Letter: We Have Been Punished by Increasing Traffic Congestion Already

Published on: 18 Feb, 2019
Updated on: 18 Feb, 2019

From John Ferns

In response to: Withdrawal of Bus Service is ‘Punishing’ Ash and Tongham Residents

Graham Eyre, former chair of Ash Residents’ Association and prospective Conservative candidate for the borough council says: “It seems that Stagecoach is punishing the people of Ash and Tongham…”.

We have been punished already.

Increasing traffic congestion is a fact of life in the borough, and no less in South Ash & Tongham.

Unlike the rest of the borough, there are currently over 1,000 new homes being built out here and the situation will only be worse when the full GBC Local Plan is implemented and all the homes are occupied.

Traffic congestion is an increasing everyday reality that faces local residents and is an indictment of Surrey County Council Highways Department which relies on “computer modelling” and which refuses to recognise the real-life implications of aggregated multiple planning applications in a small area.

How many times have I attended Planning Committee meetings in Millmead in the last three years and heard our local councillors voice their despair at their impotence in the face of SCC Highways intransigence and failure to face reality?

Our “excellent public transport facilities” have been a major factor in the argument for the volume of sustainable development already approved for this area.

And now Stagecoach is very publically justifying the withdrawal on account of “problems along the route stemming from worsening traffic congestion, which has resulted in longer journey times”.

Precisely. This is what local residents have been saying for years.

This is the tip of the iceberg. Our local road network is narrow and the main axis of the A323, Oxenden Road and The Street were not and never will be (re)designed to accommodate the volumes of traffic transiting through the area now and in the future.

And these limitations can never be solved, not even, I submit, by the infrastructure programme outlined in the Local Plan, short of a fantasy road widening scheme on the A323, Oxenden Road and The Street.

You will never get a quart into a pint pot, however hard you try.