City's traffic troubles set people at odds when we should be working together

NOW that there’s been a resolution (of sorts) to the People Friendly Streets debacle, and we’ve all had a few days to calm down, I’d like to clarify my own particular role in this campaign.

Firstly, I am not opposed to reducing pollution in our city centre, and making it safer and healthier for pedestrians and cyclists. I have a few ideas about how to begin that process, but they are only my ideas, and they aren’t what I want to talk about here.

What I do want to talk about are flawed schemes imposed upon us from Trowbridge in obedience to a government panicking about being seen to do something ‘green’ in a crisis when it’s never shown much interest before.

That’s why I joined the SOS Save Our Salisbury campaign as an admin. Because it is OUR Salisbury and local people need to be properly consulted, however long it takes, about what happens here. We are the ones who know what makes the place tick, and it needs to work for us.

There seems to be plenty of money sloshing about for environmentally friendly schemes. Which is great. 

But if we’re not careful, the pressure to spend it quickly on projects that haven’t been subject to detailed consultation extending beyond the ‘usual suspects’, and that lack widespread public support, will end in it being wasted.

There are no quick-fix solutions when you’re making fundamental changes to the way a city operates. You have to carry the community with you. 

Our traffic and transport system is complicated. Tweak it in one place and it has knock-on effects you might never have even been aware of unless you talk to people on the ground.

If you fail to do that, you risk provoking bad feeling among groups – cyclists, motorists, pedestrians, traders – who should be co-operating on what works best for everyone locally, but who instead feel forced into a destructive rivalry.

Our system has become profoundly anti-democratic and that’s the root of the problem. A vote every few years for Party A or Party B doesn’t offer an effective solution to the multitude of issues modern society faces.

We need to reinvent local democracy and it needs to work not from the top down, but from the bottom up.