While I have every sympathy with Paul Queen’s concerns (Village Views, August 2017) with regard to the piazza proposals for the village centre at Alvechurch, he does demonstrate the real problem when rightly identifying the centre as a traffic island.
The motor vehicle has gradually taken over control of our lives; your columns are monthly full of complaints from residents with regard to speeding and parking; we are all responsible as being basically lazy and selfish, wishing that every shop could be a drive-through McDonalds.
The motor car is a dangerous drug which is dominating and polluting our lives virtually unrestrained – it now controls all of us. (My father, in the 1950s, prophesied that “the next generation would be born without legs”).
Government and local authorities have simply “nibbled” at the problem with yellow lines, bollards on pavements and so-called traffic-calming measures.
If we want our form of so-called democracy, then one has to accept that nothing is ever done, ie: the Marlbrook tip and Heathrow runway.
We have allowed pedestrians to be marginalised, and the piazza is a method of restoring the centre to the people. We are all “Nimbys” and opposed to change, but pedestrianisation of parts of town centres has proved successful elsewhere.
Proposals would allow for disabled access and public transport and there is parking in the working men’s club and behind the Red Lion, but unfortunately this means the able-bodied have to walk a relatively short distance to the shops, although this can be done in comparative safety.
If you are crossing from the chemist to the doctors at present, you are attacked by cars from three directions.
Small village shops are dying mainly due to online ordering of goods and out of town supermarkets.
The shopkeepers in Alvechurch need not worry, however, as the piazza proposals are unlikely to be implemented.
David Barton, Weatheroak Hill, Alvechurch