I’D like to endorse some of the views of C. Moore (Letters, July 5, ''Traffic lights are needless').

The newly installed traffic lights on the A65 at the entrance to the Kendal Care Home and the service access for the Westmorland General Hospital seem to serve no useful purpose.

I’m not aware of any frequent accidents or of any traffic congestion at this spot and the newly developed cycle path/footpath from Oxenholme to the canal route may work to reduce the very small number of pedestrians, cyclists and others who would want to cross the A65 at this point.

A similar summary comment applies to the traffic lights which were recently installed on Parkside Road, at the junction with Valley Drive. As far as congestion is concerned, with the proximity of the railway bridge and its width restrictions, these traffic lights on Parkside Road only make matters worse.

I recall the online web poll conducted by The Westmorland Gazette back in 2017 when 79 per cent of respondents replied that there were too many traffic lights in our towns.

The idea of ‘naked streets’ might be worth an experiment in Kendal. One example of where this has been very successful is in the town of Drachten, Netherlands, where both congestion and traffic accidents were reduced following the removal of lights and other traffic control measures.

There have been similar, smaller-scale examples in the UK, such as at Portishead, Poynton and South Kensington in London.

There again, removing all traffic control systems would be a step too far. We now have traffic lights at the junction of Shap Road and Mintsfeet Road and these lights, or some other control system, are many years overdue.

With these three examples alone, it would be reassuring to know how the location of traffic lights and other traffic control methods in Kendal is decided and prioritised.

It would also be useful to know how much a typical traffic lights system costs.

Without such information, there will always be a suspicion that some of the traffic lights in Kendal are redundant.

Dr David G. Tonks

Kendal