I COULD not sympathise more with your writer 'Traffic Blues' of Standish Street (Dear Star, January 27).

We in Baxters Lane have put up with the same when 'major route' status in the mid-eighties seemed to apply.

I have lived at this address for more than 30 years, and in this time have seen - without the rose-tinted spectacle syndrome - what was a relatively quiet neighbourhood (albeit, admittedly, somewhat rundown) turned into an industrialised bombsite with the lane as the access road and the traffic to go with it.

We have 24-hour, wall-to-wall noise, courtesy of the local trading estate users and local factories.

We have to endure every type of vehicle, from the 40-tonne 'artics' - some using Massey Street as a convenient turnround point - to the lunatics trying to reach take-off speed, 40mph seems to be average and 50 to 60 is not uncommon. The only limiting factor seems to be that the lane isn't straight.

So, when St Helens Council has seen to all those areas, tidied up for the benefit and comfort of the residents, could I ask them to do something to improve the quality of living for the Baxters Lane residents and not allow the area to degenerate any further down the road to even more industrialisation?

Or is ours a case of 'out of sight, out of mind'?

Good luck to 'Traffic Blues', I know exactly what you're having to suffer.

More Traffic Blues (name and address supplied).

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.