Tackle congestion first, not a charge

Congestion charge? Why not deal with the congestion first? I have lived in Wiltshire for the majority of my working life, in excess of 25 years, and have worked in Bath for all that time and have travelled into the city on a daily basis. I have seen first hand how congestion is a blight on Bath and accept that this needs to be remedied. However, making money by imposing a congestion charge out of it is not the way forward. Tackle the problem causing the congestion, ie cars and lorries. When the Batheaston bypass was built this was the golden opportunity to integrate a park-and-ride site and also a flyover road leading directly from the A46 to the A36. From personal experience, I don’t want to sit in lanes of traffic when I could use a park-and-ride service but I don’t have that “luxury”. Only recently a park-and-ride scheme on the Bathampton Meadows was raised again and even a BANES owned site was one of the options but all too quickly dismissed. How blinkered it was not to pursue this scheme – were the congestion charge proposals the real reason behind this I wonder in hindsight? Despite residents’ objections, with appropriate landscaping a park-and-ride site would not be an eyesore and it was only part of the Meadows not the whole. In addition to the usual parkand-ride facility a school bus delivery/collection service could be incorporated – children do not need to be delivered to the school gates! It is also very evident when it is school holidays/half term by the lack of cars on the roads! So far as lorries are concerned when the A46 was recently closed due to a fatal accident there were no lorries coming into Bath – what a joy! The lorries have timetables to meet and don’t want to sit in traffic any more than anyone else does. If there was a direct route from the A46 to the A36 over the Bathampton Meadows there would be even less congestion. Sophie Chard Wiltshire