Seeing red over the blue cycle lanes
DEAR Editor, As the smooth traffic flow grinds to a virtual halt at any hours of the day in our city, the traffic planners have come up with another brain wave, blue cycle lanes, presumably costing millions of pounds and two years of shocking time-wasting traffic congestion. One wonders just how much these cycle lanes have actually cost the rate payers of Birmingham over the years?
I travel the Bristol Road past the university on a daily basis and also out of the city to Perry Barr where these cycle lanes have been laid for miles, and I have yet to see a cyclist using any of these lanes during the past six months of their installation. Whilst all this totally pointless construction was going on the roads in the city were in a dreadful state of repair, Woodthorpe Road in Kings Heath in particular resembles a Land Rover test track.
Why on earth has there never been a flyover or underpass at the McDonald’s junction on the Bristol Road? On a good day, even with the schools on holiday, it can still take 15 minutes to cross this shockingly congested junction.
In the 1970s we had the single lane flyover at Camp Hill easing traffic flow with a one way metal flyover constructed in just one week. One wonders just why traffic flow planners did not learn a serious easing congestion lesson then?
Their answer now is to demolish the Perry Barr flyover, causing more traffic congestion in and out of the city to Walsall and Sutton Coldfield. The traffic flow negation of all responsibility by the planners in Birmingham just beggars all reasonable belief in this second city of ours.
Mike Kelly, Kings Heath, Birmingham