It was said, and the quote is often repeated, that 'A week in politics is a long time' and possibly it is, but so is a week queueing to get into Okehampton from the west of the area.

I mean, of course, the decision to place new traffic obstacles in West Street that now mean a single line of vehicles for often hundreds of yards back.

For those unprepared to wait, the solution is simple: skip up through Moyses Lane and down High Street and somebody will let you out and you will have jumped 20 places, but all this will do is to make residential streets a 'rat-run'.

When the 'supposed' planners thought about three large stores in the Market Street area it would be logical to have considered the need of traffic to get to them, but apparently not and now they are making things worse. The congestion likely to result from these works will make the hold-ups of pre-by-pass days show that we then had nothing to moan at that time.

If it is an experiment then it should be aborted straightaway because it has signally failed and please for goodness sake do not let the team who conducted the traffic survey in School Way present any conclusions.

This is because they did a survey on a Saturday afternoon in the school holidays and even to this day maintain that there is not a traffic problem in that area, which is an absolutely stupid assessment.

Derek Godfrey-Brown

Okehampton Hamlets Councillor

Larkbeare

Okehampton

JUST when we thought that the traffic lights in Okehampton could not be more inefficient they have been reduced to one lane in West Street by deformed lumps in the pavement.

The present system of only allowing one direction, of four, to move already means that during any one hour each way has a maximum time of just 15 minutes movement. Although, of course, in practice the time is less because of traffic light sequencing, slowing down and restarting, resulting in about ten to 12 minutes' free movement for each direction in any one hour. Now even this inefficient arrangement appears to be made worse by reducing West Street to a single lane.

Is this a deliberate attempt to discourage traffic, people and trade in Okehampton, because this will surely be one result of ever increasing unnecessary traffic queues and delays.

David Bagshall

Grindhill

Okehampton