We are not tarmac, paving stones, rubbish bins, bicycle racks, street furniture, bus stops, taxis or buses with routes and timetables. 

We, the residents of Upper North Street and Montpelier Terrace, are human beings that like to love, laugh, walk, ride our bikes, play with our children, help our neighbours, entertain our friends, relax at home in peace and quiet, study, work hard, support those in our street who are ill or who have a disability, be visited by our families, maintain our homes, tend our gardens, run our businesses successfully, attend church if we wish, take our children to and from school, and go about the activities of daily life that include working, shopping, accessing health and social care, recreational activities, and living. 

Only the lucky few can do all of this all of the time. But in summary, this is what we mean when we say the Council's diversion of 0.5 million buses along our narrow streets over 2 years will unreasonably and substantially interfere with the enjoyment of our homes, and will injure the health of our families and ourselves, and cause damage to our bungaroosh homes. 

Council officers want to trade our health and wellbeing for  delivery of the Western Road project and associated hardware. The bus company wants to trade our health and wellbeing for the smallest impact on their customers (who are on and off the bus in tens of minutes at most), the reliability of journey times and to minimise the additional mileage. Both Council officers and the bus company have been beavering away apparently to mitigate the impacts of the Western Road project on the project's delivery and on the bus company's routes and bus timetables. They have totally ignored us, the residents, and the impact on us, on our health and wellbeing that we shall suffer as a result of enduring this diversion for two years.

Surely if those same officers and bus company had been told by their governing elected Council at the very beginning that the only way that the project would proceed was if everything stayed in Western Road, they would have come up with a solution. They would have found ways to stage and phase the project, using modern technology, so that the project could be delivered and the impact on bus customers, journey times and additional mileage would be minimised. 

So its time the Council paused the project, aborted the diversion, restored the 7.5 T weight restriction in Upper North Street, and set to work coming up with a solution to deliver the Western Road project in Western Road for presentation to their governing body, the elected Council.