Lobby group bid to push link road idea SOME of the most powerful people in the district met to try and force the government to build a £90m Heysham/M6 link road last week. But Green Party campaigners said the chances of the road being built were remote, and they criticised Lancaster MP Hilton Dawson for joining in with Morecambe MP Geraldine Smith, the Lancaster District Chamber of Commerce, Trade and Industry, and council officers calling for a new road. Jon Barry of Lancaster Green Party said: "Lancaster is about 210th of the government's list of priority for bypasses. Even if there is a change of heart in spending priorities it will be many years before there is money for a Lancaster bypass.

"I am not at all surprised that Hilton Dawson is in the lobby group. On the one hand he says there should be better public transport and on the other he says we should spend £90 million on a new road.

"He knows very well that Lancaster can only have a certain amount of money and that if there is money for a road there will be no money for public transport.

"As usual Hilton is trying to be all things to all people."

Meanwhile members of the lobby group, called the Heysham/M6 Link Committee, argued that the end of the troubles in Ireland, should it become permanent, made it vitally important that links between Northern Ireland and mainland Britain be improved.

And Hilton Dawson hit back at allegations that he was trying to be all things to all people.

He said: "I fully own up to wanting it all for Lancaster. It's not about being all things to all men. It's saying there's no one solution to the traffic problems of Lancaster. If we try to integrate public and private transport we've got a chance of making Lancaster one of the most environmentally friendly and least congested places in the country instead of being one of the worst.

"I'm fed up of this tedious argument that we either have a bypass or invest more in public transport.

The city of Lancaster has been starved of investment in transport so we need it."

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.