THE queues of traffic for Richmond Hill while resurfacing is carried out only serves to reinforce the point I made when the plan was first mooted.

The vast majority of this traffic is not going to Richmond Hill but using it arterially to travel east-west. If we closed St Stephens Road to through traffic, these cars would simply travel along the Wessex Way instead and use the Bournemouth West Roundabout instead to access the west of the town centre.

This would reduce significantly the amount of traffic on Richmond Hill and make it more suitable for cycles and pedestrians.

The slower moving traffic that wished to park there would not be mixing with a fundamentally different mode of traffic and accidents would be reduced.

Once again Bournemouth council thinks ‘shared space’ creates safe roads with no other engineering.

Unless traffic volumes and speeds are tackled this is a fallacy.

It will fail here, it already is failing at Horseshoe Common. I have already witnessed a child nearly being run over while trying to cross where a zebra crossing used to be, and I have nothing but fear and sadness for the people of Boscombe when it’s implemented there.

MIKE CHALKLEY,

Cowper Road, Bournemouth