When
the words ‘traffic’ and ‘improvement’ are mentioned in the same sentence in the
local paper it’s enough to strike fear into the heart of every motorist in the Bournemouth
conurbation and so having put down yesterday's Daily Echo, I felt compelled to take to my keyboard
to warn the nation of the motoring mayhem likely to result from this latest
suggested project to ‘improve’ the Wallisdown roundabout.
It
seems the chimps in the Town Hall basement have successfully blagged £2 million
to waste on yet another farcical road scheme that will result in little ‘improvement’
but yet more traffic chaos. Whilst we’ve
all been busy complaining about pot-holes and lack of gritting, the local Council
has been silently deploying its stealth mission ‘Operation Gridlock’ over the
past decade.
Haven’t
you noticed how street corners and pavements are getting bigger? You could fit 3 sumo wrestlers abreast on the
average street these days yet struggle to squeeze 2 cars through a junction at
the same time. Really? Well take a good look – Wagon Wheels may be
shrinking but pavements round here are not.
Much
in the same way as the Spanish Inquisition slaughtered hundreds of innocents in
the name of ‘religion’, the Council is killing us slowly with its incessant
tinkering on road networks that have functioned adequately for the past 50
years. And for what? To create a rose-tinted utopia of streets clagged full of traffic lights,
roundabouts, speed-humps, chicanes, cycle lanes and wider street corners to rid
the world of motorists who they see as the heretical enemy.
Oblivious
to the monster pollution bubble that they’ve unleashed on the population at
large through snarling up traffic, (on some roads car queues outlast local
pensioners) Bournemouth Borough Council fail to see that what is really needed
is money spent on creating a free flowing circulatory road system that reduces
engine idling time and road rage.
Allowing more flats to be built in the town whilst not accounting for
the extra cars those property owners will be driving around just adds to the
problem.
As
the news article said and I quote “the junction which has single carriageway
roads on all approaches, is often snarled up even outside rush hour times” but
chimps will be chimps especially when there’s £2 million quid’s worth of
bananas involved and like the Oracle of Delphi, I foresee a quagmire of
bad-tempered drivers in overheated vehicles grounded for hours on what was
previously the perfectly functional Wallisdown roundabout.
