Sir, – Today an elderly lady walking along the pavement on the Borough near Barclays Bank, tripped and fell off the narrow pavement into the road. She ended up under the back of a car, which was mercifully stationary at the time.
This is a situation which cannot continue. The Borough needs to be pedestrianised.
The roads and pavements in Farnham town centre are grossly inadequate to deal with the current volume of pedestrians and vehicles, let alone cope with the extra volumes likely from the proposed East Street development.
A partial pedestrianisation of East Street was shown in the plans demonstrated during the consultation at Brightwells, yet this solves nothing for the main part of the town, which is likely to experience greater traffic problems as a result. The discussions on the East Street development are causing great concern to many Farnham residents, and it was disappointing to learn that there was to be no discussion on traffic impact at the recent debate in Church House.
Before any development takes place it is necessary to ensure the traffic problems are resolved at least at the same time, if not before the development goes ahead.
The recent disruption created by the road works to improve the A31 have provided an insight into the excess traffic problems Farnham town centre is likely to experience. Even this long overdue (and only partial) improvement to the road infrastructure around Farnham will still not solve the traffic problems in the town.
R Lallemand, Tilford Road, Farnham