YP Letters: Stuck in the slow lane as roadwork contractors coin it in

I AGREE with Jayne Dowle (The Yorkshire Post, March 31) that something needs to be done to improve traffic flow on our motorways. I put a lot of blame onto the contractors who are employed to improve and maintain our motorways.

Last Friday afternoon, I was caught up in a traffic crawl on the M1 between junction 37 and the M18 due to mile upon mile of road works and a 50mph speed limit.

However, during this journey, I had plenty of time to look around and noticed innumerable very expensive pieces of equipment standing idle and in the whole trip I saw hardly any workmen. It seems to me that the contractors must think of a number when submitting their bids for this work and then double it to make sure that no matter how inefficient they still make a nice profit in the end. Perhaps if the Highway Agency employed people who had some idea of the expected cost of a project, then the contractors would be encouraged to put in a more realistic bid and finish the job in double quick time – and we would all be able to get to our destinations on time.

From: Bill Tetlow, Exelby, Bedale.

I READ with interest your item entitled “County’s Police earn £1m from mobile speed vans in one year” (The Yorkshire Post, March 30).

North Yorkshire Police did in fact earn almost £1m, but the amount ring fenced for road safety initiatives amounted to a derisory £163,000.

If you break down the figure of £886,000, they claim it costs to run the three vans for 12 months it amounts to £809 per day per van. If all the guilty speedsters elect to go on a education awareness course, then this equates to 11 speeding offences per day per van or even less if they opt to pay the fine and accept the penalty points.

Maybe the North Yorkshire Police would care to publish a breakdown in how it comes to cost this eye watering amount when the speeding tickets are issued by computer and the vans are parked for most of the day?

From: R Oliver, Lime Close, Calow, Chesterfield.

THE police have claimed reductions in the number of accidents since the use of SCVs, but they stated in the media in 2015 that serious accidents had increased by one third in the age group 17-24, and that on the A64 they had doubled. They choose the numbers that are suitable to justify their actions.