Don’t pit drivers against cyclists

Jacob Rees-mogg has attacked Canterbury City Council’s

draft Local Plan and declared politicians should be “on the side of the motorist” [‘“Council leader has lost the plot”’, Gazette February 23].

Local authority leader Ben Fitter-harding has fallen into the trap and, as you reported in the following week’s edition, “insists the authority is on the side of the motorist, which is why he is proposing a new bypass”.

As an approach to tackling the city’s traffic problems, this is hopelessly simplistic.

We won’t get anywhere by pitting “the motorist” against “the pedestrian” or “the cyclist” or “the user of public transport” or any other abstract category. Politicians of all parties should be on the side of people needing to travel.

We all employ a variety of modes of travel at different times, and the challenge for planners is to get the right balance between them.

We don’t have the right balance at present.

That’s why an urgent priority is to make better provision for pedestrians and cyclists and, above all, to find ways of providing regular and reliable bus services around the city. Of course people will still often need to travel by car, but motorists themselves will benefit if the roads are less congested. Such an approach is infinitely preferable to assuming that car travel will go on increasing inexorably and that the answer is to build more roads – routes which will simply attract

more traffic, continue the downward spiral, and destroy the countryside and the places where people live.

So congratulations to the people of Fordwich for resisting the proposal for a bypass which would wreck their town and “destroy its countryside setting”. We should join them in calling not for a different route, but for a different mindset.

Richard Norman

St Michael’s Place, Canterbury