New houses will worsen traffic

WHILST I chuckle my way

through a chapter in Bill Bryson’s book The Road to Little Dribbling, a harsh reality comes to mind in a local context.

He was in the New Forest lamenting that on a typical summer’s day, some 14,000 vehicles are funnelled through a constricted T- Junction.

He goes on: “In my experience, the last people you want trying to solve any problem, but especially those involving roads are highway engineers.

“They operate from the principle that while no traffic problem can ever truly be solved, it can be spread over a much larger area.”

Being a resident of Western Gateshead (old County Durham) this hits a real note given the daily chore of either queueing on either the by-pass from Crawcrook to Blaydon, or experiencing extensive delays both morning and evening crossing the Swalwell roundabout.

The worrying aspect however is not the lack of a solution to alleviate these delays, but the proliferation of new housing schemes granted planning permission in Western Gateshead at Ryton and Crawcrook and also the former “D” category villages of Chopwell and High Spen, in Consett, County Durham, and Prudhoe, Northumberland, with no apparent recognition that the existing road infrastructure is already saturated at peak times. IAN PARKER Rowlands Gill