ONE lunch time recently I went into Hereford to conclude some business and pick up some Christmas goods.

I travelled from Pontrilas to Rotherwas, into Hereford city then out to Three Elms Trading Estate.

The traffic was hardly moving. The whole travelling operation took about 40 minutes longer than was reasonable. I then faced coming back through all of that.

I went over Bridge Sollars bridge, through Madley and Kingstone and down the A465 back home to Pontrilas.

After leaving the Brecon Road at Bridge Sollars the road is fairly narrow, as most of you will know, and hardly what you would expect for a ‘bypass’, but the amount of traffic on it, coupled with large tractors and trailers, meant it was being used as one.

Add to that the flooded areas on both sides of the road, mostly due to hopelessly maintained drainage gullies plus crunching through large unrepaired potholes and I came away asking, How can the current councillors, particularly those from It’s Our County possibly justify the continued delay, or as they would have it ‘review’, to the need to improve Hereford’s road system?

The arguments over green credentials and a carbon neutral future are desperately flawed.

The amount of car journeys taking three or four times as long, with engines ticking over or moving slowly cannot possibly be any good for air pollution.

The fact that I – like so many others travelling on both directions on that Madley road – were taking so much longer than if we could travel on a decent road at sensible speeds, means that we must have a bypass and recover the southern link road as soon as possible.

Am I the only one thinking this, or are most people just resigned to further ‘dither and delay’ as a blond-haired politician recently said?

Phil Collins

Pontrilas