Editor,

In response to Monica Sciacca and David Holt, maybe I should point out that my letter to Machynlleth Town Council was not covered in full and it is therefore understandable if they have misunderstood the context in which it was written.

In fact, more than half of its contents concerned the fact that the Dyfi Bridge Steering Committee, of which I was the original chair, was unanimous in its opinion that a new crossing was desperately needed over the Dyfi, upstream of the current bridge and crucially should not bypass Machynlleth town centre.

As chair of that committee I remained neutral and spoke only on its behalf when addressing the media at that time. However I thought it correct to write to Machynlleth council to welcome the fact that a decision had finally been reached.

As your newspaper is aware from previous articles, I am far from being an apologist for Machynlleth town councillors , but the suggestion that they either deliberately or inadvertently “admitted” there is a case for a bypass around the town is rather wide of the mark to the point of being nonexistent I am afraid. My letter to them clearly put it in that very context.

The pages of the local press have regularly covered the opinions of those who believed a bypass was needed around Machynlleth and it is inconceivable that they and others did not strongly make their case to the authorities before a decision was reached.

The matter regarding additional traffic calming measures on Newtown Road and Maengwyn Street was a suggestion I made, as a Machynlleth resident, in anticipation of increased usage of those already busy trunk roads when the bridge is under construction. There is already more than enough evidence that this will occur. In fact last week’s floods resulted in those two roads becoming much busier.

There was already a compelling reason to have better measures in place prior to the news of the bridge, but with the expected two years of roadworks on Dyfi Bridge lying ahead surely the case is even stronger? Of course this is short-term inconvenience in preparation for longer-term improvements. (I should clarify too that the word “chaos” did not appear in my letter).

Insofar as a pedestrian crossing on Pentrerhedyn Street is concerned. There is no doubt that it and Penrallt Street can become very busy at particular times of year, although maybe “gridlock” might be a little over-dramatised .

I know from personal experience that a crossing was requested by Machynlleth Town Council and looked at and rejected by the Highways Agency many years ago, primarily because of an unsuitable location to site it, although there should be no reason why this couldn’t be requested again.

So it would appear that there were people “thinking outside the box” quite a while ago.

There is no need for this to be an “either/or” situation. Why doesn’t Machynlleth deserve a new crossing over the Dyfi, better traffic calming on its other roads and a pedestrian crossing? In my opinion it’s high time our town was treated on a par with others.

Gareth Jones, Trem yr Allt, Machynlleth.

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