MR T S MANN'S letter (May 29) is clearly the angry, uninformed response of a motorist caught in a jam. To those who know well this beautiful stretch of the Kelvin Valley, abundant in now rare and diverse plant and wild life, his description of it as ''wasteland'' might be offensive if it were not so ridiculous.
To suggest that similar delays to that which occurred on the A80 last Tuesday would be inevitable if an upgrade is decided, displays an equal ignorance in the Scottish Office proposal.
With regard to the possible disruption that could be caused when carrying out an upgrade of the existing carriageway, perhaps it would be pertinent to look at the work being carried out at the moment in upgrading one of the remaining sections of the A74. So far the on-line section of the upgrade has been carried out while maintaining two lanes operating in both directions. Apart from an imposed 50mph speed limit there is little evidence of the traffic being disrupted.
It is precisely this type of operation that was proposed for an upgrade of the existing A80.
There is also a certain shortsighted naivety in the idea that motorways alone solve the problem of congestion. We only have to consider the congestion that occurs on the many motorways in the south to realise this fact. Unless increase in traffic is controlled and an integrated transport system introduced, traffic congestion will be an ever-increasing daily problem despite motorways.
For Mr Mann, living in Bearsden, there is surely an ideal opportunity to lead the way in this respect. A way much less drastic than destroying this scenic valley. Is there not a train station in Bearsden?
Anne Fairley,
38 Mid Barrwood Road, Kilsyth.
May 29.
MR Alan Sneddon (May 30) forgets that there is already an A80 bypass in place - which could offer a 20-minute trip from Cumbernauld to Stirling or a 35-40-minute journey from Glasgow to Stirling, and possibly better this with considerably less expenditure than yet another parallel new road.
It is called the railway but currently the service is such that even I find the need to turn to alternatives when for example I wish to be in Inverness for the beginning of the day as the train cannot deliver until the morning is well past, and I must then return relatively early in the evening.
But equally the rail network in surviving as a service has to have sufficient traffic to meet relevant financial-return factors, something I ponder when I see the M9 to the east and ponder that if it were a railway it would have been closed or made single carriageway through the sheer lack of traffic.
Dave Holladay,
95 West Graham Street,
Glasgow.
May 30.
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