THOUSANDS of people marched through the streets of Portishead to reaffirm their anger about the Cabstand traffic lights system. Nearly 2,000 placard waving

THOUSANDS of people marched through the streets of Portishead to reaffirm their anger about the Cabstand traffic lights system.Nearly 2,000 placard waving protesters took to the High Street on Saturday morning for the march - the second of its kind - to call for changes to be made to the £800,000 light controlled junction.Ironically the march had to come to a halt on several occasions and wait for the lights to change before moving on.The march was organised by Councillor David Jolley who instigated the first protest, a year ago, about the lights.Councillor David Jolley said: "I believe the march demonstrated that there is still a substantial core of very concerned residents who are determined to see that this issue is just not swept under the carpet."Residents can forsee the problems that are looming just over the horizon when the 1,650 new homes being built in The Vale become occupied and inevitably increase local traffic dramatically."I still believe that a roundabout at the head of the High Street and Wyndham Way - the council's own original proposal shot down by the developer's consultants - would much improve matters."Woodspring MP Dr Liam Fox also joined the protest to back calls for a change to the lights.Dr Fox said: "I would like to thank the traffic lights for making the point perfectly by giving people just six seconds to march through them before they changed again."It cannot be beyond the wit of man to organise a traffic system that works more efficiently than the present ones. It can take 15 minutes to get through these lights and this is a problem people are experiencing all the time."Dr Fox said that more pressure needed to be put on the Government to fund the reinstation of the Portishead railway line.Despite the wave of public feeling, North Somerset Council said it still had no intention of changing the current system.Spokesman Nick Yates said: "We have made a number of changes to the junction to improve the traffic flow, without affecting pedestrian safety. "These include a filter lane and modification to the light's computer control to allow greater priority to the High Street."These works have seen an improvement on traffic flow and we will continue to monitor the situation. We have no plans to make any further changes to the layout.