Walkers should also foot bill

Your correspondent Bob Britnell is totally right [Letters, Gazette, September 10]. Cyclists should have to pay to use the roads. However, the issue is broader. I regularly drive along our local country roads and often encounter cyclists, but I also come across pedestrians and even horses, usually on blind bends or narrow sections. Sometimes I have to slow right down or even brake heavily to avoid these people, yet none of them pay to use the road I am on. Additionally, when it comes to urban driving, I often find myself stuck in slow moving traffic, hardly going faster than the pedestrians on the pavement. I often ask myself whether these pedestrians have paid for the pavements they so freely use. If they can’t afford a car, why don’t they use the buses? Worse still, I often have to stop at pelican or puffin crossings to allow these people to cross the very road that I have paid for!

When I first came to Canterbury I was able to drive up the High Street. Nowadays it’s been closed off to traffic, often to the benefit of foreign tourists who don’t even pay taxes in the UK.

I suggest that we should remove all pavements, thereby widening our roads and freeing up the flow of traffic. Pedestrian crossings should also be removed so that traffic need not be impeded. We should also re-open the High Street to through traffic. All of these measures would speed up traffic flow and thereby reduce congestion and pollution and make our city much healthier. If the Green lobby disagree with this view, then let them pay for the privileges that they so much take for granted. I’m sure Bob Britnell would agree.

Brian Moore

Beech Avenue, Chartham