FOLLOWING the report on Cross Road being used as a rat run (Dorset Echo, August 15) I would like to point out I am not a rat, sir but a tax-paying, licensed motorist who, unless restricted by law, can travel by any motor vehicle on any adopted highway in Great Britain.

Cross Road is not, I repeat not a “rat run” but a designated and appropriately surfaced thoroughfare permitted by national and local laws to be used by pedestrians, horse riders, cyclists, steam engine drivers and motor vehicle users as they wish and providing they do not block the highway unnecessarily then they can use this route whenever and as often as they wish.

If it wasn’t for the unwanted interference by county council road planning ‘experts’ who by their interference and alterations to what was once an acceptably smooth traffic flow from the Portland and Wyke Regis areas into or out of Weymouth, then motorists wouldn’t need to use Cross Road as a time-saving route to Boot Hill.

Ripping out energy-zero roundabouts and installing energy-gobbling traffic lights all over our town has disastrously affected the rate at which traffic both enters, traverses and exits this borough and, as a result, has seen a colossal increase in air pollution.

Instead of installing 21st Century “intelligent, computer-controlled lights” which can cope with wide variations in traffic demand, a pre-war system of “set timings,” devised by some anonymous person, was chosen.

This serves only to frustrate drivers by often allowing only two or three vehicles to cross a junction before the lights return to red or stops them in the early hours when there’s not another vehicle in sight.

For a perfect example of this go and watch the ridiculously-designed harbour junction at the bottom of Boot Hill.

Shane Seagrave

A resident of Weymouth since 1954