Taxpayers can look forward to further misuse of public money

YOUR article: ‘Pensioner becomes the latest victim of ‘optical illusion’ bike lane’ (April 28) reported on the continuing pedestrian accidents on Keynsham’s disastrous new High Street.

I have been a regular visitor to Keynsham since the late 1960s, and then it was the epitome of a small town with a meaningful two-way High Street with a great regard to its ancestral antecedents.

Not anymore, the High Street I fondly remember has been vandalised into one that would not disgrace the sort of bland uninspiring thoroughfares portrayed in The Truman Show film!

I am not alone in this opinion as Jacob Rees-Mogg the MP for North Somerset has tweeted that: “It [High Street] should go back to being a two-way street. This experiment has failed.”

In pathetic attempts to justify the decimation of what was a traditional iconic High Street, Keynsham Councillor Mark Roper has commented that: “The new cycle lane is built to the Government’s LTN120 standards... However, we have now commissioned a Stage 4 Road Safety to suggest further improvements.”

So Keynsham tax/rate payers can look forward to further misuse of public money which should never have been spent in the first place!

Does Councillor Roper really think that the present conglomeration of metal posts and few if any meaningful kerbstones to differentiate between pedestrians, cyclists, and motorists can be remedied by further improvements? If so, he and his ilk might like to seriously consider some words of the late journalist Patrick Hutber who coined a phrase that neatly sums up the total computerised mess that represents Keynsham’s High Street.

It has become known as Hutber’s law which states that: “Improvement means deterioration.”

Surely Mr Roper and his cohort of councillors should improve their understanding of the word ‘conservation.’