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opening mid Wales
As predicted here a few months ago, pressure is on to get more car-tourists into mid Wales. The best places to live in Britain nowadays seem to be those without fast-road connections. It prevents the long-distance commuter crowd who suck the soul out of a place. But the sirens will always be calling "economic development", and the Welsh Assembly are planning a new 6 mile road from Welshpool to Wollaston Cross, Shropshire. As local conservative Assembly Member Glyn Davies says, "it opens up the whole of mid Wales". He's also calling for a Newtown bypass. And how is the road from Llangurig to Aberystwyth going to cope with all this? The dominoes seem to be falling.
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Nottingham tram
Nottingham is in a strange position. While it has been developing a provisional 2nd Local Transport Plan which is, according to the Settlement Letter from the Dept for Transport, "heavily dependant (sic) upon the implementation of phase 2 of NET" (ie tram lines to Chilwell and Clifton), the DfT has turned down the tram plans of Leeds, Merseyside and S Hampshire. The LTP2 was one of the 16 judged as "very promising" and so rightly appears not to have suffered for the change of emphasis towards trams by the DfT which was not easy to foresee a few months ago. The council anticipates a central government decision in spring; if approved applications would go in in summer with a public inquiry possibly in late 2006.
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