VALE MP John Smith's wish to remove the roundabouts from Port Road between the Barry link and Culverhouse Cross as a preface to converting it to a suburban motorway is entirely consistent with the view and wish of the previous MP, Walter Sweeney.

The stated reason was, and is, that it will improve road traffic access between Barry, the airport and the M4 and help the development of Barry and the airport.

As usual, this ignores the presence of Culverhouse Cross itself.

Plans are in an advanced stage of preparation, the trees have already been trimmed, a new pumice, low-noise surface trialled and the line of the dualled road was surveyed in 1995. All that is needed is the money.

Once completed, the logic of dualling Port Road between the top of the link and the airport will be unstoppable.

This will ignore the schools (pollution and risk), the fire station access and the necessity of removing several properties at the airport end of Port Road.

Several properties will by then have been demolished near Wenvoe. And all this is without any public consultation at all.

Port Road, at the moment, "delivers" a steady stream of traffic on to Culverhouse Cross roundabout, which just about copes with the volume, even at peak times.

A dualled road will deliver up to twice as many vehicles, clogging Culverhouse Cross completely, as regularly happens on Bank Holidays.

Traffic along Caerau Lane through Ely, past the new proposed cemetery, will also double as vehicles try to avoid the jams.

A more imaginative approach to traffic flows in the eastern Vale is needed NOW, before money is wasted on an ill-thought-through, temporary scheme.

Dualling of the link road as east Barry develops would be very expensive, involving major excavation works and traffic jams. Reconstruction of Culverhouse Cross would be hugely costly, but then, as most of it belongs to Cardiff, it's not the Vale's problem, is it?

John Campbell Port Road Wenvoe