"A dangerous eyesore." Your front page headline (19/02/04) says it all about the new plan from the Highways Agency for the A417 south of Gloucester. The planned 180 degrees "super highway" loop is quite simple not the answer. This road will be dangerous and an environmental disaster. The Cotswold District Council's planning officer agrees. This area is one of the finest parts of the Cotswolds and must not be destroyed by concrete and diggers in this fashion. This project may result in less congestion in the short term, but in the longer term it will serve only as a magnet to more traffic. Anyone who doesn't understand this phenomenon need only look at Britain's most striking example, the M25, which was supposedly going to solve London's traffic problems. The motorway in fact helped generate more road traffic, much of which ended up in an increasingly congested central London. The UK is spending £30 billion on roadbuilding in just ten years. This money would be far better invested in trains and buses, rural public transport schemes, Safe Routes to School, Home Zones and better provision for disabled people, pedestrians and cyclists. While every such scheme would improve social inclusion and quality of life, roadbuilding merely generates more traffic, more pollution, and more hidden costs as the noise and air pollution translate into problems like ill-health and climate change. The idea that we choose environment OR economics is fundamentally flawed. Intelligent Green transport policies bring social and economic benefits as well as protecting the environment. Such policies seldom involve projects like this one.

Carol Kambites, Gloucestershire Green Party