TO Ken MunnYou posted 'What has any of that got to do with Thames Water's dodgy plumbing?Well, its quite simple. TFL and the local authorities employ professional traffic planners. They are meant to try and ensure that traffic can flow and that competing needs for road space are managed in a sensible manner.As part of that, they would take into account the fact that roads are dug up regularly, sometimes planned ahead and sometimes by short term emergency. From my long experience of W4, I would say its rare for there not to be a major road work in the area that severely impacts traffic.Then we add in the motorway running through Chiswick, and other strategic road routes such as north/ south circular, the two bridges and the key Hogarth and Chiswick roundabouts. The point is at least weekly and sometimes daily, there will be issues on these key routes and junctions. Accidents, breakdowns, dodgy traffic lights.So it should not be a surprise to these professionals that there are daily disruptions. When planning and managing the road network, they would build this in and incorporate into modelling and new schemes.In contrast, we have some amateurs (our Hounslow councillors), goaded on by other amateurs like yourself, who are randomly closing roads. The transport professionals seem to lack the guts to stand up to them.So lets look at last night. Absolute chaos around west Chiswick. No advance warning, roads such as both sides of Barrowgate Road, Dukes Avenue Sutton Court, Heathfield Gardens and Terrace, Sutton Lane all rammed. The western end of the High Road had queues all the way westbound down to the roundabout, and the new bus gate meant queues eastbound to the business park. The stretch of CS9 along Heathfield Terrace and onto Wellesley Road becomes unusable, what an irony.We also saw that when traffic cannot go through GP, then Hogarth roundabout cannot cope and the A4 is at a standstill. So that is a challenge for anyone trying to get into GP, you cannot.So what that means for the thousands of people that live along these roads is sitting in a fog of fumes. Unlike your infantile boycott of TGT, these residents cannot boycott their homes, not can pedestrians and shoppers easily do that either. If you close more roads, or reclose TGT, then you funnel even more traffic onto the few remaining routes, a health disaster for the people that live there. If the next wave of Hounslow LTNs are implemented, then many of the roads that traffic was using to escapte the closure would be closed too, such as the Dukes Avenue exit to A4. So you actually create a complete dead end, with traffic trapped and physically unable to escape. I can only see then the police needing to come and find a way to filter traffic out. But for local residents on these roads it would mean hours of gridlocked traffic.So when people like Ken suggest we pedestrianise TGT, not only do we get local traders posting their objections, we risk a bunch of amateurs turning W4 into a giant car park.
Paul Green ● 2148d