Council’s traffic figures don’t add up

ALMOST daily we hear from ESCC about forced cutbacks in public services and yet miraculously they have found a pot of our money worth some £28 million to contribute towards the building of the Bexhill/Hastings Link Road – BHLR.

Having been recently costed at in excess of £100 million they have now massaged the figures downwards to around £84 million in the hope of gaining DfT funding of £56 million.

DfT have issued a warning that if there is any cost escalation or failure to find the ESCC contribution, central government absolutely will not provide a bail out.

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Goodness knows where the £28 million is coming from, presumably from additional cuts inflicted elsewhere, but if ESCC really have fiddled the figures then guess who will have to pay up – that’s right, local tax payers.

And what does the BHLR achieve? Well consider this. ESCC figures show traffic flows on the Bexhill Road for 2011 at 28,900.

ESCC consider this to be totally unacceptable.

In the proposed opening year of the BHLR (2015) the traffic flow figure for Ridge West increases to 27,000 and for The Ridge near the Conquest, 24,400.

Oh, and I almost forgot, Gillman’s Hill will see an increased traffic flow of 35 per cent to 11,500 compared to the A21 at Whatlington where the figure is a mere 9,900.

Our money well spent?

Ian Duncan

Wishing Tree Residents’ Association

Hastings

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