May I be the first to congratulate the City of York Council on a fantastic achievement. In just two weeks they have managed to produce a one-mile queue of traffic, six days a week, on the A19 at the outward approach to the new Park and Ride. This beats the combined total of the last eight years.

What makes this achievement even more noteworthy is that they managed to do it all by themselves, without the help of local residents' views. On top of that, it only cost £2.5 million! No doubt we'll be hearing more about this success in the next edition of York Citizen.

Next on the council's agenda is the introduction of countless sets of traffic lights and a bus lane for the inward journey from the Park and Ride, which will ensure a speedy trip into York for the council's least favoured group, tourists. Remarkably, this will cost us just £1.3 million. What a bargain.

The implication of this scheme will, by the council's own admission, result in yet more queues, only this time in the opposite direction. Inevitably, this will lead to more rat-runs being created, though the council will act on this by degenerating the residential areas affected with the implementation of traffic-calming measures, at yet more cost to the ratepayer. Still, as long as the city centre is quieter, I'm sure York residents will not mind footing the bill.

Mr N Norville,

Shipton Road, York.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.