IF?ANY of your readers travelling west on the A48, are wondering why they are in huge traffic  queues at the  Chepstow Tesco traffic lights, I suggest that they ask Monmouthshire County Council.

Some drivers believe that this congestion is caused by the fact that the old town bridge in  Chepstow is closed for repair but this is unlikely to be  the case, because so little traffic uses it. 

The  more likely reason for these  irritating hold-ups, is that a company called Air  Quality Consultants, acting for  Monmouthshire Council, has a meter on Hardwick Hill, near the junction with Bulwark corner, to monitor air  pollution in the area.

The council has been threatened with fines, if air quality is not improved.

To keep this meter registering lower readings,  the sequence of the lights at the Tesco junction has been altered, to ensure that any traffic  queuing takes place on the Gloucester side of the Wye, rather than on Hardwick Hill, where pollution readings  remain worryingly high.

If this be the case, what on earth will happen when the extra housing projects  planned for  Chepstow, Sedbury and Lydney are completed?

The traffic will be queuing back to Lydney, which will then need a pollution meter of its own – as would Tutshill and Sedbury.

Traffic congestion  in this area is an on going problem for the powers that be who seem unable to come up with any solutions.

The so-called Chepstow by-pass, is not a by-pass and it was lunacy to  put a supermarket on it. 

Any further by-pass construction would be  a massive  intrusion on  the local countryside,  not to mention the huge cost. 

The Welsh Assembly wants to wash its hands of it and pass responsibility on to the county councils, by de-trunking the A48.

If this happens,  it is obvious that any planning agreements, granted to  property  developers should have attached to them a proviso that requires the developer to be responsible for traffic flow improvements and not the long-suffering Council Tax payers of both counties.

After all, it is  the developers who are making the huge profits  from the housing market.

One  measure the authorities could take immediately to improve matters would be to scrap the tolls on the Severn.

This would at least stop HGVs, coach operators and caravanners using the A48 to avoid paying the tolls. It would also be a help to local businesses.

In the meantime, we are sinking under a sea of traffic and vehicle exhaust fumes.

– Gridlocked, Sedbury.