Letter: The Vision Group Are Not Living in the Real World

Published on: 8 Sep, 2014
Updated on: 8 Sep, 2014

From Nigel Trellis

The Guildford Vision Group (GVG) plan seems naive. Their scheme to have a single carriageway road wandering off around the western side of the railway will be totally inadequate. I cannot see it being able to cope where there are currently four lanes available over the Friary bridge and two lanes in Bridge Street.

The Farnham Road railway bridge is already a bottle neck being a single two way carriageway.The scheme then goes on to show the road crossing the present Town Bridge again a single carriageway. The road plan seems to have no thought about traffic levels or traffic distribution.

The use of the car is not going to go away and people do need to get from north to south and east to west. Guildford is, after all, located in a gap in the North Downs that has been used by travellers for centuries.

This scheme, with all the lovely riverside and pedestrianised areas, is not living in the real world. It will dissuade shoppers from coming to Guildford and cause inconvenience to people living in the area.

Responses to Letter: The Vision Group Are Not Living in the Real World

Pete Knight Reply

September 9, 2014 at 8:12 am

I have to say that when I saw their pictures with tons of additional trees (always makes things look nice) and saw that Bridge Street was to be closed (apart from buses) and Friary Street I then realised how bonkers the whole thing was that I read no more.

Who is funding this art work? Also why on earth create shops in Friary Street when we already have a retail core. Can we leave things like this to our elected representatives please?
Robert Burch Reply

September 9, 2014 at 9:33 pm

It is sad to read comments with such a lack of imagination. GVG offers us a vision of what Guildford could be.

There is a lot of detail to work through, as GVG acknowledge, and some of this may mean ideas in the vision cannot be fulfilled. But at least we have something to work towards.

In the decade my family has lived in Guildford, this is the only inspiring concept for our town that I have seen. If others have better ideas to improve the current situation, then tell us.
Nigel Trellis Reply

September 10, 2014 at 11:13 pm

I’m sorry Mr Burch feels that I have a lack of imagination. I have nothing against making improvements to make areas more pleasant for pedestrians.

However, as a resident for nearly 45 years and also a realist, I am only pointing out that the area of the gyratory system has always been a meeting point of various routes. There is no physical or financial way that you can reasonably do away with some form of distribution system of traffic from the various routes in this location.

In connection with the above, I believe that the gyratory system was described at the recent meeting as the “centre of the town”. It isn’t. The centre of the town is the High Street and North Street.