Mea culpa! I voted NO to the HCZ. I don’t know why the other 1,668 people did: I can only tell you why I was against it, and it had very little to do with pedestrian crossings or the lack of them.

My argument was that it would be a heck of a lot of money to spend on something that I couldn’t see would have any effect on the main problem in Bradford on Avon, that of the simple volume of traffic passing through on a daily basis. The fact that a lot of money had been spent on the project already did not justify wasting even more.

By the way, how does having a direct poll of the citizens concerned constitute anti-democracy?

The only thing which will help Bradford’s problems is to stop the town and its mediaeval bridge from being a main thoroughfare. Drivers of all types of vehicles must be discouraged or actually prevented from driving through the town. There are various ways of achieving this and, over the last 30 years I must have thought of most of them, from shutting the bridge to traffic altogether, through various types of restrictions, including residents only.

However, according to the highways dept of Wiltshire Council, anything significant would require the re-classification of the road which at the present is A. So, re-classify it.

If use of the bridge were reduced to pedestrians, cyclists, the small town buses, and emergency service vehicles then noise, danger and pollution would be reduced or eliminated at a stroke and it would actually be pleasant for residents and visitors to move around the town, which would be beautiful again.

At Christmas 2013 the town bridge was closed to all traffic for a few days because the river rose to a dangerous level, flooding the town centre, and huge tree trunks were washed down crashing into the bridge with the potential of rendering it unsafe.

I hoped that it would remain closed for a while so that people would realise that it was possible to conduct their daily lives without it. Alas the tree trunks were removed and the waters receded in time for the resumption of normal life after the Christmas break.

However, my husband and I lived for the next three months pretending that the bridge did not exist. OK, we drove a little further and spent a little more on fuel but we deemed it worthwhile.

Why is it so difficult for people to understand that we all might have to give a little for the good of the community?

In fact I have been struck by the selfishness that has marked this whole sorry business. What about that letter of January 31 from John Potter? “The money…. is waiting to be used. Let’s not see it spent on potholes in Marlborough.” What a caring attitude. What if it were our potholes and Marlborough’s HCZ?

Isobel Guttridge/Pat Ladd again bring up the subject of a one-way system, and indeed this may help, but not the cock-eyed one which was officially suggested a few years ago. Let’s at least go round clockwise. A footbridge alongside the town bridge would be an excellent idea as long as it wasn’t supported by a 63-foot high rusty iron spike. But of course that was going to be far better than a plain, ordinary span with a two-degree slope wasn’t it? Remember all the spurious reasons why it would be so much worse than The Spike. Fortunately democracy (or was it anti-democracy?) triumphed on that occasion as well.

Come on everyone: let community spirit, humility, genuine town pride, unselfishness and plain old (uncommon) common sense prevail and let’s have a modestly priced, workable solution to the real problems in our beloved Bradford on Avon.

Bryony McGinty, Resident of Churches, Bradford on Avon since 1984.