Council didn't want the road; VIEWPOINTS.

I AM hoping that you and your readers will give full support to David Gorton's letter (Viewpoints, April 13).

He stresses the importance of completing the link road between Southern Way and Cardiff Bay. It is the missing link in the Peripheral Distributor Road around Cardiff.

When, as director of environment and planning, I proposed this road and gave the estimated cost to South

Glamorgan County Council in 1976, the leader of the opposition thumped the desk and claimed it would be "a hundred million pound road going nowhere".

My response was that, indeed, the docks had become "nowhere" but at the end of the 19th century it had been one of the busiest places on earth. It had relied upon canals and railways.

Linked to the east and the west by major roads, it would become "somewhere" once more. In the following years the Department of Environment and Planning of South Glamorgan County Council designed and supervised the construction of the motorway from Coryton to Miskin and the Periphal Distributor Road around the whole city except for this "missing link".

Ironically, we chose to build the western side first because we feared that if we had built the eastern side first the western part would never have been built! Now is the time to build this missing link.

It is disturbing that the Southern Way viaduct is in need of repair after only 25 years.

Our original design was in steel but the successful contractor put in an alternative lower bid for its construction in concrete and under the terms of the tendering process this lower bid was accepted.

Ewart Parkinson South Rise Cardiff