How gratifying it was to read in last week’s Wiltshire Times that at long last someone on the Bradford on Avon Town Council, in this case Mayor/Cllr Peter Leach, is reported as recognising the council has no mandate to build a bridge.

Now perhaps it will put the horse back in front of the cart and first establish a defensible rationale for building any sort of bridge.

The cable-stay crusade has been driven forward on a tide of hyperbole, emotion and unsubstantiated belief. It is now time for a fundamental re-appraisal from the ground up. What is desperately needed is objectivity, detachment, and above all, plain common sense.

The perceived pedestrian safety issue has never been considered strong enough to persuade district/county authorities to finance a bridge. I was under the impression the Priority for People project was committed to making life more comfortable for pedestrians, even if that meant inconveniencing motorists a little.

John Seekings puts forward a good idea (Wiltshire Times, July 22) to narrow the town bridge for traffic for the benefit of pedestrians. He is not the only person to put forward this idea, but why does he only suggest it as a temporary measure?

If Prority for People is a serious venture, why not bite the bullet? Why not spend comparatively little to keep traffic away from pedestrians rather than spend a small fortune on a bridge to take pedestrians away from traffic?

There is nothing quite like a good traffic jam to encourage people to find another (more suitable) route, or to simply conclude the journey isn’t worth the hassle.

As the new development already has at least two access points and the developers were presumably happy with that, there seems no reason to build a bridge purely on the basis of need for the residents of the new complex.

Although I have sympathy with Mike Cunningham (Letters, August 5) who suggests the councillors should all resign, we need to remember not all the councillors gave the cable-stay backing.

I do, however, question whether the most vigorous cable-stay proponents on the council can possibly exercise the objective unbiased judgment needed, particularly those who have vowed to continue the fight, as they are perfectly entitled to do, in a purely private capacity.

Naturally, a thorough re-appraisal might still conclude a new bridge is vital. If that proves to be case then a budget could be set with designs and tenders invited from the marketplace.

What we should not be doing is rowing the first boat which takes our fancy with no cap set on cost, no account taken of what can actually be afforded, and no thought about whether there might be more beneficial things to spend money on.

D Best, Conigre House, Bradford on Avon.