n Sir, As a resident of the Heron Hill Estate in Kendal for the last ten years or so, I read with interest the letter from Mr Peter Leeming in last week's Westmorland Gazette, relating to traffic through Valley Drive and Lingmoor Rise (Letters, October 15, Outer ring road is rat run').

While not doubting that a certain amount of traffic (however, certainly not heavy' as claimed) does travel through the estate, this is what the roads are designed for, is it not?

As far as the traffic being fast' is concerned, this is obviously subjective.

While there will always be a minority boy racer' element, I would defy most sensible drivers to drive at anything even approaching a fast speed, due to the extremely curvaceous nature of the estate roads, not to mention the proliferation of parked cars effecting natural traffic calming.

It is even possible that the accidents to which Mr Leeming refers have had nothing to do with inappropriate speed, and have been caused to some degree by ill-advised parking causing a traffic hazard, or possibly involved one of the very elderly residents that one witnesses attempting to drive on the estate (flat cap, peering dead ahead, high revs, oblivious to everything- we have all seen them!).

As far as the introduction of traffic-calming measures is concerned, I can help in advising Mr Leeming that the reason that this has not been introduced is that many, if not all of the necessary triggers' for this, are not in place.

Probably the most important of these triggers is the support of local residents, which is something that I have always believed, and had confirmed to me by our local councillor, is not there.

This is hardly surprising when one looks at the fiasco of the traffic calming recently put in on the Valley Drive estate, and the general residents' displeasure with many of the other schemes already installed throughout the town.

David Armstrong, Kendal