Road to nowhere battle continues over unlinked £50m junction

WHAT a farce with this unconnected £50 million road M49 near M4 South Gloucestershire, that was built with the intention to link up with Amazon and other industrial units on Severnside.

Over the years I noticed the Conservative council in South Gloucestershire had tunnel vision and were hell bent on road schemes, and building houses in the wrong place, which in my opinion were not for the best.

It seems South Gloucestershire Council must be responsible as they are “the Local Highway Authority”.

Where was the previous West of England Combined Authority (Weca) Metro Mayor Tim Bowles? Did he go absent without leave? Why didn’t he bang heads together?

What a farce closing Filton airfield and building houses on the old airfield. In my opinion Bristol Airport is not the ideal position to serve our area as a major airport. Filton airfield had excellent motorway connections M4, M5 & M49 and the Henbury Loop passed right next to the airfield, at Brabazon crossing and closed North Filton station.

Talk about shooting yourself in the foot! In my opinion only I thought it crazy to close Filton Airfield and build houses on it. Filton Airfield had one of the biggest runways and was capable of letting Concorde land. The nail in the coffin of Filton Airfield was the planning consent to build houses to the east of the runway at Stoke Gifford.

Talk about land grabs. The Conservative council of South Gloucestershire sold off the original home of Henbury station and goods yard on the Henbury Loop.

On the land of the old ICI smelting works in Avonmouth they had all the old railway sidings at Smoke Lane ripped up, and built big industrial units, with a massive fleet of 40 ton plus lorries based at this site. Talk about polluting and damaging the ozone layer and pumping out high levels of CO2 emissions.

Useless South Gloucestershire council are not interested in having buses arriving serving Filton Abbeywood railway station. They are petrol heads are intent on spending vast amounts of money on the Avon Ring Road.

The Avon Ring Road is built on parts of the old Midland Railway. When it was being built it was pointed they should keep part of the old track beds for future use.

Typical South Gloucestershire Council were not interested, and the Avon Ring Road was built on the track beds of the Midland railway.

In my opinion before Weca was formed, Conservative-led South Gloucestershire, North Somerset, & BANES councils ganged up on Bristol in a pincer movement. They made sure they got what they wanted at the expense of Bristol. David Wood Bristol