TRANSPORT Minister Stephen Byers is being urged to foot the bill for a bypass directing traffic away from Middlewich Town Centre.
In the wake of a county council report which highlighted the danger to pedestrians walking along busy Booth Lane and Lewin Street, former town mayor Dave Sutton is calling for a bypass.
The report found pedestrians, many of them children, are 'very vulnerable' to passing traffic along Lewin Street.
It states no feasible traffic-calming measures could improve the situation and the only option left to protect the safety of pedestrians is to build a bypass.
Blueprints for a bypass by 2007 are included in Middlewich's Local Plan, but families say that is not soon enough.
Residents living along Booth Lane say they are sick of running the gauntlet of speeding cars every day.
Ian Chambers, of Booth Lane, said: 'My son is now 10 and big enough to go out on his own and I am worried sick until he returns home. I have mixed feelings about bypasses because they always rip through countryside, but something badly needs to be done here.'
Now Cllr Dave Sutton, who serves on Middlewich town, Congleton borough and Cheshire county councils, is to write to the minster at the Department for Transport, Local Government and the Regions to press Middlewich's case.
'This report gives us ammunition to go to the Government and say that the bypass needs funding,' said Cllr Sutton.
'If there is an accident at junction 18 of the M6, all the traffic diverts down Booth Lane and Lewin Street.
'The bypass is in the Local Plan to be done by 2007, but we can't wait that long.'
