Over 1,000 people have petitioned to make Falmouth town centre a traffic-free area.

A petition containing more than 1,000 signatures is now due to be handed over to county councillors next Tuesday in a bid to pedestrianise Falmouth's main streets.

The signatures were collected from people in the town centre over a number of weeks, including during a traffic census that finished at the beginning of last month.

The petition will be presented at County Hall on Tuesday morning by representatives of various bodies including Falmouth Town Centre Forum and Falmouth Friends of the Earth, ahead of a full meeting of Cornwall county council. They will be joined by town mayor Mike Varney.

Mr Varney said: "County need to understand exactly the weight of the plight Falmouth is going through as far as the traffic in the town and the state of the main street within the town. We need to get the partners together so we can sort this problem out once and for all."

He described the number of signatures as "fantastic," adding: "It just goes to show what the people of Falmouth want. It's about time we gave the people what they want and what they need. We want as much of the main street pedestrianised as possible."

A lot of the signatures were collected by the Falmouth Friends of the Earth group.

Kate Ormrod, from the group, said: "It's amazing how attitudes have changed over the last few years. We have been calling for pedestrianisation of these streets since Local Plan inquiries in the 1980s. Back then many shopkeepers were wary of removing the option of passing motorised trade, but these days they're mostly as adamant as everyone else that the town is actually losing regular and visiting shoppers because of the acute unpleasantness and danger involved in just attempting to walk along its streets."

In a letter to Cornwall county council the group asks members to respond to the petition and to "urgently outline specific plans for Falmouth's main streets that address people's profound concerns."

The group has also said it has been "buoyed up" by the positive reception that they claim the idea has had from "nearly" everyone" and the "deep sense of frustration and anger at the continued traffic assault on the town."

Members have called for the Church Street car park to be closed and, rather than just replace it elsewhere, they are pushing for the local authority to put in place "decent and comprehensive" public transport.

"There's little point just moving car traffic from one car park to another. We need to address car use per se, to enable people to change their car dominated habits so that Falmouth becomes part of the great wave of positive actions to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, restrain climate change and help ensure the town has a long term future. A first step towards this would be to restrict traffic in the main streets with the use of rising bollards, as works successfully in other Cornish towns," added Ms Ormrod.

Sally Stiles, a member of the group who helped carry out the car census, during which many of the signatures were obtained, said: "Many people you speak to in the street have a horror story about a car nearly - or actually - hitting them and most up-country visitors can hardly restrain their disbelief at the cars driving down the main street."

John Slaughter, chairman of the Falmouth Town Centre Forum's transport working group, said the petition had been put together through a combined effort from a number of groups.

"I think the petition is going to reinforce the demands from the people in the town. In a town of 20,000 people, 1,000 is a big proportion," he added.