10 hours Ago
It appears that the Administration have hit the panic button as the realisation that yet another set-in-concrete, nailed on, and utterly guaranteed manifesto promise appears to be stalling – there’s a theme here locally and nationally. This week, we saw the leader of the council begging local businesses and landowners for potential space for the long-promised park and ride. Labour have been promising this for nigh on 30 years as a saviour to all our congestion and visitor number woes.
You will hear over the coming months, and possibly years, how the Greens “totally oppose” park and ride and are against such a plan. Well, dear reader, those statements are technically known as a “right load of old twaddle”. We would have supported plans over the decades had Labour actually come up with any that would have worked, but there are some basic flaws that need to be discussed.
If park and ride is to be used to reduce congestion and pollution in the city – something which of course we would wholeheartedly support – then city centre car parking would have to be taken away. This is a two-pronged problem as every local authority relies on its parking fees to fund transport initiatives but, also, we simply don’t own all the car parks and would not be in a position to purchase them to close them down. If a park and ride scheme is to be successful, buses need to get from the site to the city centre in 10-12 minutes and if you have the same level of congestion caused by vehicles heading for car parks, that target simply isn’t achievable.
We can look enviously at cities around the country that have successful park and ride but they invariably have one massive advantage over us in geographical terms. They are 360-degree places whereas we are only 180 and have a big wet thing at one end and a beautiful green thing at the other, neither of which are conducive to building on (even though in 2012 the then Labour leader Gill Mithell did actually suggest concreting over the South Downs National Park). On a much more positive note, it appears that shovels are finally hitting the ground very soon on the much-anticipated final stage of the Valley Gardens project, which will link the first two stages to the seafront.
When Greens became the official opposition in 2019, it was Cllr Pete West as our Transport Spokes who insisted on the resumption of the VG task and finish group to resurrect (yet) another project that had been kicked into the long grass by the previous Labour administration. On taking minority administration in 2020, we set about an engagement and consultation programme the likes of which the city had never seen. On such a large project it is impossible to please all the people all of the time, but we tried our very best and the first two stages were a revelation when first unveiled.
The final link will bring much needed safe infrastructure for our residents. There is a fallacy that increased motor vehicle traffic is more profitable than pedestrians in terms of local business , which simply isn’t true. Forbes magazine recently reported that “Those not in cars spend 40 per cent more each month in shops than motorists, found the research undertaken by University College London’s Bartlett School of Planning” and Chris Boardman, national active travel commissioner said: “Walkable high streets make for vibrant, happier and healthier communities, which is of course good for business.
"Making the centres of our towns, cities and villages easier and safer to get about on foot means people are more likely to spend more time there supporting local shops, pubs, cafes and restaurants”. So if we are to truly save our high streets and city centre, we have to make it more appealing to those who want to walk or wheel through our city. Perhaps now would be a good time to take a look at another of their 2023 manifesto promises to “explore a car-free city centre”, which so far seems to have gone ignored post-election.
In Preston Park we are seeing the finishing touches on the A23 active travel corridor, another project where funding was secured under a Green minority administration. All we need now is the A259 active travel scheme to be completed and we will have a suite of Green-led infrastructure that will encourage more of our residents to travel actively. But given that cycling infrastructure is on less than five per cent of our highways we clearly have a long way to go.
Even though the new Transport Secretary promised “unprecedented levels of funding” that in fact has amounted to £2 per person nationally, so we probably shouldn’t be holding our breath..
