IT was after reading a number of alarming reports in your paper: "Wild West Tearaways, Aldi Plans could mark the end of Empire," etc, that I stood on York Bridge and contemplated the past.

40 years ago buses used to stop on York Railway Bridge, the first stop after Euston Road Station, the hub of old Morecambe.

The buses then on their way to Lancaster passed relaxing farmland and forest lungs.

Now, so much country has since been developed with feature-less monocultural building, and concessions to cars, that the citizenry have been reduced to robo-sapiens.

It was then, 40 years ago, that in my opinion the quality of life passed its apex.

Since, we have witnesses Spengler's Decline of the West and the omens forecast in professor AJP Toynbees's studies: in 1960 there were 100,000 more miles of hedge, and 65 million more elm trees (and, incidentally, minimal suicides among farmers). As a regular visitor to Morecambe I have pleaded in 1972, 82 and 92 for a railway platform at York Bridge, halfway between Bare Lane and the Prom. Regrettably for 38 years I have watched near-empty trains disdainfully chug past the densely populated York Bridge area.

Trains that would have permitted five to 10 million greener, faster, more beautiful, pleasant and relaxing journeys between Poulton and Lancaster. Journeys filled with talking, reading, knitting or just looking out of the window.

Why not combine the York Bridge idea with a stop at Bailrigg as a service to the university community?

This would both reduce the university's road-clogging traffic pollution and the time-wasted travelling.

We have been physically shaken by bus journeys over speed bumps, stopping and starting at traffic lights and pedestrian crossings and pumping CO2 emissions into the atmosphere.

This aiding of the current climatic disasters, is not just for now, but will be with use for hundreds of years to come.

The town hall's plans for the Pontins will clog village lanes, in addition to the queues of lorries from Heysham, and all the Lancaster jamming cars.

With regards to the Lancaster by-pass does the town hall realise that at short cutting underpass would be less environmentally damaging and less costly than the long disputed plans.

The Old Viking

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