John Lazarus, Byron Bay
Council’s full-page ad Understanding the Byron Bypass Project states the bypass will reduce cars in the town centre by 30 per cent. That’s propaganda. Council’s own MR545 study identifies that only 18 per cent of cars drive through town, which will descend to a single-figure percentage in summer’s high traffic peaks.
Phoning Council gets the response that the 30 per cent is based on the disputed traffic figures that the developer’s consultant, Veitch Leister, provided for the rejected West Byron development. Do we need a council if we just use developers’ consultants to inform development?
Council’s ad also claims that the bypass will make the town centre more pedestrian friendly. That is another farce, as Council has adopted to extend the central business district (CBD) zoning to Butler Street to turn it into a new commercial CBD extension development area. Does this mean we will we have a bypass down a CBD main road?
Record temperatures across Europe and India. Globally the hottest June ever. Record run of high winter temperatures in Australia. Catastrophic projections for extinctions. And the bypass of nowhere continues on the basis of lies and propaganda. We are down to self-defence of our future. Council is not acting in our interests; the bypass blockade protesters are.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
