City centre plans, 2015 version

You cannot get away from the fact that it is a 40mph dual carriageway - there are many many such roads with pedestrian crossings throughout the land, so why shouldn't there be one at the top of Bishop Street? Or should the policeman be brought back on duty there?

That is a rubbish statement, they are NOT a ring road, yes pedestrian crossings work on those roads BUT the whole point of a ring road is to keep traffic flowing and our ring road works, so do the under/overpass and have done for years, they ruined it with the traffic lights on the Foleshill roundabout so imagine if a pedestrian crossing was to be installed by Machine Mart, the time it takes for the sequence would have traffic backing up on the roundabout within seconds and the same for traffic coming off Radford Rd going east, leave it alone as it works and if you can't work it out then you should not be on it.

So what if they're not ring roads? They're the same grade, same number of lanes, all designed to ease congestion and aid traffic flow. And by your own admission pedestrian crossings work on them. The point of the ring road is to bypass the city centre. You are showing exactly the misconception of it I'm trying to point out - it is NOT a motorway! And have you seen how badly a lot of those junctions clog up in rush hour, especially between junctions 6, 7, 8, 9 and 1? And that is in a city as under-performing as Coventry. If this city saw the level of traffic it SHOULD due to its size the ring road would not work.Traffic would not flow at all. How often do you use the pedestrian sections of the RR like the subways/bridges? I used to use them all the time and trust me you would not say they worked.They put you off immensely. They could not be more intimidating if you put an "Abandon all hope all ye who enter here" sign above them. After the RR was put in all the old routes that people used to use to travel into the city centre as pedestrians practically dried up, along with the businesses along them. I now use the car, and the offset of the slight inconvenience to a motorist of having to stop on it to the benefit to a pedestrian of not having to use the subways and bridges is one more than worth paying. It is works so well why aren't more towns and cities copying it? And those that did have them, like Birmingham, are covering them up and making more sections of them level? It is a change long overdue. My next hope is they start adding pavements at the side and buildings right up to the edge of these. It is a road that badly needs humanising.

I use the Spon End / Queens Road (what's left) subway all the time and the only problem I see is having to step over a tramp with his dog and a guitar, I've never had problems with going over or under the ring road, they are not intimidating to me, and like I said before they have worked for years so what's wrong with the people using them now to the folk that used them for all this time?

The argument that the Ring Road has a 40mph speed limit doesn't really wash. What percentage of drivers abide by any speed limit? Most people I know expect a four mile journey to take just 5 minutes.

I mainly used that one too, amongst others. Hardly an inviting prospect. But how many people DIDN'T use them that would use an at-level crossing? Like I said, there used to be a steady stream of people that would go into the city centre via roads like Spon St. After this became subways it slowed to a trickle. The city centre used to have subways all over the shop. They're now almost all filled in. Why? Because people didn't want to use them. Then of course there's the economic reasoning. The bridges/subways need constant surveying and repairs to be structurally safe. No sooner does the London Road flyover have the scaffolding taken off it goes back on. Money that doesn't need to be spent. If you made the ring road level with at-level crossings the public realm, pedestrians, cyclists, those with wheelchairs and buggies, the city centre and its economy would all benefit. Meanwhile motorists would see a negligible increase in journey times at worst. Once this work is done some people will moan about how much longer it takes them, it's more dangerous blah blah blah but I bet the evidence just won't back them up. Remember when the station subway was filled in? People said it would be chaos, the entire thing would gridlock and bodies would be piling up. And it just didn't happen. All that happened was a massive improvement in how pedestrians could access the city centre. The fact is the RR was poorly thought out, like most of the post-war rebuild, and everywhere other than here seems to have sussed this out. I'm still disappointed the Swanswell Boulevard never happened - it was a brilliant idea. If I live to see the thing humanised to a standard at-level A road I'll be very happy.

But people are more likely to drive to conditions. Put walkways alongside the RR, with buildings around the edge providing a frontage and pedestrian crossings and motorists will consider it more built up, treat it like a normal road and on the whole drive accordingly. Most of the A45 through Coventry you'll often see someone driving at 60mph. And these are sections that you see people just crossing over in what Americans would call jaywalking. Take Coundon Wedge. It used to be 60mph (now 40 but people tend to do more), isn't particularly well lit and yet there are public footpaths that cross this road without any form of formal crossing to help! And yet you don't see masses of flowers on the roadside for the many ramblers/dog walkers that have been killed using them. The doommongers are just making up scenarios that just will not happen.

The City Centre Action Plan has now been published here. At 90 pages it will take some time to absorb.