Evidence that roads can’t cope

The cause of the problem is a gas leak at the entrance to Bridge End and the junction of Myton Road, Banbury Road and the road coming over Warwick Bridge from the town. Whilst repairing the leak a phased traffic light system has been installed.

This once again emphasises what happens in this area whenever there is disruption of any description. It must serve as a very real warning to the Warwick District Council that if their plan to build some 4,500 new houses south of the river over the next 15 years goes ahead, thereby adding a further seven to eight thousand cars to our already crowded streets, they are going to create a major traffic crisis for us all. At present the plan is to widen the junction and approach roads and install traffic lights. The problem is however, that the bridge, which is single lane each way, cannot be changed as it is a listed building. So effectively they are planning to pour more traffic into a bottleneck which they cannot rectify and continue to ignore.

Today (Monday) at 9.30am the traffic on the Banbury Road is solid back to the Europa Way roundabout and beyond, the Myton Road is backed up to the Myton Hospice road entrance, and the queue on the bridge reaching back into the town is solid. The Coventry Road is stationary from St John’s intersection all the way out to the Saxon Mill, and Warwick High Street and West Street has heavy traffic back to the Longbridge roundabout.

When you walk into town the exhaust pollution from all this traffic can be smelled and must be at intolerably high levels. This is damaging the health of Warwick residents and the very fabric of our historic town.

When are we going to wake up to the fact that we are slowly but surely destroying the beautiful old towns of Warwick and Leamington? The leader of WDC has stated we must build for the future and the next generation. If he really wants to do that his team have got to come up with a better solution than they are currently offering in their Local Plan.

They have to put far more effort into building on brownfield sites, reassess how many new houses the area really needs, and realise that to add to our housing stock, especially affordable housing, we must have a solid rational plan for developing the necessary infrastructure rather than the ad hoc approach they appear to have at present.

Anthony King, Save Warwick