The Price of Fuel

This week’s Denbighshire Free Press complains of the rising price of motor fuel. It’s priced at 97.9ppl unleaded or diesel at Bridge Services this morning, 2ppl higher for unleaded than at Yr Wyddgrug. We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again but for a variety of reasons, much of the working population of Rhuthun needs to or wants to commute out-of-town. It’s true that there are more quality jobs on the doorstep than there once were but not enough to satisfy everyone. And if you wonder at the traffic on the A494 and A525 into Rhuthun during the rush hour (well, rush-20-minutes), whether people live locally & commute out or live outside Rhuthun & commute in, these days they aren’t prepared to move house for work, preferring instead to travel.

In other words and in spite of everything, motoring’s still cheap, though it’s those on lower incomes who suffer most, of course.

In a rural environment and for a commuter town such as Rhuthun, it’s hard to see how this will be any different.

That the front page of the same newspaper, in referring to the possibility of a Llanewly/St Asaph by-pass, also hints at “a network down the vale to open up job opportunities to everyone” as part of a council “vision to create a north-south link” recognises this rather simple fact. If that vision stretches to Rhuthun, it will rectify the poor road connections facing residents at least in one direction. If ever this comes to pass, though, it’s likely to be decades away. And who knows what Rhuthun and society at large will be like then. Terrible thought, perhaps we’ll be living on Soylent Green, such will be the car-generated environmental devastation.