WALLISDOWN WOES

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.