I WONDER if Mr Jolly’s view (SCR Letters, August 13) that a link road is about moving traffic from Illaroo Road to the Princes Highway is universal in North Nowra?

If so, I wonder what the residents of Bomaderry, as they face the daily congestion on the highway and Bolong Road, think of this?

It seems to me that this emphasis on the interests of one group of residents with no consideration for others is part of the answer to the lack of intelligent thinking by our councillors about traffic management on the north side of the river.

What good does it do to spend millions of dollars on trying to force people to follow one route or the other only to find that they all end up at the same “choke point”, ie, the river bridges and the two sets of lights.

We should not continue to be drawn into an acrimonious debate about the best route for a link road. Rather we need a concerted cooperative effort to get the planning, design and funding for a third bridge next to the existing ones. This is the answer to resolution of the “choke point”.

In the meantime, improved traffic management of the right-hand turn off the highway into Bridge Road to stop the backing up of vehicles onto the old bridge, and resolution of the traffic block outside the Illaroo Road public school would offer short-term benefits for the long-suffering commuters.

To address another of Mr Jolly’s points, that is the safety issue, a pedestrian footbridge outside the school would be the most cost effective way of answering that problem and would avoid the need for traffic lights.

We must hold the current crop of councillors to account and demand that they abandon the nonsense about a link road solving our traffic problems, that they cease playing one suburb’s interests off against the other, and that they come up with an intelligent and workable answer to the community’s traffic needs.

If they can’t rise to this simple challenge they don’t deserve to represent us and they should make way for a new lot that can.

T. Barratt,

Bomaderry.