Let's go to the drive-thru on the park and ride bus!

MAYBE I should take up a new career as the patron saint of lost causes.
During the lifetime of my Salisbury Journal column I’ve championed quite a few of them.
I fear that the next addition to the list will be the battle to save Old Sarum airfield from being reduced to a ‘heritage attraction’ marooned amid a sea of new housing estates.
But coming up fast on the outside is the plan for a drive-through McDonald’s and 65-bedroom Premier Inn on the little plot of wild land between Tesco and Southampton Road.
This scheme has resurfaced (apt phrase, given that the land floods every year!) and I love it that McDonald’s has submitted a Travel Plan which begins: “If we can all modify our travel habits, even slightly, we can start to make a difference.” This for a drive-through (sorry, ‘drive-thru’, I tend to forget we’re all part of the American empire now) restaurant!!
But of course the plan is only intended to show how staff will be encouraged to car-share, cycle, walk or use buses.
What about the stream of extra traffic this development is likely to attract to the most clogged-up pinch point of the city’s overloaded road system?
In fact, at one point the supporting paperwork suggests that the development will “reinforce the park and ride location and will support its use” thereby “reducing congestion on the A36”. Oh yes, let’s go to the ‘drive-thru’ on the bus!
Sadly, I’ve seen nothing to suggest that this type of development on the site is unacceptable in principle to our planners. Eventually, I am sure, it will happen – or something like it will.
So while it may sound dull, it’s great news in fact, that the Wiltshire Core Strategy was finally approved and adopted on Tuesday.
It means that after much horse-trading, Wiltshire Council has convinced Whitehall it has allocated enough space for all the new homes and businesses it is required by officialdom to accommodate.
Whilst it’s a very far from perfect document which dictates that in a decade’s time our city will have doubled in size whether we like it or not (maybe it will be big enough to merit a unitary authority of its own?) it will make it much easier for council planners to turn down speculative planning applications on unsuitable sites.
In the meantime, what a ‘gateway’ to southern Salisbury we are likely to have. Golden arches and – who knows? - a supermarket on stilts. Very classy!

P.S. Irritating things. Why do comedians, at the end of their routine, say things like “I’ve been Dara O’Briain, thanks for listening”?

Do they imagine the audience don't know who they've come to see?