Time for county to do something

The Bexhill Link Road is great and it works well. But as predicted, we sit in traffic queues at the Queensway/Ridgeway end of the now '˜old' Link Road.

So moving on, what about the other two new Link Road projects – the A21 connection and the Sidley by-pass? These should have been built at the same time. Today the St Leonards traffic chaos is just spreading and spreading.

As road users, in the new climate with a new Chancellor, we must press all our Councillors and MPs to raise the investment in our grossly inadequate road network.

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This we must do to attract the new moneys which will regenerate the South Coast economy – and stop the decline actual or imagined.

One who lives in Ore and works in Bexhill reckons he saves an hour each day using the Link Road - dubbed the ‘road to nowhere’ – but he has worked in Bexhill for over 15 years and is still left wondering where a lump of his life has gone.

A simple calculation for even 10 years means he has some 2,500 hours (or 200 days of awake-time) of wasted life. And along with that just how much exhaust gas has polluted the air, and how many gallons of petrol and diesel burned off in that time?

Just one person is trying to live and earn a living. What a waste and at what a cost. Now what of the other thousands upon thousands of road users?

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As the line of the new A21 connecting road by Sainsburys has been mostly cleared of vegetation - and only the SEAT car dealer has yet to move premises - it really is time for the county to get on with the job.

Despite what was the wettest June, this is already late in the year in earthmoving terms, but the latest heatwave is drying the ground out.

So can we now hope that the protesters, having had their say, and again added monumentally to the build cost, will kindly go back to their homes and quit interfering?

The rest of us need the relief. Many in the Ridgeway/Baldslow area are trapped in their homes during peak hours with vehicles blocking their front doors and driveways.

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If we can get that going, we can start kicking up all over again about getting the rest of the A21 dualled from Kippings Cross to Lamberhurst and then on to Hastings.

Almost daily it seems we face the ongoing fatalities, broken bodies and smashed vehicles – and now we are to be slowed further by the threats to our 25-30 miles/hour travel from the checks by costly average speed sensors.

We have awkward junctions where a new roundabout would cut accidents.

We still have just 12 miles of dual carriageway across the whole county... and our lives are ticking away from the daily road jams and traumas.

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Shall we press for more and better roads now please – or just wait until the county seizes up, by when it will be far too late?

Richard Tilden Smith

Clifford Road

Bexhill

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