A council committee that closed a busy Exeter road to create a ‘pop-up’ cycle route through the city during the Covid pandemic has been urged to open it again.
Dryden Road was closed in 2020 while public transport services were scarce, and in 2021 members of the Exeter highways and traffic orders committee (HATOC) decided to make the closure permanent.
Now the same committee has decided to ask council officers to look into the possibility of letting cars back in.
They were urged to do so by Alderman Olwen Foggin, a former Lord Mayor of Exeter, who told them the closure had sent traffic on to diversion routes which were too narrow to cope safely.
“You are sending all the traffic onto walk-to-school routes,” she said. “There is extra congestion in the housing estates.
“This is exposing lots of schoolchildren to excessive pollution.”
She said the ‘chaos’ should have been considered before the road was blocked, and she told the committee that it was a ‘social injustice’ that traffic problems were being shifted into more densely populated areas.
“I can’t believe it was allowed to happen,” she added. “If I was a mother I would not be allowing my child to walk to school down these busy roads.”
Cllr Neil Stevens (Reform, Alphington and Cowick) said the issue had dragged on for too long while Cllr Angela Nash (Reform, Wonford and St Loyes) added: “It was put on to the residents and the benefit is very minor.
“A very few middle-class homes get the benefit and the pollution is being spread to other areas. The residents have had enough, and this needs to be addressed.”
Cllr Nash urged the committee to revoke the road closure altogether, but councillors voted by six to five to back an amendment from Exeter City Labour councillor Laura Wright to ask officers for a review of the closure to be reported back at the next meeting of the committee in October.
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