While reading the article in the Gazette on March 17 regards the congestion in the North Station area it was as if it had just come about.

I returned to Colchester 1966 to start employment at Benham & Co in what was in those days Sheepen Road and living in Greenstead Road and a year later I moved to Alresford It was not long after that queues started to build up going in for an 8am start and leaving off work at 5pm.

Three years later I jumped over the wall to QB News Papers. By this time the traffic was building up in the mornings and again in the evenings to such an extent that when we left work at 5pm we would join the line of traffic in the car park.

We would be in first gear from the car park along Sheepen Road, North Station Road, Cowdray Avenue, Ipswich Road Roundabout, eventually clearing at Harwich Road roundabout.

They then took the top of Balkerne Hill and made a dual carriage way which continued along the newly-built West Way to Colne Bank Avenue, but there it stopped.

The journey in the evening was no different. It did help in the mornings as it was quicker to come round the Hythe, Barack Street, Southway, and Balkerne Hill to get in to what is now Sheepen Place.

To this day the road layout has not really changed.

The development in the town has increased, creating more in and out traffic with people travelling to and from work as more people live in the town, but do not work in the town.

The Gazette on March 24 had a story about a flyover plan.

I seem to remember in 1967/68, land and property was purchased to improve the traffic flow from St Botolph’s Circus through Magdalen Street, Barrack Street to Hythe Hill with a flyover from Hythe Hill over the Hythe river and railway line towards Clingoe Hill.

The road and the flyover was never built and we ended up with that silly bridge between Hawkins Road and Greenstead Road where you queue any time of the day down Clingoe Hill in the morning and St Botolph’s to Clingoe Hill in the evening.

By the way, the other morning at 8am the traffic lights at Wimple Road and Brook Street were out and there was no queues in either four directions.

John Sallows Bramley Close, Alresford

  • Cabinet should lead on flyover plans

The radical road proposals made by councillor Martin Goss and his Mile End colleagues for the area between Westway and North Station at very least deserve proper evaluation.

At last someone has come up with some forward-thinking ideas to deal with the daily congestion, which over time will get much worse.

What puzzles me is that this has had to come from ward councillors. Surely the lead should come from cabinet.

I know Colchester Council doesn’t manage or hold the purse-strings for highways, but I expect it to be more assertive with county and highways over infrastructure.

It has responsibilities for planning, transportation, business and tourism.

It has presided over ambitious housing growth.

Quite simply, we need more road capacity. Talking about transport alternatives doesn’t cut the mustard.

People must to be able to go about their business. The current situation will impact on our economic potential and affect every resident.

A half-hearted approach won’t work. To show we are serious, this matter needs a unified cross party approach.

A motion should be put to full council authorising it to write to the powers that be requesting professional evaluation of Mr Goss’s ideas and a review of the town’s congestion problems.

This should be backed by all our county councillors and MP.

It would help if they could secure letters of support from the business community and other interested parties. I quite expect to hear “we are in ongoing discussions with county”, which is code for “it is heading for the long grass”.

It should be lead from the top of Colchester Council with all political parties on board.

Meanwhile, it might be a good idea to foster better relations between Colchester and Essex and acknowledge car use is a necessity for most residents.

Nick Chilvers Canwick Grove, Colchester

  • Forward planning would have helped

I READ about the dilemma surrounding ideas to alleviate the bottleneck at North station (March 24). At last, something may be done?

When the Northern Approach Road was first proposed, my suggestion at the time involved a bridge at the bottom end of that, linking with Clarendon Way, and to form some sort of one-way system to maintain traffic flow.

That was “too expensive” to implement at the time but now, not that many years on, we are in a situation of having to “retrofit” some sort of solution to prevent the area coming to a permanent standstill.

Obviously something needs to be done but any Army and Navy-style flyover is going to be a pig’s ear and could possibly involve compulsorily purchasing property on Cowdray Avenue for a link up and then yet another junction onto an already busy road (more snarl ups) and will cost a lot more in monetary terms than if it had been planned in at the start.

No one seems to do any forward planning, which means our poor town just becomes a place of poor design and urban mish-mash.

SF Mann Colchester

  • Poll tax was fairer than bin bag rules

Rumour has it the three-bags-a-fortnight-councillor is having to see a counsellor because he feels he is being haunted by the ghost of Maggie T, taunting him that her poll tax system would have been much fairer by allocating the garbage allowance per person and not per household.

She derides his decision to stop giving out refuse sacks as being illiberal, as well as foolish, because citizens will buy XXXL bags whose large capacity will block the pathways, strain the spinal ligaments of the sanitary engineers and in no way reduce landfill.

While we all wish him a speedy recovery from his nightmares, it would be most unwise to send him get-well cards as this would only encourage him to wheelybinaze the whole town.

FF Casale The Avenue, Colchester

  • I vote for Ukip not Mr Carswell...and will again

I’m surprised to hear our MP Douglas Carswell has left UKIP. He’s a good MP but when I voted in the last election I voted for UKIP. 

When he claims a by-election isn’t required that may be true, but that’s also denying voters the right of having a UKIP candidate representing Clacton at Westminster. 

If Mr Carswell is sure of his popularity among Clacton voters, he should be prepared to call a by-election. 

I personally will stick with the party I voted for in 2015.

Robert Lewis Brixham Close, Clacton

  • Yes Minister! Your plans are most 'ambitious'

The Braintree Local Plan Update 4 was circulated about 10 days ago.

It proudly announced that in the review by Lord Kerslake, he “commended the scale of ambition” of the councils regarding the garden community (overspill town) projects.

Lord Kerslake was previously the head of the civil service and as it happens, I’ve been reading the book of the TV sitcom “Yes Minister” (written by Jonathan Lynn and Antony Jay), about the tensions between career civil servants and their new minister. 

No doubt a lot of your readers will recall the series.

I was amused to read (on page 164) that words like “original”; “imaginative” and “ambitious” were some of the civil servants’ most damning criticisms of ministers’ plans. 

Somehow I don’t think Braintree’s councillors have read the book.

Noel Mead Broad Green