IF 'pedestrianisation' of Falmouth town centre during the hours of 11am to 4pm is part of a plan to make Falmouth Town Centre more user friendly, then anyone who thinks spending £21K whoever pays for it, to move the bollard and block the main shopping street, needs their heads examined!

I worked in the feeder street to Market Strand, the one-way Webber Street, for almost 15 years, and saw more traffic congestion back-ups than most, stemming from the Market Strand / Market Street / Killigrew Street junction, adjacent to which the bollards will be!

Ferry and coach passengers flood that junction, besides so many trucks, vans and cars, which the bollard will prevent from using car parks beyond it, usefully closest to our top ratepaying shops.

Now lunacy is about to ensure traffic will back up High Street, Webber Street and up the Moor, probably extending up beyond the roundabout, effectively choking the artery to the heart of this town. This issue is known by the Council(s) and now, seemingly, ignored/overruled.

90% of the jams were noticeably lacking any management by Traffic Police or Traffic Wardens. Why so? Probably because they wished to avoid the area knowing they can rarely make any difference.

Will Blue Badge holders be blocked from the main street by the bollard?

I ask because the ‘help’ I recently received from a Traffic Warden to make the town more ‘user friendly’ was a £70 fine for parking in front of Specsavers, in a wide space opposite the closed HSBC, with no pavement, no yellow lines and displaying my Blue Badge.

I was on sticks, to save time and avoid wheelchair ‘unloading’ & use. He didn’t have the balls to sign the ticket issued for contravening the ‘no loading’ restriction between 11am – 4pm.

Traffic was moving freely past me as the bollard had been removed from right opposite SpecSavers, where I had a 3pm appointment. Had I unloaded the wheelchair, I would still have had to leave the car and the warden had not the wit or decency to have accepted my parking was legitimate anyway!

Shortly we are going to witness the repair/replacement of Prince of Wales Pier which opened in 1805 and was built with a then new structural material, reinforced concrete, now decaying in-extremis.

Imagine the effect on pedestrians and traffic management if the whole of this repair/renewal scheme is not managed from the water!

I’ve suggested, to seemingly deaf ears, that the pier and the whole waterfront area across to Fish Strand Quay should be shuttered in with granite-faced steel piles and in-filled with harbour-deepening dredge spoil to create land linking Market Strand with Gas Works Car Park.

Despite solving the issues of safely dredging and disposing of contaminated waste, extra town parking, diverting traffic from Market Street to Gas Works car park, adding extra SWW flood holding tank space, and certainly getting round the recent bizarre M&S development proposal to create vehicular access through their shop frontage to internal parking spaces for residents.

Of course, this suggestion is too obvious and involves too many parties, a.k.a. ‘stakeholders’.

All they have to do is unite and agree the big picture requires urgent plans to be submitted for outline consent, and start the Levelling Grant application process, now!

Infilling with dredged harbour silt would provide free dredge disposal, right on our doorstep, saving at least half the £30mil CCC expect dredging will cost.

If they will listen, I'd be pleased to help.

The current supposed availability of Levelling Grants could fix a lot of this town’s needs if Cornwall and Falmouth Councils had the vision to think big and long-term. Penzance has been successful in that respect.

 Andrew Campbell

Harbour Terrace

Falmouth