HAVING been reading about the efforts of Cllr Roger Mathew to put back a sensible and much safer road through Whitchurch (Times, August 8), we wanted to send him our support on this. Good luck in him having success and in common sense prevailing!

We also think the idea of a bus lane at Yelverton roundabout is ludicrous, when so few buses use this and it works fine as it is. Soon the A386 main road will be so slow, so full of pointless bus lanes and hardly used cycle lanes that only serve a tiny minority of people, and so clogged up with more traffic lights than Christmas and delays ad infinitum, that people won't bother travelling into Plymouth unless absolutely necessary.

It's becoming faster to drive to Exeter! It took me 55 minutes home from Plymouth last week, mid afternoon!

Who's behind all this lunacy with the roads? Surely we need at least some faster arterial roads to facilitate moving people, for the sake of our economy/infrastructure, and to keep people off the quieter local roads which are the ones where we must preserve the peace and quiet. One gets the feeling that the people behind all this won't be satisfied until we all move everywhere at 10mph max or do away with the convenience of cars and our freedom of movement altogether!

Don't know how they think those of us who are disabled and cannot walk far can manage without a car! There must be a large number of disabled and elderly people in the Tavistock who absolutely definitely need their cars to get about.

Shouldn't planners be trying to make things easier for everyone to get around, not harder?

Andrew Haglington

Tavistock Group of Friends

I NOTICE in the Times (August 8) that there is another call for the Rural Gateway to be restored to two-way traffic.

This seems to be by councillors who have at last decided to come out of the woodwork after three years hard campaigning by others. Could it be there is an election next year?

I with others campaigned for three (not two) years to have the most dangerous aspects of the scheme removed and this at least has been done. Unless the original problems which have been ongoing for seven years, of traffic speeds and numbers of vehicles, especially vans and lorries, along the whole length of the Whitchurch Road is addressed, the problem will not be solved.

Ian Kilpatrick

209 Whitchurch Road

Tavistock