LETTER: Wishes of the majority

We hear ideas from individual people about how to improve the Worthing-Lancing stretch of the A27.

A very long flyover, a single-lane tunnel, grade separation (flyovers or underpasses) at junctions, a road cutting across the golf courses.

They all have their problems. Flyovers are ugly. Safety regulations make tunnels expensive. Construction work to produce grade separation at junctions would delay or divert traffic for years.

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When asked, eight out of ten residents in Offington wanted a ‘northern bypass’ – a dual carriageway built along the route of the A280 and A283 connected by an improved A24. Many drivers already use this route rather than sit in queues on the A27. A large majority were against any on-line option.

Chichester and Arundel have been offered a bypass or improved bypass.

The combined cost of these would be about the same as the cost of a northern bypass. Yet our population is three times theirs! Sir Peter Bottomley knows the benefits of a bypass as he was Minister for Roads and Traffic in 1986 when the Okehampton Bypass (A30) was built through the Dartmour National Park.

Options to build a bypass using a new route through the South Downs were shelved in the mid-1990s because it was too expensive, would take too long to construct and seriously affected the surrounding area (reply to Tim Loughton by Nick Raynsford in 1998). A carefully designed and planned northern bypass would blend into its enviroment and cause little obstruction to traffic during construction.

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It is time that we understood the wishes of the majority of the other residents and businesses in Worthing and Adur. It is our money that pays for these projects.

Martyn Hinchcliffe.

Chairman, Offington Park Residents’ Association,

Alford Close, Offington

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