LAST December, the final version of the St Ives Transport Strategy was announced. Included in the £4million plan are measures to stop drivers speeding through rat runs . What St Ives actually needs are measures to stop rat running altogether. The sugges

LAST December, the final version of the St Ives Transport Strategy was announced. Included in the £4million plan are measures to "stop drivers speeding through rat runs".

What St Ives actually needs are measures to stop rat running altogether.

The suggestion of a no right turn from St Audrey Lane into Needingworth Road will achieve very little. Most drivers will simply travel 200m to the Bramley roundabout, make a U-turn and continue to enter Needingworth Road by making a left turn instead. Many drivers will use Pig Lane as an alternative, thus increasing the traffic on this other major rat run. Result - nothing solved.

Rat running in St Ives could be stopped so easily by the installation of part-time traffic lights at the Meadow Lane roundabout to operate between 7.30am and 9.30am every weekday and heavily weighted in favour of bypass traffic.

Together with a well publicised Press campaign in advance, it shouldn't take even the dimmest of drivers too long to work out that the quickest way out of St Ives to the A14 is to use the bypass starting at the Bramley roundabout.

A small percentage of the £4million budget spent in this way would pretty well eliminate the rat running menace in St Ives, making some of the other proposed measures unnecessary and creating savings to pay for the new traffic lights.

S M DENHAM, Pig Lane, St Ives