IT is with considerable concern that I read the Courier article about Tesco applying to remove the bus gate between the Station and Joseph Locke Way in Crediton.

This back road was meant to offer a safe route for pedestrians and cyclists to access the Tesco’s store, and now the new doctors’ surgery and Mole Avon and McDonald’s, avoiding the dangerous and polluted A377.

As a cyclist using this road several times each week, already I am endangered by motorists driving illegally at excessive speed down the length of the road and through the bus gate.

I have observed HGVs, Post Office vans, DCC vans, tractors, and many other commercial professional drivers who should know better blatantly ignoring the traffic restriction at the bus gate.

I have had motorists attempt to intimidate me and run me off the road by forcing their way through the bus gate and on Station Approach, which is always reduced to a single carriageway by parked vehicles.

Tesco’s delivery lorries frequently park up on this road, and an increased weight of traffic using a road which is reduced to a single carriageway by a parked lorry is a serious risk to safety.

Already at times when there are roadworks on the A377 the traffic through here is out of control, and motorists drive at great speed down the road to try to compensate for any delay.

This is also likely to increase the number of vehicles using Four Mills Lane, a very narrow lane with blind turns and no pavement, to proceed on to the centre of Crediton. The danger to pedestrians on this lane is real and needs to be considered.

We know that for the next four weeks this will become the main route from town to Tesco’s, and Icivils seem to have acknowledged this today by putting up signs giving priority to traffic in one direction THROUGH the bus gate. What they should have put up are signs reinforcing the traffic restriction.

If this is approved by MDDC planning it will be another step backing the tyranny of the motor car and increasing the danger to all users of this road, many of whom are children heading to McDonald’s.

May I urge councillors to refuse the lifting of the traffic restriction and promote safe and sustainable travel on foot or by bicycle to Tesco’s and the other premises on this route? Crediton needs to discourage car use, not give it the green light.

Keith Simpson

Crediton