Kirklees Council should look at the wider picture

My son lives half way up Greenhead Lane and saw all these cars crashing into one another. One lady rang her husband who came in a 4 x 4 and he crashed into them. No it is not all driver’s fault my son drives 40,000 miles a year so I would say he was quite experienced, he had to leave his van down at the bottom. So to me the road wasn’t gritted until later after the crashes. Very frightening. If we went back to standard profile wheels and tyres instead of low profile, car drivers would have a bit more of a chance because really last night was a dusting of snow to what we used to get. Lorries are a bit more of a problem, especially artics, but a softer compound tyre would help and letting some air out of the tyres helps too, unfortunately no good if you have low profile tyres. ONCE again Kirklees Council conjures up another scheme to supposedly resolve the traffic chaos on Halifax Road and around the Ainley Top junction.

Congestion, air quality, and “stimulating the local economy” predictably feature in the promotional hype.

Typical of the times we live in, more suggestions our esteemed council and presumably associated political agencies really know what they are doing.

Perhaps in the light of the situation we should avoid the “jam tomorrow” sentiment seeing as Ainley Top traffic “jams” are already more than apparent.

The major issue is that another “solution” has been unveiled.

Wasn’t the recent major amendment to Ainley Top going to resolve the problems, and/or the creation of a Smart/ Managed M62?

Indeed, the latter was declared a success by the Highways Agency a mere 10 days after the latest work was completed rather than after a realistic time period. Similar positive commentaries were made about the traffic lightcontrolled Ainley roundabout.

In each case local people had previously observed the likely folly of the rash claims being made by the “experts”.

As for Kirklees’ new-found concern for the air quality in Lindley and Birchencliffe, it should be remembered that Lindley Moor Action Group has spent the best part of two decades raising this matter with Kirklees and DEFRA.

Independent testing and crucially Kirklees’ own data highlighted serious issues on Halifax Road, but was ignored as our council opted to approve massive development in the vicinity of Ainley Top.

Councillors’ and officers’ past responses to air quality concerns now make interesting reading.

The Lindley Moor development hype very much focussed on promised job creation, even now a familiar, discredited developer ploy in Kirklees and neighbouring Calderdale. The truth is past promises dramatically failed to come to fruition.

Rather than addressing the clear congestion and air quality situation, Kirklees blindly pursued a property developerled agenda, which has irrefutably had a negative impact on the district and the people living in it. Indeed, the decline is probably guaranteed to accelerate as our council is likely to unveil even more illustrations of its incompetence.

Perhaps, before suggested “solutions” and “schemes”, Kirklees Council should recognise there’s more to the regeneration of Huddersfield than putting all the eggs in the university basket and futile, piecemeal road amendments. MR Balance may or may not have noticed that my entire letter was a point-by-point, dismissal of a letter from a Brexiter.

There were in fact several points in my letter. So do I want to correct a few figures about the stock market?

Well, I can see that it’s the very wealthy who would be the only ones to benefit from Brexit financially, and so it might be of importance to them.

However, for me, it was the least important of my points, and a complex one at that. So for the sake of compactness I simplified greatly.

As Mr Balance did not mention any of my other points, I feel pleased that the greater part of my letter was balanced and correct.

So thank you. Lets stay in the EU.