THE radical plans for the future of Worcester’s roads system, revealed by your Worcester News today, will be hugely controversial.

The proposals were sent to Whitehall four months ago but have now been released to your Worcester News after we made a request under the Freedom of Information Act.

County Hall transport chiefs want to see cars banned from the historic main city bridge (once a new £33 million city centre bridge is built) and from Deansway, and 31 miles of new bus lanes opened on six key routes into Worcester.

We can imagine the collective dropping of jaws as readers digest this news.

The basic principle behind these plans is simple enough to understand – make Worcester greener by making it easier to use public transport than private cars.

We will reserve judgement until we see more meat on the bones of these proposals but we imagine many readers will question whether this is the best way to achieve the council’s environmental aims.

Routes like Bath Road, Bromyard Road and Ombersley Road are already traffic hot-spots. Quite what they will be like with traffic squeezed by dedicated bus lanes is anyone’s guess.

‘Brave’ is certainly one word we might use to describe the proposals for transport in Worcester up to 2016 that are aimed at winning £187 million in Government funding.

We await the reaction of our readers with interest.