Any method in this madness?

I only ask because...

A – You are building new houses in Hadnall Village, north of Shrewsbury. Now this might be a good idea, as there is a rail line there, and you could add a new rail station. However, instead of building on the land between the A49 and the railway, you are building on both sides of the A49. And there are no plans for a railway station at Hadnall.

So instead of creating a quiet village with good road and rail access to Shrewsbury, you are creating a village that will forever be divided and blighted by the busiest road in Shropshire, with a few road deaths a year. And then you will bemoan the number of cars coming into Shrewsbury, which the town cannot deal with. And you will say that you cannot afford to put the A49 in a cutting, to prevent noise nuisance in the new village, and nor can you afford a pedestrian bridge. So you will not be able to afford to rectify a problem you created in the first place.

You did the same down in Craven Arms, many years ago. Craven Arms predominantly situated to the east of the A49. So then you decided to allow a supermarket and other developments on the west side of the A49. So now all the locals have to run the gauntlet of the busy A49 to do their shopping. Did you not learn from this error?

B – Yet just up the road from Hadnall there is the railway station of Yorton, a location where you are refusing to build any new houses. Again you will bemoan the number of cars coming into Shrewsbury, while studiously ignoring the rail infrastructure in the county.

C – You are building new houses in Baschurch, northwest of Shrewsbury. Now this might be a good idea, as there is a rail line there, and you could add a new station. However, instead of building new houses near to the railway line, you are building them on the other side of town. And there are no plans for a new railway station at Baschurch. So all these new Baschurchites will have to use their cars, and then you will bemoan the number of cars coming into Shrewsbury, which the town cannot deal with. So you will not be able to deal with a problem you created in the first place. Sound familiar?

D – Ditto the new houses you are building at Harmer Hill, Eaton, and Dorrington, and any number of other villages in the county that have no rail connections. Do you not know what made London great? The fantastic commuter connections it had built, which allowed people to live in the countryside (as it was then) and commute into London? Instead, you are creating a road traffic problem that the road infrastructure of Shropshire cannot deal with now, let alone in 50 years time.

E – And where there are obvious locations for a new railway station, like the Battlefield Industrial Estate, you fail to put one in. You put in a level crossing instead. And then you wonder why Battlefield is so congested, when nobody can get to work there by train.

Is the Salop planning department terminally vacuous, or do you have a special training course to teach new recruits how to be bone-headedly stupid?

Rod Elliot, Shrewsbury