SIR,

Many residents are very concerned that children walking to school, mums with prams, pensioners with zimmer frames and many others are being put at risk by plans to put double yellow lines banning all parking on Goldwire Lane.

The section of lane leading to the Green Dragon public house is one of the main walking routes to school for pupils from Monmouth Comprehensive School and the way into town for hundreds of pedestrians from nearby estates, the way home from the pub for many.

Yet despite its undoubted popularity as a walking route, the narrow one-sided pavement disappears towards the junction, forcing people into the road.

All householders agree that that stopping residents parking on our section of the lane will increase the speed and frequency of traffic by making it a more attractive route into town than Somerset Road, giving drivers a clear run to put their foot down.

We are not scaremongering, we live here, see what goes on, and genuinely fear our lovely little lazy lane will become a dangerous rat run and a pedestrian will be hurt or killed.

Council officers don't seem to share our concerns, but then again they wouldn't believe us nearly a decade ago when we told them the traffic system for the new bridge would cause the kind of problems they are now trying to resolve. We live here; we know what happens when motorists get a clear run towards that dangerous Green Dragon junction.

Highways say the new 20mph system will stop cars speeding. No it won't. If the police cannot stop motorists parking so disgracefully preventing ambulances from getting through, then how will they have the resources to stop speeding motorists? Or stop people parking on double yellow lines? Or sort out the inevitable rows over when people start parking on Fitzroy Place, Cinderhill Street, Drybridge Street and the surrounding roads, when they have nowhere else to go? Double yellow lines will compound and move the problems, not to mention create new ones. Banning everybody from parking on the whole of Goldwire Lane which, contrary to what many people believe, includes residents, carers and professionals calling in on elderly people, will turn the whole road from the Bridge onwards into a circular race track and create a potentially fatal problem.

Ultimately the answer is more parking for Monmouth town centre, not less, and stricter enforcement against inconsiderate parkers who stop emergency services getting through, in other words for the police and the county council to do their jobs. There are other things that can be done but in the long term the solution proposed is not the right one for people on Goldwire Lane or the wider community. We have started a petition to show them that they need to go back to the drawing board and find a new one.

Let's hope for everybody's sake they listen.

Janet Hughes

(Goldwire Lane)