Weston-super-Mare East Ward

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Lasting Legacy

by davidcordingley on 17 February, 2011

image from westonsupermarepeople

David Cordingley writes : Geoff Malham’s letter has prompted me to write and wonder, as the last Conservative Councillor leaves the town hall in May and turns off the lights, what will be remembered as this Council’s most lasting legacy of incompetence. For me it will be even worse than the Tropicana fiasco, it will be a weeping sore that affects daily life for everyone in Weston, namely Highway’s complete failure to understand how road traffic works in real life as apposed to the dream-world that councillors must live in when making decisions.

I mean, were they all on their i-pods when traffic chaos was predicted at the already busy B&Q roundabout BEFORE the development? And all on holiday when told a traffic standstill was the assured outcome if ASDA and Waitrose sat right next door to each other. Again, look at Weston Village; 2000 homes built with the best intentions of a utopian traffic free new world, I’m sure, but with residents now left to reach work or shops funnelled through jiggling little narrow two-way side-roads cramped with parked cars – getting worse all the time but completely and conveniently ignored by their local conservative council representatives – whoever they are.
And was it impossible to visualise the queues that would result when, after doubling in size, Weston has been left still with only ONE main through route to the East and North; and this road having absolutely everything coming directly off it, from massive housing estates to shopping centres to trading estates to motorway access. No wonder we can’t attract big business to Weston. We are promised fixes, but this must read like just another Tropicana saga to most people.
Most unforgivable of all, though, is how the splendour of Pier Square is wrecked by the highway that cuts right through it and with its hideous accompanying forest of traffic lights. Have these councillors no idea of the coming chaos – really? Masses of August traffic and hundreds of tourists trying to dodge cars before milling around in the road itself as they try to push through the one small gap left in the flood defences. Worse, the spectre of unsuspecting Mums letting their children run free at the start of Pier Square only to look on horrified as their kids run headlong into the traffic blocking their way. It’s more than incompetent, some might say it’s verging on negligent.

published in Weston Mercury Readers’ Letters 17 Feb 2011

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