Now that Shrewsbury is reaching near gridlock at times, can anyone come up with a solution other than the N/W relief road.

As long as the NWRR is built so that it joins up with the existing 'outer ring road' (i.e. top of Ellesmere Rd to Churncote Island) then it should help to reduce the amount of through traffic in the town centre. People going from Bicton Heath to Harlescott (for example) will also have a better route.

It won't do much to cut down local traffic though - watch how much quieter it will be next week during half term when the children are off school. And the town centre is, unavoidably, a bottleneck, and unless we build another 6 or so road bridges over the river, it will remain a bottleneck. Probably the most cost-effective thing to do in these budget-poor times is to make do with what we have instead - encourage park and ride, walking and cycling.

The new A5 bypass is chockablock every bank holiday with through traffic to Snowdonia - not sure what we can do about that.

Decent public transport in Shrewsbury and wider in Shropshire?

:lol: Oh, no, wait... this is Shropshire we're talking about. What am I thinking! :rolleyes:

I too am waiting for descent, safe, public transport in Shrewsbury. I do use the park and ride this seems fairly good. We need to pedestrianise the town centre like Chester, or even if push comes to shove, charge people to come into town in their cars at peak times, on Friday especially the inner roads in Shrewsbury become gridlocked. The solution is to encourage more people especially during peak times to share their journeys to and from work. Also parents taking kids to and from school could take a leaf out of this book in their gas guzzling 4 x 4's by sharing a journey.

Better public transport would be a Godsend. Re-open the old Abbey Station, perhaps? Look at other sites for stations in and arround the town?

There's a lot that could be done, if the will existed.

Abbey Station... er, no.

But a station at Harlescott and also a new Shrewsbury Parkway station at Preston Boats (by the A5/A49) would be good. And restore services to the one at Baschurch (platforms are still there).

Investment of that scale in trains? They would have to be re-nationalised and maybe as of such major importance in our relatively small country should have stayed that way in the first place.

New stations and even new lines (or at least restored stations/lines) are happening in Wales and in Scotland, where the devolved governments are providing money and support for such schemes. In London new stations and new lines are constantly being built. It's not a case that just because we have a privatised railway network that nothing can be done. The trouble we have here in Shropshire is that there is no will for anything to be done, be it from national government, the county council, business leaders, Network Rail, Arriva Trains Wales, etc. Baschurch station could easily be re-opened. Two new platforms to create a Harlescott halt near the level crossing would hardly be expensive or difficult to sort out. Etc, etc.

Steam trains are even make a comeback as our country depreciates into third world status!

P.S. Dr. Beeching should have been struck-off!

When they had those floods up north a few months ago they built a temporary station in a matter of days.

Not only did they design, organise and build an ad hoc station in a matter of days, services called there immediately and it was added to the national rail computer system, etc. It shows how it CAN be done.

As for the North West Relief Road - I doubt it ever will happen. There will be more consultation, and then more consultation, and more consultation... meanwhile the project gets more and more expensive (and money is being spent (and has been for years) on consultants, bureaucrats, managers, PR people, etc etc)... it will never get to the stage of actual construction. Especially when you consider the cuts in public expenditure in the next few years and sluggish economic growth.

http://www.shropshirestar.com/2010/02/12/1...sk-for-opinions

Asking for opinions? I wonder what responses they will get... let's see a) "yes I want to drive my car round the town so please build the road" or b ) "you badger-murdering capitalist scum" or possibly the odd c) "will this improve my bin collection? the fortnightly collections mean that I have to... yada yada". Public consultation - it should only go so far... :rolleyes: