| Topic: | Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re: Lamberts Folly -Is Church Street really the reason for such huge delays? | |
| Posted by: | Phil Andrews | |
| Date/Time: | 01/05/18 15:25:00 |
| I appreciate the theory behind road closures is that some car users will turn to other forms of transport, and I also know that this strategy does sometimes work. But it is dependent upon various other conditions also being in place, which I understand were absent in respect of the Church Street closure. Hence my view that it was badly handled, rushed through for all the wrong reasons and conducted in a manner which left local people feeling that their opinions and ideas counted for nothing. Surely it would have been better to have had no local consultation at all than to have one and then act in defiance of its findings? The mishandling of the process and the inevitable resultant backlash also led to a predictable spat in which all vehicle users would be cast by some as villains, which itself generates more unnecessary bad feeling. If I may offer a personal anecdote - a couple of weeks ago I needed to travel from my home beside the hospital to Busch Corner, and from there back to my mother's home in Chestnut Grove (in the opposite direction just past Redlees Park). It would never have entered my head - pre or post-closure - to have made this journey by car, but I am presently on crutches. I walked (or hobbled) to Busch Corner with a view to catching the 267 back to my mother's. But this would now have meant sitting on the bus for up to an hour, and so I was forced to walk to my mother's from Busch Corner, and then home again from there - a round trip of about two miles, which on crutches is not fun. And yet in the eyes, or at least the propaganda, of the pro-closure lobby I would be depicted as lazy or selfish. This is the mindset which has been brought into our community by the hasty actions of one councillor, supported instinctively by colleagues in a knee-jerk act of political solidarity. There is a real, and difficult, job of work to be done towards alleviating traffic problems in Isleworth and addressing the Church Street issue was always going to be an integral part of that process. But when a holistic and inclusive approach was called for what we got in its place was confrontation and the needless and counter-productive flaunting of power by local representatives who still lack the maturity to wield it wisely and to resist the temptation to cock a snook at the hoi polloi. |