I read with interest Cllr David Beaman’s article. In my opinion, we do have one road within our town centre that does have easy potential to becoming pedestrianised and cannot understand why it keeps getting missed off the Farnham Infrastructure Board’s programme as well as our council’s. It is East Street.

Currently both the right-hand lanes on East Street and Woolmead are rarely used.

One can observe the majority of traffic is on one left-hand lane in East Street and one left hand-lane in Woolmead. So it would seem to make sense to use Woolmead Road more and East Street less (because one lane in both cases is barely used).

Woolmead Road could be converted to two-way traffic which would provide an opportunity to create a pedestrianised East Street.

I was dead against the building of Brightwells – and still am. However, it is here so we need to make the best of it we can and, given the access into this new development is so hidden and so small, pedestrianising East Street would help, especially when the development on the opposite side of the road eventually gets built.

If the traffic was directed on to Woolmead Road, then a largely-pedestrianised East Street could still provide access for bus/taxi/cycles as required.

The requirement for deliveries to the shops on East street could be time zoned, as is common practice elsewhere, particularly in other pedestrianised towns.

I am told this would not work because of the light phasing at the Royal Deer Junction. But I believe it could work if the buses and taxis were still running in the direction they do now and access the Royal Deer junction without the need for more complex traffic-light phasing.

As I see it, The Royal Deer traffic lights should need only one extra phase to allow buses/taxis to enter the junction from the east and this new phase could be traffic-sensor controlled.

It would be less frequently needed by buses/taxis, and therefore should not lead to the feared traffic increase, taking into consideration the traffic reduction on The Borough because of the effects of traffic being allowed to right turn at the bottom of Castle Street.

I also hear this idea won’t work because of the length of long vehicles, with trucks and buses turning left out of The Borough on to the Woolmead/Bear Lane.

So why can’t the traffic on the southbound lane on Woolmead be prematurely stopped and set back to allow for the swept circle of buses and trucks? Does anyone else support this idea?

Yolande Hesse

Bishopsmead, Farnham