Bring on the lights at Portico (From Warrington Guardian)

Bring on the lights at Portico

THE need for lights at the Grapes at Portico is an obvious one. The A58, from Hilltop to Lane Ends is now a racetrack for motorists with a lack of vision and imagination.

Speed limits and conditions needing care just do not exist. Pleas for new signs, whether as street furniture or road surface information as one sees in other areas fall on deaf ears. Yellow cameras do not seem to figure in Merseyside/St Helens Borough which is a pity considering the revenue they produce.

The white hatchings do nothing to help motorists leave their drives as they are designed to keep traffic to the nearside of the carriageway. We are expected to see round bends, through the metal and glass of parked vehicles, and keep a very sharp eye out for cyclists who use the pavement as a cycle track.

Over the past four or five years or so there have been two small housing developments adding to the number of vehicles emerging and entering, and the old Lane Ends School is now a Day Nursery. Parents leave and collect their little ones as required, mostly in their cars.

Then there is the ongoing problem of New Road. It is still being used as a short cut to and from Burrows Lane. I feel sure that the timing of the Lane Ends traffic lights is a contributory factor influencing the short-cutters. All that is required is a filter for right turning traffic.

Quite what use the 'humps' in New Road are, the locals do not know. They do not need them, and the 'short-cutters' (of whom there are more than ever) they bounce over them.

So, let's have the Portico lights, a filter on the Lane Ends lights and whatever ancient and modern technology can produce to make this length of the A58 safer for all users.

E.L.E., Prescot (name and address supplied).