A READER has written to us to vent his frustration at increasingly bad traffic in Durham.

"I went to see the ‘Moon’ in Durham Cathedral and left Durham - or tried to - soon afterwards.

I was caught up in a vast traffic jam caused by the Milburngate fire. Durham was locked solid with traffic.

When I eventually reached the A690, it was jammed with vehicles as far as I could see. I presume it was the same in the opposite direction.

Even vital services couldn’t get through.

This surely illustrates the catastrophically foolish decision to lead a major highway through the town centre, great swathes of which were destroyed.

The city centre now boasts three huge roundabouts with a multitude of road signs and directions on the road surfaces, not to mention a forest of confusing traffic lights.

I look at it as a swarming, polluted disaster zone. Last week I walked down Silver Street. Walking was hazardous because or cracked or dropped paving slabs. There were twelve shops, large and small, closed with one about to close.

Claypath, at 11.30am, was heaving, with buses trying to get past each other, lorries and endless cars.

This chaos would have been added to by the equally catastrophic decision to build a new county hall at the bottom of tiny, narrow Providence Row, with even more attendant traffic.

I really wonder what sort of brain, if any, did our councillors have to engineer all this chaos?"

J C Madgin, Belmont, Durham.

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