IT is good to see, in your correspondence columns, some common sense about, and much persuasive opposition to, the ESG – qualities sadly lacking in the council that supposedly should champion and protect our city.

There are two fundamental and fatal flaws to the ESG scheme. First, its purpose, second, its method. To exploit to the full the city centre, to meet the needs of an increasing population, may be sensible. But to create a rival centre of gravity away from High Town is sheer folly.

And consider the lesson of the Left Bank Village. That was paid for by a millionaire not beholden to the banks and his ambitions were not entirely commercial. They included attracting shoppers to venture south from High Town, with the offer of above-average quality in an above-average environment.

Alas, the sums never added up.

Herefordians never went in sufficient numbers to make the venture viable.

Eventually the good doctor gave up, and successive entrepreneurs have gone bust.

High Town connected to the Left Bank by Broad Street didn’t work. Nor will High Town/ESG connected by Widemarsh Street.

The most recent traffic census shows that, along every main road, about 12,000 vehicles a day converge on Hereford, with its single bridge and inner ring road.

We need a road system that will enable trunk traffic to avoid the city centre and local traffic to get round the city without clogging up its heart.

That is surely the first priority.

And for that a second river crossing is an essential. But which side of the city? I was dismayed to read in your paper a few weeks ago that there are those in authority over us who, perhaps mindful of past special pleading about the Lugg Meadows and the higher costs of that route, regard the western crossing as “good enough”.

No, a crossing at Breinton would not be good enough – it would be a disaster.

A crossing at Breinton, just to link up with the Brecon Road, would do nothing to relieve Commercial Road, Blueschool Street, and Newmarket Street of local or through traffic from the east of the city. Those huge volumes would remain, with which the proposed link road into Edgar Street could not cope if the inner ring road were closed to traffic – an absolutely essential step if the ESG were ever to “belong” to the city centre.

A road beside the water meadows of the Lugg would not threaten the meadows themselves – witness the new bridge over the Severn south of Worcester, and the road on to it from Powick that crosses water meadows without desecrating them.

As it stands, the Edgar Street Grid plans will only create worse gridlock, and destroy any chance of making something unique and special of Hereford’s true heart, the area within its old walls.

PETER WILLIAMS Ross Road, Hereford