READING the national newspapers it is clear we are in the throes of a growing environmental and economic crisis. We have almost certainly reached peak of oil, climate change is on us, food prices soar, house prices collapse. It is abundantly clear we need to reduce car use, invest in and improve public transport and maximise local food production and distribution.

Reading the local newspaper how does Herefordshire Council propose to rise to the challenges? It pushes forward plans for a bypass: the Hereford Outer Distributor Road (HODR).

This putsch - a road to be built in haste and repented at leisure - goes against the findings of a lengthy government inquiry: an eastern route would obviously have a severely detrimental impact on the Lugg Meadows’ environmental status. It will be of dubious value, as the bulk of Hereford city traffic continues to be internal and will undoubtedly create a potential alternative for north to south M 5 traffic - an M5 bypass. Of course the developers “who are coveting the county”, whose investment is relied on to build it, will benefit from the infill of several thousand houses, providing they can sell them. And where will all these new residents work, shop, learn or play? They will pour into the congested internal spokes of Hereford’s internal traffic system, not whizz along the bypass. I stand as the child in the crowd, wondering where the emperor’s clothes have gone.

Herefordshire’s transport strategy states “increasing the number of journeys made by sustainable means is an overarching objective of the Local Transport Plan” yet we find a complete contradiction in the HODR, which will be an excuse for urban sprawl up to its boundaries. And all with the minimum of consultation.

The community will, as ever, have been duped. We should be finding better, more permeable ways for people to travel from A to B within Hereford city, without damaging its setting. These would cost a fraction of what is proposed. Tourism which represents £395m to the county a year will be threatened. The HODR represents 1970s/1980s retrograde planning. We must all campaign to stop it now, and deliver a far better alternative.

CAROLE PROTHEROUGH and Herefordshire Councillor GERALD DAW, Green Party.