MARC Yearling is being utterly selfish (Gazette Letters, March 16, “Traffic on Headgate hasn’t been ‘solved’) with his demand that Essex County Council should make Colchester’s traffic chaos and congestion worse so he can cycle to work.

He shows a couldn’t care less attitude to others thus affected.

Measures introduced in 2020, under emergency legislation absurdly linked to the Covid pandemic, have created serious congestion at both Headgate and from North Station railway bridge where we have the only bus lane in the country from which buses are banned.

My surveys have shown what everyone can see – namely that very few cyclists are using the cycle lanes created at these two locations.

Assuming that Mr Yearling cycles to work between the hours 7am to 9am, from where he lives to Colchester Hospital where he works, his route takes him over the river bridge from Middleborough into North Station Road.

My survey, at the bridge, for those two hours reveals that each hour there were only 14 cyclists going from south to north. That is an average of just one bike every four minutes!

At Headgate, the removal of the ludicrous barriers has seen the equally ludicrous painting of a right-turn only lane into St John’s Street, which few drivers do. County Highways based at Chelmsford know that. So why did they do it?

It is a two-fingered sign by them to Colchester.

The congestion back onto Southway and beyond continues.

How is that greener, safer, healthier?

County Hall should have simply restored the two lanes from Headgate into Head Street to what it was before.

Sadly, un-elected Highways officials have their own agenda which has seen the views of elected councillors ignored.

Time councillors took back control and made decisions, not the bureaucrats.

Sir Bob Russell Catchpool Road, Colchester