Real Northumberland Murky: We have broken the back of commerce in Blyth town lets wipe it out on Cowpen Road ?

Decisions taken by Michael Gove and the Tory County Council Leadership whose interests lie in Morpeth and Ponteland their cohorts on the Blyth Town Team now joined by another faceless group the Best Board.

Residents are fully aware following the Town Centre fiasco the Council’s aim is to degenerate the Town of Blyth and drive its population to shop in Cramlington at the County Council owned Manor Walks shopping centre.

A new battlefront for Blyth residents and businesses has been opened up through the planned narrowing of Cowpen Road to supposedly ‘make people fitter’ will mean Blyth and residents from all the other areas who use Blyth’s facilities will now have to be cremated in Cramlington. This is due to the well designed congestion planned for Cowpen Road damaging trade at Blyth’s crematorium its being forced through the Council via a planning application for a crematorium in Arcot, Cramlington, the self gifted application to demolish Blyth’s Keel Row and the proposed narrowing of Cowpen Road to accommodate ever more cycles and their excuse is it will make Blyth residents fitter!

Is it designed to close businesses and cause greater job losses in the Town? The proposal is to remove all right turn pockets Cowpen Road and narrow the highway; the consequences of following that plan without a bypass being in place for Cowpen Road is disastrous for what's left of commerce in Blyth.

WHERE ARE THE CYCLISTS NOW?

Blyth’s has hundreds of people who use cycles, we codgers have also found out that at a recent meeting of Blyth Town Council a report from a Councillor and a letter from the Chairperson of a nationally approved cycle club who is a resident of the Town were read out and a motion was accepted by all parties to oppose the new cycle track and the narrowing of Cowpen Road. That decision was taken by Town Councillors in favour of upgrading the tentacles of SUSTRANS safe routes built in the 80’s 90’s and early 2000’s that cross the Town and also support the expert cyclists who wish to steer national cycle route one from its crumbling track along the river Blyth through the much safer Blyth Riverside Industrial Estate and pick up its current route near Bebside Estate, leaving Cowpen Road as the prime access route for emergency vehicles, white vans and tradesmen who repair homes, factories and deliver goods right across the Tyne and Wear conurbation, Northumberland, Durham and beyond.

Blyth’s residents use the SUSTRANS routes to ply the same journeys daily that any alteration to Cowpen Road would achieve such as school travel, travel to work in and home journeys out of town as well as for leisure activities and they pass within a few yards of the new entrance way to the cycling and walking bridge to the new Blyth Bebside station that's the catalyst for this potential damaging plan, keeping Blyth’s cycling fraternity not only fit but very safe indeed. BLYTH IS THEREFORE ALREADY TRAVEL SUSTAINABLE!

Northumberland County Council has been aware of traffic problems entering and leaving Blyth for several years. The two main roads into Blyth, the A193 Cowpen Road and A1061 Laverock Hall Road are heavily congested with over 20,000 vehicles a day on each road. Two bypass roads are planned but only one, the A1061 bypass from the new South Newsham station to the A189 junction at the Three Horseshoes Roundabout appears to be progressing.

This will still leave Cowpen Road with 20,000 cars a day as those decision makers at County Hall in Morpeth have not planned a new cross town road to steer traffic to this new outlet in the South of the town and the current infrastructure at peak times to get across and around Blyth is under massive strain and congested at all peak times. The lack of realisation is thoroughly galling to local residents. Especially with the Council’s medium term plan supporting road expansion and not road narrowing.