A PUBLIC transport campaigner has hit out at firms who say rush hour traffic on Severalls Business Park has become "disgraceful". 

Company bosses say thousands of workers who drive home from the business park are regularly facing bumper to bumper traffic for hours in the evenings.

They have called for immediate action, which could include installing new traffic lights or new exit routes from the site.

READ MORE: 'I cannot stress how bad this is': Firms call for action to end traffic woes

Talks are set to take place between Colchester Council and Essex County Council on how the situation could be eased. 

But Peter Kay, secretary of the Colchester Bus Users Group, has taken aim at the firms.

In a letter, he said: "I have just seen the extraordinary comments made by certain employers on the Severalls Industrial Estate in Colchester about the evening traffic congestion.

"While one is used to people making stupid myopic me-me-me statements on traffic matters, this one really takes the prize.

"The only true thing in their remarks is that the situation is “disgraceful”.

"But who are the people who create this disgraceful and largely unnecessary situation?

"None other than the dim don’t-give-a-damn-about-the-public-at-large employers on the estate, who insist on their staff leaving work at 5pm or 5.30pm on the dot and so deliberately create torrents of cars and 15-minute hold-ups for themselves and, more importantly, for everybody else.

"They now complain they are having to resort to sending some staff home at other times to try to help, talking as if the congestion their staff get caught up in was something inflicted on them by other people.

"No, we don’t need token gestures, it is your responsibility to have a full responsibly thought-out plan on all this."

The campaigner adds: "There is no problem for most of the day, but these employers think the problem should be solved by the rest of us having to pay for road alterations, instead of by them acting responsibly and spreading their firms’ end of shift times.

"They deserve as much sympathy as a burglar who moans the stuff he has nicked is damned heavy to carry and thinks the council should supply him with a free servant to help."

Mr Kay also points to councils building business sits, such as Severalls, away "away from the previous inner areas better served by public transport and more walkable to".

He adds: It will inevitably greatly increase the percentage of staff who go to work by car.

"The car-dominance at Severalls is also a major component of North Station area congestion in the evening peak - the Northern Approach Road after 5pm is chock full of cars going into town.

"But all the councils are doing is loading even more employment into this incurably car-dependent location and proposing ever vaster population increases to finally break the camel’s back."