I read with despair in the Gazette & Herald of March 6 that the old chestnuts of putting 20mph limits in the Market Place and Long Street in Devizes are once again being warmed-up by Wiltshire Council.

These roads are rarely, if ever, capable of being traversed at anything significantly over 20mph when it would be an issue of safety to exceed that speed, by anyone who would take note of such limits.

Both are equipped with obstructions to prevent comfortable traverse at almost any speed: parked vehicles (legally and otherwise); sinuous bends around the Town Hall; two zebra crossings; a number of razor-edged kerbs encouraging vehicles to give the pedestrians behind them a wide berth; several side roads with insufficient radius on the corners (eg Hillworth Road and Bridewell Street) and, of course, the obligatory potholes and incipient sink holes.

Add to this the fact that for most of their length they are equipped with the widest pavements in Devizes, giving plenty of safe space for pedestrians.

We are constantly being reminded of shortages of funds for proper road maintenance and yet we can apparently afford to squander money plastering the townscape and countryside with (often incorrect, obscured and poorly if ever maintained) signage for arbitrary, inconsistent and largely pointless speed limits, and for paving over a chunk of The Green for a cycle path from nowhere to nowhere.

With the roads in their present state it is the potholes and the necessity for swerving round them that are dangerous, not speed, and the potholes are genuinely life threatening to cyclists.

When the potholes are masked by extensive pools of standing water (which seem to hang around long after any effective drainage system would have dealt with them) the danger is magnified.

Imposing unnecessary speed limits exposes the whole notion of limits to ridicule and limits are no guarantee of safety.

They are certainly not an acceptable substitute for proper road design and provision which those who pay for them have a right to expect.

The tree-sitters and other ‘eco-terrorists’, to whom the nation seems to have surrendered, are no doubt now employed by the councils, which would explain both the lack of proper roads and the constant drive to eliminate wealth-generating mobility.

Brian W Smith, Wick Lane, Devizes.