GSD: Government Should Abandon Line Wall Closure Plans Until “Proper Groundwork” Has Been Done
The GSD has said the Government should abandon Line Wall closure plans until “proper groundwork” has been done.
A statement from the GSD follows below:
The Government have climbed down from its decision to effectively close Line Wall Road because it had neither properly planned the implementation of its idea nor properly consulted on it. Rather than continue regardless with a pilot project from Saturdays to Mondays it should abandon the proposed implementation until such time as it has done proper groundwork, invested in infrastructure to support its plans and persuaded the public of the merits of its ideas. This should not be rammed through on 1 June. The insistence on implementing a three day a week pilot project now also shows the Government's poor handling of its traffic and transport policy and more importantly it illustrates how the Government are ignoring the concerns of thousands of people in our community who have expressed strong views on the subject. It is clear that in order to discourage the use of vehicles in our community, serious work will need to go into traffic modelling and widescale consultation before making changes to our road network and infrastructure.
Elliott Phillips said: "A plan to reduce use of vehicles by our citizens requires serious and detailed planning with widespread consultation and not a suddenly rushed through and ill thought out announcement to be implemented by 1 June. The original plan failed to fully appreciate the implications of the closure of a major arterial road in our network affecting the lives of many people in our community and could have been avoided if the Government had done all the groundwork necessary to implement significant changes to our roads. The recent rowing back on the announcement to close Line Wall Road and the widespread revolt by our community is the clearest sign that the Government is disconnected from the views of many working families, small to medium size business and the elderly on traffic management.”
