BUNCRANA RELIEF ROADS

Photo: A plan of the relief road near the Cockhill road

Before I get on my soapbox this week I wanted to clarify a point I was making last week about good and bad planning. Bottesford a badly planned town 20 miles outside of Nottingham has increased in size from 2000 to 5000 people in the last few years. Most of the new residents don’t shop in the village; they pop into large supermarkets on the way home from work in Nottingham and stock up with groceries then fill their cars up with petrol. Doing this puts nothing back into the village where they are eager to live. Four of the six shops, a restaurant and a pub have all closed down as trade dried up; the community centre is also faltering as members decline. Housing estates for the new residents were built in the very areas where locals used to go for walks. So now you have to go by car to get to walks. As I said last week the village is becoming a faceless suburb of greater Nottingham.

BUNCRANA RELIEF ROADS

This week I want to talk about a development plan for Buncrana. I’m probably the last to find out about the proposed relief roads that are planned for the town, (or Area Of Special Interest as the council call it.) Plans for the Buncrana relief roads have been drawn up for years now. I see that the inner relief road is going to be built within a pavements distance of our estate; this will meet the outer road just past the bottom of my garden. If the road were to be built today I would no doubt be one of the first to use it. A few years ago I was living in an area where Asda decided to put a mega-super-duper-market and car park, slap bang in the middle of a residential area. There were loads of complaints and demonstrations but the development went ahead anyway. After a week the supermarket was full of the very people (me included) who protested about the eyesore, happily filling up their trollies with cheap food and shrugging their shoulders saying “Well we tried”. The same fate will no doubt befall a new road network if anyone opposes it.

Just think though, I will be able to jump into my car, bypass Buncrana totally and get to wherever it is I’m going to at least three minutes faster than I can now. But what are these valuable three minutes costing me, well there’s noise pollution with lorries flying past the house 24 hours a day, lack of privacy, dirt and dust and air pollution. The planned inner relief road also cuts through a couple of quiet housing estates, even before it gets to me. These estates will literally be chopped in two. What a great place for the kids to play!

The plans for the roads are just a bit out of date. The outer relief road is too close to our ever-expanding town and development is passing the proposed route already, which would split the town in two. It’s a short-term fix. Geographically it looks difficult to find a perfect route for a relief road to go. But the Buncrana outer relief road on the map looks as though it is following the designated path because, well, it wouldn’t go anywhere else! That’s not a reason for planning a route where a road should go.

I know a lot of people are welcoming such a development as roads do play an important part in the infrastructure of the county, which will lead to more investments and get the kids to school faster etc. etc. Maybe any allocated money would be better used to (really) improve the roads we already have. Some more funding could be invested in an efficient public transport system. We do love our cars and it would take a very efficient service to prize us out of our machines though (I haven’t been on a bus for years)! This might do away with the need for car parks in the town. The Area Of Special Interest where the road was to go could become a massive park and there could be one of the main gates at the bottom of my garden so I can take my dog for long walks in the evening…

We like to think we set an example to our young. What sort of an example is it vandalising hundreds of acres of beautiful land and dividing whole communities by building ineffective road networks? But hey, with the new road I’ll have an extra three minutes to do things in the day, six if you count the return trip! What would I do with all that spare time?!…





Environmental.