Real issue is how to tackle local traffic

Lord Strasburger’s letter stating we can keep HGVS out of Bath falls flat on its face once you look at the October 2017 Clean Air Zone (CAZ) Automatic Number Plate Recognition data set used for the B&NES Bath Hacked “Hackathon” on the 20th of October 2018.

On average 28,042 vehicles used London Road every weekday. Of those 1,139 were HGVS (4 per cent of total) with 430 HGVS (1.5 per cent) travelling through Bath in under 1 hour. Of those, 215 HGVS (0.7 per cent) used the A36/A46 route, 156 (0.5 per cent) the Bristol route, and 59 (0.2 per cent) the Radstock route.

It appears that the Lib Dem election machinery has decided that vilifying 0.7 per cent of HGV traffic travelling through the city (A36/ A46 route) will win them the next local election.

There is a simple but wrong answer to everything.

We have a Royal Mail depot in the heart of the city centre with high volumes of HGV traffic while our MP, Wera Hobhouse, is calling for a Bus Depot Island on the western edge of the city to be converted into an arts and crafts fair.

We still do not have freight consolidation centres on the east and west of the city (outside of the CAZ). We have a CAZ “C” (vans, HGVS and buses) that has left the city with illegal levels of air pollution due to a Tory Air Quality Model that required dumping traffic lights on Queen Square (rather than closing three sides to through traffic), so they could go into a local election committed to not charging older diesel cars.

With only 2,564 vehicles (9.1 per cent) using London Road travel through the city (1,005 A36/A46, 442 Radstock, 1,117 Bristol) the real issue is how do we tackle local traffic.

This places the onus on Bath residents to walk, wheel, cycle, or use public transport if they *can*. It requires the council to urgently put in place freight consolidation centres on the east and west edges of Bath outside the CAZ.

It requires a CAZ “D” which includes older diesel cars which I suspect will be forced on the council by the government.

Even that may not be enough and we might need to consider charging *ALL* diesel cars and vans as they are responsible for 82 per cent of air pollution.

It requires moving high HGV traffic businesses out of the city centre to more suitable sites. These are all difficult political messages to push.

It is much easier to blame 215 (0.7 per cent) evil nasty HGVS trundling through our city to and from the south coast and that nasty Wiltshire council for not playing ball.

This is acting not action and very much Blah Blah Blah politics that is desperately trying to ignore all the evidence and hopes you do too. Adam Reynolds Timsbury