LETTER TO THE EDITOR

BUILD A TUNNEL AND MOVE ON 23 March 2004 Madam - Until recently I've always associated the expression the 'missing link' with a shambling, sub-humanoid creature of low intelligence, long since overtaken by the march of evolution. Now the phrase has reappeared in association with the A417 at Birdlip. It would appear that, far from having died out, the species is alive and well and planning roadworks in Gloucestershire. First, how can anyone seriously think to put back the traffic clock? We have a Cotswold motorway, as anyone who drives from Cirencester to Swindon and then to the M4 will observe. Going to Cheltenham, however, is a curious experience because the motorway suddenly peters out, leaving part of your journey unpredictable in the time it will take, except during those morning and evening periods when you know you'll be in a prolonged jam. That is, unless you have the foresight, as increasing numbers seem to now have, to belt through the surrounding lanes and villages to avoid the Air Balloon. You carried an account of a 50-vehicle pile-up (Echo, March 13) in the latest in a series of accidents on the A417 this winter. Apart from the obvious risk to life and limb, these cause hold-ups and turn the area into a circus of mud and misery as motorists try to escape through the countryside. So how can there be a solution to this problem? Slicing through the AONB with a series of ghastly cuttings, right beside Crickley Hill Country Park, and obliterating the Air Balloon would be unthinkable in any country other than this. Anyone remember Twyford Down? The Newbury bypass? What is being proposed is a permanent scar on the dramatic escarpment overlooking the Severn Vale, Forest of Dean and Malvern Hills. It's not so very long ago that a proposal to plant trees on the fields affected at Birdlip was turned down by the County Council on the grounds that it would damage archaeological remains. We have, I suggest, two alternatives. The first is the obvious one - build a tunnel. I read in frank disbelief of the engineering problems and the costs envisaged. How can it be that the Italians, French, Germans, Austrians, Swiss and the Spanish accept and make a virtue of tunnelling as a routine part of road planning and building while we throw up our hands in horror at the prospect? At the risk of appearing cynical, the cost and environmental arguments against the tunnel seem to be advanced by those with a vested interest in preventing it. They are unsupported by proper evidence and have the clear knowledge that their arguments are hard to demolish without serious engineering expenditure. The second alternative is to do nothing, or to use the well-tuned British tactic of delay, in the hopes that the problem will go away. I have been listening to Gordon Brown, Chancellor of the Exchequer, pronouncing that we have every reason to be proud of our country's economic prosperity, a period of growth unprecedented in 200 years which outstrips that of our European neighbours. Anyone who has driven across Europe will be wondering how, this being the case, those neighbours have so much better roads than we have and so evidently care so much more for their environment in planning and building and maintaining them. Then drive, as I must several times a day, along the litter-strewn A417, through Nettleton Bottom to the queue at the Air Balloon. While you remain stationary, look west at the view over the Gloucester and north over the wooded Cotswold Escarpment, interlocking hills and valleys from Crickley and Leckhampton to Cleeve Hill. Then tell me if you think the proposal of sliproads, cuttings and flyovers can be the answer. Build the tunnel, save the landscape and the local environment, bring peace back to the lanes and villages, face the financial costs and get on with it as soon as possible before yet more people are killed or injured. David WG Taylor, Winstone, near Cirencester. INDEX