News that Highways England is undertaking a study into a new route for the A27 that passes to the north of Chichester is also worrying news for Arundel and Worthing / Lancing.

For sometime it has been clear any works to solve the serious pollution and hold-ups on the present road around the city would mean massive disruption while the many roundabouts are removed or over bridged. Yet even after all that expensive work, history tells us there would still be a capacity issue due to induced traffic, meaning extra lanes would be soon be needed to cope. So why is that bad news for Worthing etc?

If a northern bypass / ring road is built, it’s likely to be a dual carriageway or even an ‘Expressway’ type of road now favoured by Government. Such a new road would be very attractive for traffic from the M27 and further west wishing to travel to East Sussex and even Kent by car instead of train.

However to unleash such a massive increase in traffic on to other sections of the A27 would be a hammer blow to towns such as Arundel and Worthing already facing the worry of increased traffic as a result of likely road schemes there.

Surely the time has come to retire the A27 as a long distance option along its present route and work up an alternative further inland. Of course if the sensible option of improved public transport was not ruled out none of this would be necessary. Remove long distance traffic from the road then the A27 would happily cope with traffic between local communities.