I raised cable car idea for town nearly 40 years ago

Essex county councillor Anne Turrell said it was time to look “outside the box” to find an answer to the congestion clogging up the town’s roads.

Mrs Turrell, a previous Colchester Council leader, said the town could be the first in the country to introduce an aerial cable car system.

But David Judge, who ran Markham’s Office Equipment in Colchester, said he raised a similar scheme nearly 40 years ago.

Mr Judge, of Cottage Drive, Colchester, was a committee member of the Colchester Chamber of Commerce when work was underway to build a car park on the site of the former St Mary’s Hospital on Balkerne Hill.

He said: “I suggested a monorail or cable car to go from a centralised base at Colchester North Station up to St Mary’s. It was pretty revolutionary at the time.

“The chamber said I was mad, but said I could write to the council to suggest it, as long as I made it clear it was my personal point of view and not representing the chamber.

“The council said it would consider it, but it fizzled out.

“Traffic in Colchester is terrible.

Something needs to happen.”

Mrs Turrell has asked for radical suggestions to resolve Colchester’s traffic problems to be included in the council’s core strategy – the principles on which the borough’s local plan are based.

She has suggested cable car centres could be created at four points on the outskirts of town and cable cars, carrying six to eight people each, would travel slowly and continuously into the town centre allowing passengers to alight at cable car stations along the route.

Structures would need to be built to carry the cars above the traffic and over the North Colchester railway station bridge.

Mrs Turrell said she realised she would come in for criticism, but said she hoped her suggestions would trigger the debate on alternative ways of tackling the town’s traffic problems.

She added: “If we don’t do something on congestion, traffic will just come to a standstill.”