Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, Member of Parliament for The Cotswolds, commenting on the A417 crawler lane proposal said that he had been campaigning for a solution for the whole of the road ever since the Crickley Hill by-pass was opened in the early 90s. At that time he coined the phrase the ‘missing link’ and it was confidently expected that the entire duelling of the road would be completed and there was money to do it.

In the event it was never carried out because there was no local consensus as to what should be done. So it is absolutely essential that if we are to lobby government for any part of the scheme that there is local consensus.

There is no doubt that a crawler lane is a crucial part of the overall solution. However the major problem is the position and size of the air balloon roundabout whereby traffic has to turn between 270 degrees on a steep gradient.

The problem with an extra lane is that four lanes would be funnelled into the roundabout rather than the current three.

Mr Geoffrey Clifton-Brown said that although he was no traffic expert it did seem to be that work will need to be done on the air balloon roundabout as well as the crawler lane in order to begin to have an impact on the twice daily congestion.