"It gives me no pleasure to say 'we told you so!' " said Ian Milton, Co-ordinator of the Save Brecon Campaign, speaking of Brecon's Inner Relief Road. "All our worst predictions, and more, have been realised. We have endured over 18 months of chaos and disruption, only for traffic and access in the town centre to be made much worse. The new road is actually dangerous. Although designed for traffic travelling at 20mph, the authorities refuse to impose limits to that effect. The bottom of Castle Street is a potential deathtrap: I was nearly hit by a bus the first day the new road opened. Typically, the Highways Department will do nothing about it until someone is killed or injured. It doesn't even fulfil its supposed purpose of taking traffic out of the town centre. Thanks to the idiotic reversal of direction in Castle Street, west-east traffic now uses it and Lion Street, and delivery vehicles to the Market are forced to go through the centre to get out again. As we predicted, east-west traffic continues to use Glamorgan and Ship Streets, as it is quicker than going through the two extra sets of traffic lights on the new road. All this, and at what cost? We are not allowed to know. I believe it is well over £2m., once the costs of demolition and rebuilding are included: our money that could have been spent, for example, on saving a village school from closure. They claim, with typical dishonesty, that they consulted the public over the scheme: as has become standard practice in our hypocrisy-driven culture, they conducted token and manipulated exercises in consultation, then proceeded to do what they had planned in the first place. The only consultation that was conducted on the basic principle was in 1993, when people were not against better traffic management provided there was no damage to Brecon's historic heritage. In the event, we have worse traffic management, and the damage to Brecon's historic character is incalculable. The demolitions of the Old Infirmary, Berkeley Place, Black Lion, former Volunteer Bureau, and other listed buildings in the Conservation Area, are a crime against our precious heritage. Castle Street was for hundreds of years the link between the Castle and the town: it has now been severed by this dangerous monstrosity. The role of the National Park Authority in aiding and abetting this atrocious scheme is especially scandalous, since it goes against everything they are supposed to stand for, including their legal duties. The spectacle of their bureaucrats preening themselves on Castle Street bridge at the understandably low-key official opening was sickening."
