THE restriction of traffic on Lendal Bridge is a bold move by City of York Council.

There may be better ways to limit the motoring free-for-all that blights this city, but this restriction should be seen as an essential step toward freeing the whole city centre of the private motor car and the consequential concrete and Tarmac standing areas.

The city centre could be transformed by a hundred acres of new parkland, with grass, trees and flowers. Surely the city-centre shops and the tourist industry would benefit enormously by such a massively improved environment.

When Coney Street was closed to non-essential traffic, the same crazed car lobby prophesied catastrophe. Who trading in that street now would welcome back that sullen crawl of polluting metal? The end result of limiting car use will be improved bus services and better access for other forms of sustainable transport – with or without the help of central government.

Roger Westmoreland, The Oval, Pocklington.

 

• FOLLOWING a recent visit to York, I subsequently received a penalty charge notice for a traffic contravention in respect of what I now know to be the Lendal Bridge bus lane.

As a frequent visitor to the city, I was somewhat bemused by this, as I had used this route on many previous occasions.

However, I have since discovered I am not alone in this regard.

Following a Freedom of Information Request, I am informed that fines amounting to £524,160 have been issued in the first 68 days of operation of this restriction. At that rate the Council stands to make £2.8million per annum from this single traffic scheme.

I wonder if anyone local shares the sentiment that this appears to be excessive. It is after all a perfectly good road bridge.

Stephen Tingley, Winton Road, Ware, Herts.

 

• ON BBC Radio York, Coun Dave Merrett said he had wanted to send out warning letters for first time offenders crossing Lendal Bridge, but was told by the DVLA it wasn’t allowed, so everybody got a fine.

So who decided not to send out fines to the people who drove over the bridge the first week? What’s the truth? Why weren’t the people who drove down Coppergate in the first week let off?

There were no signs the week before at Coppergate saying the times were changing. Why not? Was it a ploy to collect money from car drivers?

Stephen Mortimer, Cosmo Avenue, Heworth, York.

 

• HAVING resisted the temptation to write about Lendal Bridge for so long, I now feel compelled to have my say.

First of all, one has to determine what constitutes the city centre. Ouse Bridge is the middle bridge of the original three, so I would have thought that this was the central route into the city centre and the traffic restrictions that existed in Blake Street, Davygate, Parliament Street, Coney Street and Coppergate before the closure kept traffic out of the city centre anyway.

Most of the traffic over Lendal Bridge went down Bootham or Gillygate, away from the city centre. So was there an ulterior motive in keeping the area traffic free possibly making it quieter for any new hotel in the old council offices?

A statement in The Press of November 27 from a council spokesperson said that the closure will “improve bus times, cut pollution and city-centre traffic”. Yet bus times have not improved and all this closure has done is to move the congestion and pollution to other places, in particular more populated areas such as Clifton Green. This has also led to more traffic using Westminster Road and The Avenue. No doubt the residents of these streets will congratulate their local councillor for supporting the closure.

AP Cox, Heath Close, Holgate, York

 

.• THIS letter is not a complaint about the York council or any councillors, it is just a letter about a plaque on Lendal Bridge, that says this bridge was declared free from toll on the day of August 7,1894. So why is there one now, for are not fines some kind of toll?

Maybe one day the powers that be will let history stay the way it was written.

Frank Cartin, Guardian Court, Water Lane, York.