IN order to clean up Okehampton and rid it from unnecessary queues and delays I offer a traffic light challenge to the authorities.
The present settings of the main traffic lights and the fairly recent throttling down of each direction, to effectively one lane, is probably the most inefficient arrangement possible and inevitably results in queues even with a modest amount of traffic.
Such queues routinely stretch back to the car park at Waitrose, all the way up East Street and even the Exeter Road.
My offer is to reset the timing and operation of the main traffic lights, with other minor works all at relatively very minor cost, which will measurably improve traffic flow. This will not be at the cost of safety and indeed may even improve matters by removing frustration and reducing the use of ?rat-runs?.
If this offer is not taken up then I think we can all assume that the official intention is to deliberately strangle traffic-flow with perhaps the intention of helping to justify the link road.
However, I do hope that this offer is accepted, even as a trial, such as is said to be the case for the narrowing of West Street, but not assessed in the same way.
I would be pleased for the townspeople to make their own judgement, via this newspaper, as well as direct measurement of this proposed enhancement.
David Bagshall
Grindhill
Okehampton