SO THE city council have monitored closely the cycle lanes on Bassett Avenue and are about to paint the lines and continue with them because apparently they are a great success.
The so called monitoring, if it ever took place, seemingly failed to see cars backing up on Winchester Road back to the the Hill Lane roundabout and beyond on a regular basis and south bound traffic backing up back to the Chilworth Roundabout.
I wonder if there was any monitoring of air quality at the Winchester Road / Bassett Avenue roundabout or in Bassett Avenue on a before and after cycle lane introduction basis.
Surely this should have been the most important part of monitoring.
Recently, Royston Smith MP in commenting on other cycle lanes in Southampton, said: "We all want cleaner air.
"Taking out lanes and narrowing others does not achieve that. Instead it makes it worse. Idling traffic is a significant cause of pollution and by implementing these changes the council will be damaging the health of residents not improving it."
There is nothing earth shattering about this statement. It is stating the obvious.
The only people who seem to be failing to recognise these self evident facts are the city council planners who seem to be very much in bed with the cycling campaign minority pressure group and ignore all other relevant views or facts.
What is, however, unbelievable is the timing of the monitoring, if it ever took place.
What a good idea to carry out monitoring about 10 days before a significant portion of the economy is due to open up on 4 July and ferries on 6 July.
Portsmouth City Council recently abandoned at least one of its proposed cycle lanes because it could see that, as the economy opened up, within a few weeks the queues of vehicles would be backed onto the M27.
Will the city council only realise the problem they have created when the queue of south bound traffic backs back onto the M3 and the queue of north bound traffic can be seen from the Civic Centre.
BLM (Bike Lane Madness) is spreading like a pandemic and must be stopped.
Patrick McClure
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