Madam,

Referring to Evan Owen’s letter of 14 April about the Llanbedr bypass, there was a community council meeting about the bypass last week.

We were giving even less warning than for previous meetings. The future of our village needs better than that.

Firstly, the businesses in the village were criticised for taking no action. In our activities as the Stop the Bypass group as residents, we are well aware that any business which plumped for one option or the other would jeopardise its future and its links with its customers.

From our contacts I find that the business view is about three to one against the bypass.

Correspondence in your columns from outside Gwynedd has been totally opposed.

Secondly, the community council needs to be more sensitive to future opportunities. Take the Spaceport. Are they aware of Richard Branson’s considerable recent success in the Mojave Desert, and the fact that the tragic disaster last year was caused by pilot error – the pilot pulled the shuttlecock landing brake by mistake at several miles out?

Developments in space take-offs from our airfield (the UK’s favourite) are likely to mean big business for us from well-off experts.

We want them to come here in their leisure, and not to a collapsed village like Tremadog. It was bypassed and its trade sucked away to Porthmadog, leaving only a widely known garden centre and a tiny convenience store (a local’s view).

Thirdly, Llanbedr is planned to be the UK’s centre of drone research, in which we have a world lead, which we plan to exploit.

Robotic control of vehicles is a key aspect of this, and will make the bypass redundant, as was said in one of your letters.

A pilot use of the technology to guide HGVs from five different countries and group them on motorways into a tight convoy to a single destination has already succeeded.

This can massively reduce traffic congestion.

So, in the near future we are all likely to be grouped and steered through the A496 in safety. And the bypass will be a famous £6 million white elephant. The GCC Project manager was unable to say how many tonnes of globe polluting CO2 construction would generate.

Nearly all villagers support the airfield access proposal. It is the southern bypass that we reject.

Yours etc,

Graham Tottle,

Secretary,

‘Save Llanbedr Village,

Stop the Southern Bypass’,

2 Maes Artro,

Llanbedr.