After a 50-year wait for a Hereford bypass and reading in the Hereford Times last week the results of Herefordshire Council coalition administration’s review of traffic congestion in the city, the original eastern route was back on the agenda. Great news!

Until later in the report you are told it would not be a real bypass but a bridge linking Rotherwas industrial estate to either Ledbury Road or Hampton Park Road. A quick way to work for those working on the other side of the river.

But no relief for clogged-up traffic on the A49 unless the council decides to adopt the eight-mile western route planned by the Tory administration, together with its 7,000 homes in a new township out in the countryside.

Worst still a section of the bypass would go through the middle of the 2,000 houses the Church Commissioners' plan to build on Kings Acre Road. Not a healthy or safe estate to live on.

The eastern bypass, half the distance of the western route, would have been built in the early 70s but for a few not-in-my-backyard objectors delaying a start and the Labour Party coming into power and decreeing no more bypasses.

The bypass would have joined the Worcester road by the Bromyard turn with a link to the A49 on the Leominster road.

I reported the saga at the time for the Hereford Times.

Business leaders and both MPs continually urged the Tory council to go east not west.

Now they will need to persuade the coalition group to complete the project started by sensible councillors half a century ago.

George Thomas
Hereford

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