AS a passionate supporter of public transport in general and railways in particular, I find supporting any road scheme particularly galling. But I think we can all see that if Malton, Norton and Scarborough are to prosper, improvements to the A64 are essential.

Talk of any spend at Hopgrove is premature. I wonder if any highways engineer ever tries to go through that junction in the summer? If they did they would know the problem is not the roundabout – may I suggest it never was?

The issues are the turn into North Lane and the crossroads at Towthorpe Moor Lane with the traffic slowing down to allow people in and out, which then impacts particularly badly on the speed at which the two lanes of traffic can merge.

I know it won’t be popular, but as a start why not simply close the end of North Lane so traffic cannot join or leave the A64 at that point?

It’s a nice little rat-run to the York ring road and I use it myself, but the additional distance is not great and it would be a much cheaper option than going straight to the split level junction at Hopgrove, which in my view will make no difference apart from having traffic standing on a bridge.

Jerry Swift, Great Barugh