Concerning the Andover Road closure city council leader Martin Tod is reported (Dec 21) as having said last September “Having two main roads running in parallel would be an act of insanity.”

There are three reasons why keeping Andover Road is the only sensible future option to prevent traffic chaos and misery.

Having two more or less parallel main road must be a better option than one especially when all the existing major road traffic is added to that to eventually from 2,000 dwellings. 

This is diversity - the more ways available from A to B precludes one local event causing a major hold up with the additional pollution that results.

Inevitably many times a year incidents on the M3/A34 will result in official and unofficial diversions along the Andover Road. 

The mind boggles at that addition to the traffic “flow”, particularly over all those traffic calming bumps.

And just where is it stated and let alone empirically justified that two parallel major roads are a nonsense as he claims. 

On the contrary are not two better than one over-busy road with all the temptation to seek out rat-runs through Weeke and across to the Stockbridge Road?

Neil Dewey,
Braeside Close,
Oliver's Battery,
Winchester

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