Sir

The total cost of dualling the southern link road will be £38m for the roads and roundabouts (does that include widening the railway bridge?) and £70m for the second Carrington Bridge plus the inevitable overspends. This adds up to £108m for years of futile tinkering and traffic misery compared to £117m for the real solution. With no signs yet of the central government contribution then the £38m will be largely wasted (I can imagine the application ".....er we have started to dual our partial ring road and just realised that we cant get 4 lanes across the 2 lane bridge - don't suppose you can send us £63m ....?")

Computer modelling of traffic flow says we don't need a ring road, but the output of such programs depends entirely on the information you put in.

On the other hand common sense tells us that if you add natural traffic growth to the current overload and the effect of creating 3000 jobs at one end of the A4440 and 5000 houses at the other end, then no-one is going to be going anywhere at more than 5 miles a fortnight.

Finally, will anyone in authority guarantee that when the 2500 houses are built between Dines Green and Broadheath, the site layout will leave a way through for the next link of the ring road that will inevitably be proven necessary ?

Mr T Salter

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