Villagers block road in protest as bypass axed
AN ESTIMATED half the population of a Snowdonia village blocked a major road yesterday in anger at cancelled plans to build a new bypass in the area.
The community of Llanbedr has been blighted by traffic chaos for many years.
Bottleneck situations often form in the village, which is divided in half by the A496.
The coastal road is busy throughout the year and acts as a link between Penrhyndeudraeth and Barmouth, and the communities in between.
At 11am yesterday, the road was blocked by about 150 people as part of a peaceful protest, with residents walking along the road in tandem.
It took place along a 1.5-mile stretch of road through Llanbedr. Liz Saville-Roberts, MP for Dwyfor Meirionnydd, was also at the action.
Protest organiser Karl Ciz said: “The protest is to call upon all political parties to come together to resolve the Llanbedr problem.
“We call upon Welsh Government to deliver the ‘low-speed bypass’ offered in the report into Llanbedr by Lee Waters [deputy Welsh Government minister for climate change].
“Planning permissions are still in place, and an amendment to the plans to reduce the speed limit would satisfy long-term CO2 savings too, so we question why the speed amendment is being blocked. It’s a solution that would please everyone, after all.”
He added: “There was about 150 people – about half the village – at the protest today. We want to depoliticise this issue.
“We are not going away, we just want Lee Waters to look at this again and this will not be the last protest.”
Councillor Annwen Hughes thanked the Pobl group for arranging the protest.
She said: “There was a very good turnout, there were many from Llanbedr and we even had some people from Shropshire and a young family from Australia, who were staying in Llanbedr, join the protest.
“This has been going on for many years now and work was supposed to start in January 2022 when the plans were once again shelved at the Cop 26 summit in November 2021.
“But once again we have been left disappointed.
“We are hoping to stage another protest and are not going to go away.
“We are worried it is only a matter of time before something happens to the bridge and the consequences that could have, and the village is struggling in the summer with gridlocked traffic.
“We just want the Senedd in Cardiff to listen to what we are saying.”
Yesterday’s protest comes after the Welsh Government unveiled its Roads Review of 55 roads projects in Wales.
The planned schemes were frozen in June 2021 and an early casualty was the £14m Llanbedr bypass.
The proposed bypass got the goahead in March 2020 and, had the scheme not been axed, it would have been completed this year.
Its cancellation fuelled grievances in a village that is regularly gridlocked in summer and must contend with traffic “mayhem” all year round.
The narrow bridge over Afon Artro is often the epicentre of the bottlenecks formed in the village.
The march was designed to “show disappointment’ in the approach taken by the Welsh Government.
Organisers say it has “been 60-plus years since we could walk and cycle safely” through the village.