I eagerly offer my time to participate in a feasibility study into a fixed link as recommended by the Garnett report into the Isle of Wight infrastructure.

The campaign will, I hope look seriously at the massively reduced costs (in relative terms) of tunnelling under Solent and under the Island to give us connection to the national infrastructure from which we have passively allowed ourselves to be forgotten. Why would anyone not want to be part of such a debate and demand our tax payers right to access to national public services?

Hopefully an engineering geologist would take up my idea (represented above) and look at the Fratton junction area for tunnel submersion, and re-emersion at Lymington –giving direct access to the West country. In Portsmouth & Southsea station escalators would give access the trains in the tunnel. Under Solent to Ryde, where the neglected Arena site on the Esplanade offers opportunity for escalators creating an interchange with existing rail, hovercraft, bus and taxi ranks. Above ground level might make a 5* Hotel which the island sorely lacks? Tourist with suitcases and bikes help reinvigorate the serviced tourist economy of the Sandown Bay and beyond. The congestion suffered on the roads of Newport would be relieved , and the eco-aspirations of sustainable development rewarded by locating the many thousands of houses we must deliver near infrastructure for commuting to and from the mainland.

Cathy Foulkes

Ryde