Link Road letter

As promised, here is my letter to The Visitor which was published on Wednesday 13th January.

I used to live in East Lancashire and I started to work in Morecambe in 2001. Within a year I had moved here because the poor road system meant that it was difficult to travel here on a daily basis. Well it is actually a good road system but we all know about the problem getting through Lancaster.

Since then I have spoken to local businessmen who would rather not be based in Morecambe. It seems quite obvious that if you have a business that relies on a link to the motorway then it would save an hour on every journey if you move to the other side of Lancaster. If your business relies on tourism then tourists need to get here. We should back the link road if we want to stop Morecambe’s economic decline and we may also attract prospective employees from further afield.

Any business based on tourism including The Winter Gardens must have the link road as an integral part of their business plan. This is why I was surprised by one point made by Ian Clift (Letters 6th January) that the Morecambe Bay Independents are asking for the link road to be looked at again. I thought this political party supported Morecambe’s economy and had links with the Winter Gardens. It should be fully behind the road.

Ian Hughes in the same letters page wrote that MP Geraldine Smith said “...you don’t get funding if you look divided and not sure whether you want to go ahead”. He was referring to the Council’s attitude towards the Winter Gardens not the link road. If we don’t get the road I wonder how history will look upon Geraldine’s role in Morecambe’s decline.

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