As for the real workers, maybe we should all resign and get a public sector job on our doorsteps and cycle to work?
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I wouldn’t lobby Tesco, Brian2, because it is up to town planners, not Tesco, how we introduce sustainability and prioritize climate change in the decisions we take as a society.
I don’t work in the public sector (and I don’t see how this is relevant to a discussion about millions of our money being spent on a controversial road), but I think the people who provide us all daily with public services such as NHS workers, those who work in education, the police, the civil service, library services, social work, the prison service, cleaning etc deserve tremendous respect for what they do.
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Just released #1 and #3 :-)
And Huw you are a dreamer – go back to sleep.
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In response to #8, Itsallajoke, the pollution comes from subscribing to the delusion that increasing road capacity will deal with pollution.
It won’t.
Increasing road capacity increases pollution.
Smarter methods to reduce car use (see #1) reduce pollution.
If we want to reduce pollution, we need to reduce traffic.
We can do this by stopping unnecessary road-building projects and diverting the money saved into improving public transport (making it cleaner, safer, cheaper and more ‘aspirational’ like in Aylesbury) and putting sustainability at the heart of planning policy.
Could you comment on what I said about Newbury in #5 now?
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KarenK, askeric was unable to answer my question in #10, so I need an answer from someone, who is wide awake and is not a dreamer. Could you help?
‘For how many years and in how many countries in the world do you think our current way of planning oil-based, carbon-emitting transport systems can be sustained?’
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Huw -
Would you do me the kind courtesy of answering the question I put to you in #6 please.
I think it is relevant becuase:
I believe that you support cycling etc partly, if not wholly becuase it wouldn’t really affect you that much.
Please prove me wrong and tell me/us in general terms how far you travel to work each day – how much weight you have to carry etc etc? on such journeys? – (or maybe you’ve retired?)
For the record, I run an internet service provider company, and I travel the length and breadth of Shropshire and the West midlands Daily (I’ve just travelled from Bridgnorth to Oswestry and back to Telford this morning)…
So ….
Come on Huw – how could I possibly have done that on a bike or public transport, with a shed load of broadband modems, laptops, and other “IT” type equipment on board?
just to repeat – please answer the question.
Thanks
Askeric dotcom
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I may be a bit confused, but Huw has been asked a question, and he is rambling on about something completly different…a career in politics awaits him ! and maybe a trip into the real world would do wonders for him !
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Huw,
You said:
“For how many years and in how many countries in the world do you think this way of planning oil-based, carbon-emitting transport systems can be sustained, askeric? ”
Can you tell me where I actually mentioned within this post anything about oil based / carbon emitting issues ?
I’m talking about better road systems, NOT the technology of powering the traffic that uses them !!
So…..
We HAVE to find an alternative to oil, if only becuase it’s running out, and also of course becuase we are putting back into the atmosphere all that CO2 that was recovered by plants in the carboniferous era which produced the oil reserves in the first place.
(And destroying the rain forests that play a large part in “re-cycling” some of this “latent” Co2 into carbon and oxygen by way of photosynthesis.)
What NEEDS to be taking place is:
Development of fuels that do not release a nett positive amount of CO2.
Wherever these fuels are derived from, there is clearly only ONE truly “green” source of energy, and that is sunlight.
Sunlight manifests itself in several ways:
Wind,heat(sunlight, Photosynthesis, (Vegetable oil?) waves(water) etc.
All mehtods that generate power from any of these sources are actually utilsing the energy from the sun.
So the REAL answer Huw, is to provide efficient road systems for everyone to use as and when they need to, AND develop in parallel, energy sources that don’t put a nett positive amount of CO2 into the atmosphere.
Can you show us examples of where this fuel development is occuring – rather than quoting us endless dubious statistics about global warming, and how we shoud all get “on our bikes”?
(BTW Huw – I/we were experimenting with running diesel engines on vegetable oil (plants recovering CO2 producing carbon – the oil – , and oxygen … to burn it with to produce energy… etc etc) over 20 years ago – long before all this furore over climate change became fashionable)
And so ….. I DON’t see an awful lot going on to talk about fuel development – but what I DO see / hear is an AWFUL lot of car “knocking”
So roll on “non” producing Co2 fuels !! ??
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Huw ….
Come on ..!!!
“KarenK, askeric was unable to answer my question in #10, so I need an answer from someone, who is wide awake and is not a dreamer. Could you help?”
How about answering my direct question first??
and if you are patient Huw ….
You will see a repsonse from me adressing your concerns, that has been held up by the S/Star moderation process .
Patience Huw, Patience !!! – thought you would have plenty of that for the time it must take riding a bike everywhere!!!
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Huw has lots of holidays during half term and term end so doesn’t need to “rush around”,like the rest of us. I hope that all the other teachers at your school ride a bike to work Huw.
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Huw – “askeric ” asked you a very reasonable and relevant question – “what do you do for a living?”.He’s not asking for your work address, telephone number etc., but it does seem to be a very fair question.
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‘Confused’, I wonder if you have heard of the film, The Age of Stupid, starring local actor, Peter Postlethwaite. http://www.shropshirestar.com/2009/03/20/its-not-as-stupid-as-it-sounds/ )
Postlethwaite plays a man in the globally warmed and destroyed world of 2055, watching film footage from 2008.
He is a bit confused like you.
He asks: why didn’t we stop climate change while we had the chance?
With the wealth of unmistakeably grim data collected by climate scientists, and news from the United Nations last week that climate change is killing 300,000 people a year and affecting 300 million, it’s a good question, isn’t it?
Those 300,000 people, who have done least to warm the planet, inhabit the real world just as much as you, askeric or I do.
If traffic-reduction policies are proven to be successful in other towns, and those policies are relatively cheap, improve traffic flows, enhance quality of life and reduce pollution then surely we would be have to be living in the Age of Stupid to press on with the failed and destructive policies of the past.
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Huw Peach said: Jun 4th, 2009 at 10:18 Your comment is awaiting moderation.
I wouldn’t lobby Tesco, Brian2, because it is up to town planners, not Tesco, how we introduce sustainability and prioritize climate change in the decisions we take as a society.
I don’t work in the public sector (and I don’t see how this is relevant to a discussion about millions of our money being spent on a controversial road), but I think the people who provide us all daily with public services such as NHS workers, those who work in education, the police, the civil service, library services, social work, the prison service, cleaning etc deserve tremendous respect for what they do.
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Huw Peach said: Jun 4th, 2009 at 10:41 Your comment is awaiting moderation.
In response to #8, Itsallajoke, the pollution comes from subscribing to the delusion that increasing road capacity will deal with pollution.
It won’t.
Increasing road capacity increases pollution.
Smarter methods to reduce car use (see #1) reduce pollution.
If we want to reduce pollution, we need to reduce traffic.
We can do this by stopping unnecessary road-building projects and diverting the money saved into improving public transport (making it cleaner, safer, cheaper and more ‘aspirational’ like in Aylesbury) and putting sustainability at the heart of planning policy.
Could you comment on what I said about Newbury in #5 now?
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It’s all very well people going on about using public transport but there seems, as always, no real-life experiences shared about it on these threads. Well this is mine.
Friday morning I was driving up the M6 at Shap Fell and caught the Virgin Express train up where it runs alongside the motorway. Well I slowed down to see how fast it was going and it was a paltry 110mph.
Now just how can a business person justify the train fare and time (and time has to be charged for) to a client? We need roads because the public demand efficiency and the lower costs that they bring.
I suggest than these greenies open in town stores with the supply chains using horse and carts and enjoy market domination as their believe is that everyone will flock to their environmentally nice shops – even the poor in society.
MY CHALLENGE TO THE GREENIES: Cost and time cost, my journey from Shropshire (choose an embarkation point of your convenience) to arrive at Haweswater, Cumbria 09:00. An overnight stay may be included, but it must be costed. Just what would you charge?
I think you will find that 155 miles at 50p per mile and 2 hours travelling time at £100 per hour is excellent value to the consumer when compared to the cost of public transport. But please feel free to prove me wrong, if you can.
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thank god this road has no chance of getting national or regional funding
ok so shrewsbury has a wee bit of congestion at peak times but it pails into insignifigance compared to say hereford, or walsall or londons m25 or anymajor town with cars in it really
the government is skint, there are better ways to sink £100 million with out carving up the countryside
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Without wanting to interrupt the debate here…
Has nyone actually TRIED using the ‘cycle routes’ in Harlescott (one of the areas supposedly helped by this road)?? Not that really is a joke. Short pieces of cycle ‘lane’ interuupted by multiple junctions (which you have to stop at). I was nearly decapitated on Halescott Lane this week by overhanging branches over the cycle path. If this is what a cycling demonstration town is about then build the road quickly as we will never encourage cycling whilst it is a dangerous activity on roads stuffed with cars or unfit-for-purpose cycle lanes.
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Lucy W said:
“Friday morning I was driving up the M6 at Shap Fell and caught the Virgin Express train up where it runs alongside the motorway. Well I slowed down to see how fast it was going and it was a paltry 110mph.”
While I agree with the points that you are making, I hope the paragraph I have quoted above was meant to be a joke Lucy……?
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Huw Peach said:
“I don’t work in the public sector (and I don’t see how this is relevant to a discussion about millions of our money being spent on a controversial road), but I think the people who provide us all daily with public services such as NHS workers, those who work in education, the police, the civil service, library services, social work, the prison service, cleaning etc deserve tremendous respect for what they do.”
I do beg your pardon, Huw but I thought you were a teacher of Languages, is that not classed as public sector working?
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Huw -
I asked you politely to tell us what you do for a living.
contrary to what you say… it IS rlevant becuase:
1. What you do, and how far you have to travel to your regular place of work, (i.e essential journeys that is)
and indeed … how much weight in terms of tools of the trade, goods, spare parts you have to carry (or don’t carry, as I suspect) will have a bearing on your ability to walk, or bike, to work.
I suspect that you do work locally, don’t have to carry much weight, and don;t have to worry too much about whether your employer is “making a profit” or not.
I think my question is entirely reasonable.
I can only assume that your reluctance to answer it proves my suspicion Huw, that:
Your using a bike or public transport wouldn’t affect YOU and your income much. In other words, it’s a bit of “I’m alright Jack”.
So come on Huw – answer the question.
It’s easy enough.
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Lucy W.
Did you really mean to imply :
I slowed down to 110MPH ??? (the alleged speed of the Virgin train?)
Careful Lucy ….The last person who appeared on the S/Star columns (recent video) travelling at a palrty 100 Mph on the A5 got Nobbled !
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#27 idon’tblieveit, if there are problems on the bike paths (which i have not encountered personally) I hope you will report them to the Council, who rely on info from the public to improve their services.
Wouldn’t you agree that it is cheaper to clip branches than spend £100m on a road?
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Brian(2), I teach in the private sector, and I am lucky enough in my life to be able to get around by bike. In Lyn Sloman’s research 30% of trips made are like mine.
I have noticed more and more people in Shrewsbury taking advantage of the weather and making trips by bike, but I do realise (as the research above in #10 shows) that not all people have that highly enjoyable, fitness-enhancing luxury.
You, askeric, Lucy W and Rob, Telford all fit into Lyn Sloman’s 20% tranche (see #10), but I hope you feel that dealing with 80% of traffic by re-directing money earmarked for roads into smart solutions like in Aylesbury will make your lives easier, too.
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Huw.
Thank you,
At least you’ve admitted that: (in #33)
“and I am lucky enough in my life to be able to get around by bike.”
So can we at least agree that Biking or indeed public transport isn’t a viable option for many of us?
I’m not at all sure about the 20% / 80% tranches and money being directed elswhere.
Fact is – I and countless others pay A LOT OF MONEY to use our vehicles, and lets JUST remind oursleves that this ISN’T for pleasure use either. This is use for supporting the infrastructure of supply of goods and services which everyone benefits from ….
So ….
It’s OUR MONEY – and it should go where WE want it to – i.e providing BETTER road facilites.
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Being a semi-local due to work but actually living in a village near aylesbury, I feel I have to ask where huw gets his information. Aylesbury is NOT a green paradise where everyone walks or cycles. I say the opposite, its just like everywhere else. On busy weekends, the ring road is full of cars queuring to get ito car parks, all the major stores are on out of town retail parks and being semi-rural, many bus journeys aree just not possible. My village has no bus, I would have to wlak 1.5 miles to the next village to catch one. I can drive the 5 miles to any of three towns in that time. Sorry Huw, I think your propaganda does not fit my experience of the town.
Sometimes, bypasses are for the greater good. The Newbury bypass was to ease the flow of long distance HGVs from the south coast ports to the Midlands which I would say has worked well. The fact newbury centre is still congested is the continuing growth of population in the south. I am neither for nor against the relief road by the way as I do not commute into Shrewsbury often.
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Loving the debate folks…
Question – Does the scheme include the proposed flood defence option where flood water was to be diverted to fields and reducing the flood river level by 1m in the town???
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Eric: I don’t ‘imply’ anything, I am merely stating. I understand that the last person to be ousted by the Shropshire Star for a minor motoring misdemeanour actually handed himself in and confessed.
Should the police come and get me, I will claim it is all mere bravado and they will have no evidence. The best thing they will find is an eye-brow raising in-car video of the Hard Knott pass and as the NSL applies then I have not committed an offence on that.
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Huw: Of course clipping some branches won’t cost £100m (but if the council do it you never know), but cutting a few branches isn’t going to solve the problem.
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I understand that, askeric.
I pay tax on my car as well, and I want the people spending my money to THINK AHEAD and ensure that that money goes into smart, sustainable projects, not into a £100m road, which will destroy Shrewsbury’s unique biologically rich green wedge for ever, and then become redundant when peak oil kicks in in a few years’ time.
Traffic levels are going down in the town centre, not up, after all.
These smart investments in traffic-reduction projects, which have proven successful in other towns, will speed up your unavoidable journey (and I do understand you are car-dependent for your job, while re-iterating that between 40-80% of car drivers are not like you). They will also make Shrewsbury even more of a pleasant place to live in.
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Big Bazzer (#35) you are right to say that Aylesbury has many of the problems that we have in Shrewsbury, but it is a little ahead of us in tackling them.
The reason I highlighted Aylesbury is because it has gone about tackling those problems, not by building more and more roads, but by investing transport money in cheaper, smarter, sustainable methods of dealing with the 80% of car journeys which Lyn Sloman identifies (#10).
Aylesbury became a Cycling Demonstration Town in 2006, 2 years before Shrewsbury, and has introduced lots of SMART methods to encourage a modal shift from private to public transport.
Money has been invested in marketing bus services to make them more ‘aspirational’ and this has increased public transport usage.
As I said before in #10, 20% of car journeys are unavoidable. It sounds like you fit into this category as well.
However, I hope you agree that your journeys from A to B will be sped up if the planning and transport authorities can tackle 80% of journeys without resorting to a highly controversial, £100m road.
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Has WetFeet considered that climate change is expected to increase flood risk and that spending £100m to build a road, which will increase carbon emissions by 13%, might only exacerbate the problem further?
Does WetFeet think that road-building is a sustainable model of flood alleviation, which Britain ought to be exporting to the rest of the world as good practice?
And has WetFeet considered his/her cousins affected by increased flooding (which climate change will only make worse) in Bangladesh?
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Lucy W, I used cycle route 81 from Shrewsbury town centre to the sports village yesterday, had a very pleasant ride (no low branches) and didn’t come across a single car.
I recommend it to everyone.
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Huw: Is there a cycle route 66? If so has anyone written a song about it?
By the way, heard that the last ten years data shows a levelling of global warming and possible cooling. So that spanish speaking expert and his university (somewher in S America?, do you remember the website that you couldn’t read because it was in Spanish?) seems to be right – remember where you heard it first – Radio LW!
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I commute 8 miles each way through town by bicycle (and have done in the car) and I much prefer doing it on the bike – it is far more enjoyable, and cheaper. Cycling and walking in town would be even better if there were fewer people in cars and more on bicycles.
Most people travel shorter distances than me, and the significant reduction in traffic during school holidays indicates the ‘school run’ and the short journeys shown by traffic studies are the ones where alternative transport methods would pay dividends. The majority of school children would prefer to walk or cycle to school, it’s their parents who insist on using the car.
This £100 million road will not help town centre congestion, our collective CO2 output, our health or the environment. Shrewsbury already has both a ring road (the old A5) and a bypass. I can get from Welshpool Road to Battlefield in about 15-20 minutes – the same time as through the town centre. There really isn’t a pressing need for yet another road around Shrewsbury.
@askeric, I pay ‘road tax’ aka VED too. But paying a tax doesn’t give you any right to steamroller your preference through, any more than a smoker can dictate NHS policy because the smoke fags. VED is a tax on a polluting, damaging and relatively dangerous form of transport and, like fuel tax, one of the many ways the government chooses to tax people. I’m not saying cars are all bad, it’s how we use them that makes the difference. Cycling most definitely is a viable form of transport for many people (though I’d not expect someone to travel from Oswestry to town every day!). Again, it’s the short journeys that make the most difference. And there’s always car-sharing…
@WetFeet, the case for the NWRR being in any way helpful re. flooding has not been confirmed. It is in fact likely to contribute to peak flood events by increasing runoff (the sloping tarmac surfaces at Shelton and near Harlescott will drain to the centre and therefore the river basin).
@Lucy W, climate change deniers exist but that doesn’t make them right. There were scare stories over MMR because one (discredited) study linked it with Autism.
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Huw: Re Global Warming, as we both know the Frans Joseph Glacier, New Zealand, is advancing, not retreating. The only difference is I’ve seen it for myself.
Had a phone call from my chums in North Island and they have had snow for the first time in 8 years. The planet is definately cooling, so put your push bike away and drive everywhere at 20mph in a 4×4 – the planet needs warming up!
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Lucy W, do you think the case for this £100 million road is stengthened or weakened by your denial of anthropogenic climate change?
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I used to cycle to the office. It was a strenuous 3/4 hour trip each way and did it because I enjoyed it. At 6:30 am its very pleasant. Sadly I had to give it up as I was loosing 1/2 a stone a month. Nevertheless I still cycle to the pub but even health and safety is trying to stop that making lights compulsory and the police even had the audacity to accuse me of being drunk in charge of a bicycle!! On another occasion I fell off swerving to avoid an ambulance with the blues on. Nice guys, they did reverse to see if I was ok.
Therefore I would share my words of caution that cycling is not all its cracked up to be.
Simon E: Re #44 Global Warming believers also exist and that doesn’t make it right, or do you believe the world is still flat?
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Lucy, the case for human-induced climate change is much stronger than that against. If there is more snow than usual one year (like the UK’s period of cold, frosty weather last Winter) that does not make a case for global cooling. Patterns are cyclical, but the overall trend is alarming.
Climate Change facts (not made up by car-hating greenies): http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climatechange/guide/bigpicture/
If you were losing 1/2 stone a month when cycling then you were not eating the same calories as you were expending. The same would apply to any activity. Quite simple, really.
Compulsory lights at night are a good thing in my view. They mean people are more likely see you instead of mowing you down oblivious to your presence on the road. I can’t imagine why anyone would want to argue they aren’t needed.
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