IT SEEMS everyone is agreed, at long last, that junction 18a M4 is a vital improvement to local infrastructure.

It is twenty or so years since our Conservative councillors first proposed this junction.

Predict and provide at its best; but the Liberal Democrats, the Green Party, CPRE shouted it down. "New roads increase traffic," they said. As if lorries and cars emerged, Terminator-like, from the tarmac. It is development which creates traffic and this requires new infrastructure.

So it never happened.

Well, now we have development galore from Bradley Stoke to Emersons Green with poor infrastructure which lowers productivity and performance.

Heavy lorries take the long road along the M4 and then double back on a parallel road the A4171 to reach Emersons Green on the A4171, the Bristol so called 'ring road ' which hits the buffers at Filton Hill - a pleasant post war tree lined suburban road has been widened and made ugly with bloated junctions. A big black footprint on the doorstep of Bristol which purports to be a Green city. Endless tinkering when junction 18a should already be up and running .

By now our councillors should be anticipating the next project.

As Thornbury inevitably expands there will be a pressing need for junction 14a M5 where the B4059 crosses the M5 at Rudgeway, to relieve A38 congestion.

But that too will not happen.

Our council officials prefer the uglification of existing local roads. It keeps their departments in work. So prepare to be urbanised when the green verges of the A38 are gouged out for a Metrobus route between Thornbury and Bradley Stoke. I am sure they are computer modelling it already.

Wendy Roberts

Over Lane

Almondsbury