Regarding Rectory Lane, Stevenage, your correspondent last week suggested putting speed humps in Rectory Lane. Actually, such a scheme was put forward earlier this year. It was priced at around £500,000. Yes, half a million! The residents roundly rejected

Regarding Rectory Lane, Stevenage, your correspondent last week suggested putting speed humps in Rectory Lane.

Actually, such a scheme was put forward earlier this year. It was priced at around £500,000. Yes, half a million! The residents roundly rejected this as a costly and disruptive white elephant which would not actually solve the particular problems of Rectory Lane.

Herts Highways then turned round and said they did not have the money anyway, so it could never happen.

We are left with two other suggestions recently made in your columns.

1. Let the potholes grow so that no-one in their right mind would voluntarily use the lane. Additional advantage: It would give the rich selfish uppity folk who live there a good jolting every time they come and go. Hurray!

2. Straighten and widen the lane, cut down any trees and hedges in the way, and presumably also demolish the various garages, out-buildings and walls that abut on the road and impede visibility. Additional advantage: Since this would effectively wipe out the Conservation Area, then (after a suitable period of mourning) we can take the logical next step and turn it into a dual carriageway. Then it can fulfil its manifest destiny as a major traffic artery.

How about this for a third way? Close St Albans Link. This is the little road linking the St Nicholas and Great Ashby areas to Weston Road and Rectory Lane. Apparently it was never planned or approved - it just happened a few years ago. Closing it would not cut off any traditional route. But it would drastically reduce the rat-run traffic. More than half the traffic in Rectory Lane comes through this link.

Some people are worried that the traffic would be diverted to other Old Town roads, which are already over-crowded. But it is much more likely that the rat-run traffic would find the nearby dual carriageway more convenient. Why not have an experimental closure of St Albans Link?

NAME AND ADDRESS WITHHELD

* I wish to make clear to Mr Morgan, and several others over the past few months, that the speed limit in Rectory Lane is not 20mph and never has been.

The signs put up show a recommended speed limit which is not enforcable. Speed limits are on a circular sign, with a white background and a red border. The start and finish of the limit must be clearly indicated as they are in both Walkern Road and Letchmore Road. If you contact the local authority I am sure they will explain why they do not put the legal signs in place.

IAN MACLEOD, Unwin Road, Stevenage