The North Devon Journal has spoken out as a public inquiry into the building of Western Bypass and Downstream Bridge gets under way.

The newspaper has been campaigning for the new bridge and bypass to ease traffic problems in the Barnstaple area.

Planning permission for the scheme, which it is estimated would divert up to 15,000 vehicles a day from Barnstaple’s heavily congested town centre, has been granted, but an inquiry has been forced by objections to the compulsory purchase orders for the land.

The North Devon branch of Friends of the Earth are questioning whether the £31m scheme for the proposed five-span bridge across the River Taw and 2.8km bypass would benefit the environment.

Fearing the objections could be seen as the view of the majority in the region, the Journal has spoken out.

It said: “In recent years, it’s not normally been the case to find large numbers of people supporting major road building schemes in environmentally sensitive areas such as this.

“But be it at the ballot box, through opinion polls or also the overwhelmingly favourable response to the Journal’s successful Build Our Bridge campaign – wherever one looks the public has firmly signalled its support for this plan.

“We are sure they do this having thought very carefully.

“They think about the crippling traffic problems, which blight both Barnstaple and the wider region, harming our ability to compete for the tourism visitors so fundamental to our economic wellbeing.

“They think about the polluting effects of traffic crawling through the town – and how their children’s futures could be so much more healthy without it.

“They think that the pipe dream of “an integrated transport system” is years away, if it happens at all, and in the meantime North Devon simply cannot afford to stand idly by on the sidelines, waiting for the much-heralded improvements which may never come.

“And perhaps most of all they think of the need to secure this region’s fragile economic and social infrastructure for generations to come, rather than forever relying on handouts and economic support which can be turned off at the whim of government.

“In normal circumstances the Journal would find much sympathy with the statements of the protesters. But these are not normal circumstances and there are not normal solutions to the problems we face.

“Which is why the Journal insists that – despite what might be claimed in some quarters – the real message coming from North Devon is now, more than ever, Build Our Bridge.”

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