ANYONE puzzled by the lack of audible opposition to the instant High Street traffic ban may be interested to learn the results of five counts done between the first week of the scheme and early August, all Mondays to Fridays in the late afternoon.

In date order these show the following numbers of cars turning left from Head St to the High St in one hour: 76, 55, 92, 103, 97.

Normally, with such a scheme, there is a large amount of ‘abuse’ in the first days, which quickly goes down as people learn of the new situation and plan around it.

But in this case it is evident that what people have learnt is that they don’t need to take any notice at all of the supposed ‘ban’!

The figures show that well over a thousand cars a day must be using the High Street, on top of which it is likely that many of the vans (not counted) did not actually have business in the High Street.

If the scheme is not going to be enforced, then no useful analysis can be made of its pros and cons.

So it is just becoming another ECC joke to add to the outburst of bollards, a large percentage of which have already been taken away in recognition of their uselessness or actively detrimental consequences.

This now includes the North Station northbound bus layby joke, where a permanent build-out was made (after protests about the unsafeness of the initial version) only to be removed again by the same men after a few days.

The endless waste of public money by ECC Highways on quarter-baked schemes goes on.....

strangely, opposition councillors never seem to have any interest in attacking ‘Tory waste’, though any waste by Labour councils rapidly attracts attacks by the Tory opposition.

When the instant bollards scheme was put to them CBC merely chose to say how wonderful it was, and it was left to Sir Bob Russell and others to take action on it.

Peter Kay

Park Road, Wivenhoe