Half of Colchester’s travelling residents, inc- luding students and the elderly, have no access to a private car, yet they are suffering the severe air pollution caused in our town centre streets by the thousands of unnecessary cars every day. We have waited more than a decade for a car-free High Street, which will cut pollution and congestion, but it must start at 8am to include peak traffic, not 10am.

Restricting High Street deliveries and disabled parking, which have caused the opposition, are not the problem, so can continue. Buses will at last be able to run to schedule.

Colchester Council and Essex County Council must make whatever legal moves are necessary to keep the current bus station at Queen Street and improve it for the benefit of bus users. It provides safe interchange with buses from the east and national coaches, local shops benefit, and, as has been noted nationally, it is a vibrant hub next to the Firstsite gallery, which was built on some of the land legally dedicated for the bus station in the Sixties. This legal covenant must be upheld now.

Osborne Street is a very polluted through-traffic route next to Southway, is too dangerous and too far from the centre for elderly shoppers to be suitable as a bus station. If all councillors gave up their private cars and travelled everywhere by public transport, they would realise that.

Paula Whitney

Co-ordinator Colchester & North East Essex Friends of the Earth,

Shears Crescent

West Mersea