One sided view of future of Gray’s Lane

Dear Sir,

I read your piece on the potential closure of Grays Lane with interest and to be honest some annoyance at the one sided attitude to the issue.

As you point out it is a much used short cut or in other words a rat run and motorists use this in ever increasing numbers.

You seem to have the view that the car is king and anything else that gets in the way is irrelevant. First, this is not the USA where anyone on foot is looked down on and only the motor car should be catered for.

At the end of the much used short cut is a footpath, it is a busy one used by Schoolchildren, shoppers, the elderly and anyone else with business on Park Street and very near accidents have been narrowly avoided despite your claim that there has never been any. Yes I agree that there has not been a major accident between cars however there have been minor bumps there plus a number of road rage incidents that were caused by one driver not giving way to another and so on.

What is more serious is the risk to pedestrians, yesterday at 1.50pm I was struck myself by a lady driver who, when she stopped said she did not know there was a footpath there, (this was relatively minor as it was the wing mirror and no injury apart from a bit of a fright) some four months ago my partner was subject to a tirade of foul abuse by a taxi driver because she was walking along the footpath and happened to be in front of him, another example is of a partially sighted lady of elderly years who had a very close encounter with a car which fortunately didn’t make contact but gave her quiet a fright. I have taken the time and effort to do research regarding this and the number of near misses I have outlined is just the tip of the iceberg, there are many more stories that could be told.

Another issue is that with the considerable traffic running over this footpath, it is beginning to be destroyed, who should pay for that path to be reinstated? The landowner who allows the lane to be used, The motorist who use it or the Local Authority whom we all pay for? And by the same token if a pedestrian is stuck who is liable for insurance, after all its private land.

Finally, the islands are there to tell you to stay left and although there are no signs there, it implies no right turn, yet you condone traffic coming from this lane, going between islands, cutting through the traffic lights regardless of colour and away, maybe you should put up a CCTV unit outside your office and see how many near misses there are because of this. Believe me you might well be surprised.

I am not necessarily saying that the lane should be completely closed but there certainly is the need to at least control the traffic flow out of this lane to ensure the safety and comfort of pedestrians as well as driver whether this might be by some decent sized traffic bumps at the end or as proposed possible closure of the gap between islands.