Congestion and lack of car parking continue to plauge occupiers in old cities. John MacRae looks at some of the answers.
Achieving a balance between access and environmental protection in town centres is the most difficult task of traffic management, and this is particularly acute in historic towns.
But, while each town is different, a consensus is forming that managing demand for road space, rather than providing increased capacity, should be the guiding principle.
Pedestrianisation is one of the key planks in historic-town management. According to Hillier Parker’s Russell Schiller, since the case of London Road, Norwich, in the early 1970s, pedestrianisation has been opposed by retailers beforehand and supported by them afterwards.
But there is now evidence that pedestrianisation can lead to increased turnover. Dacorum Borough Council, worried about competition from The Harlequin at Watford, commissioned Donaldsons to research the effects of pedestrianisation in Hemel Hempstead which revealed “quite a dramatic upturn in trade”. There was a loss during the building period, although disruption was less than expected.
Donaldsons monitored initial rental levels, capital values, pedestrian flow, car park usage and visitor attitudes, and will repeat the exercise later this year. Turnover figures supplied by 12 shops are being monitored confidentially. Nicholas Falk, director of Urbed – which is leading research for the DOE into the “vitality and viability” of town centres for PPG 6 -wants to avoid the term pedestrianisation because “it has got a bad name”. He prefers “people first area” or ” foot street”.
“One is not talking about the total exclusion of traffic for all the day,” he says. Foot streets are not a universal panacea and some smaller councils pedestrianise because it is fashionable.
More than 50 towns in the USA have reversed pedestrianisation, he warned, and even Bruges was forced to go from complete pedestrianisation to allowing some traffic.
Urbed favours traffic calming rather than complete pedestrianisation. Foot streets and banning traffic from town centres for most of the days implies park-and-ride to supplement parking in the centre.
Research published last year by Donaldsons on retailing in historic towns stresses that the quality of the links is vital. “Unless these are comfortable and fast, park-and-ride is inconvenient ,” it said.
Park-and-ride is not cheap, particularly if a tram system is involved. Donaldsons’ study claims that regular mini-buses along a dedicated route may show a better return than multi-storey car parks.
In November the English Historic Towns Forum called on the Government to recognise that historic towns are a national asset and that the DOE should allow continuing investment. While no decision has yet been made, Stephen Joseph, director of Transport 2000, says that a revised Department of Transport funding regime should make innovative traffic management schemes more feasible.
York
Ideas to solve York’s traffic problems date back to around the second world war. Plans for a dual-carriageway inner ring road a mere 250 yards outside the city walls were rejected only in 1975 following a public inquiry. Partial pedestrianisation followed in the 1980s.
By 1987, York had appointed a town-centre manager and recognised that transport policies held the key to the vitality of the city centre in the face of competition from out-of-town retailing. MVA Consultancy was hired to make recommendations on a city-wide basis.
A pedestrian zone came into operation in September 1987 covering more than 30 streets. Today, traffic is banned from 11am to 4pm Monday to Friday and from 10.30am to 4.30pm on Saturday.
York’s efforts at promoting alternative modes of travel have centred on park-and-ride. Although four parking areas are planned, so far only one has been established, south-west of the city close to the outer ring road. A second site on the east side should go ahead next year. The council funded its 563-space car park by selling the adjoining site to Tesco. The service has a five-minute frequency at peak periods.
Although York provides city-centre parking for short-stay users, its parking policy has been to reduce on-site parking in the pedestrian zone. Since January 1990, the council has allowed only one space per 5,000 sq ft of floor space with 1,500 sq ft permitted off site. The current level of commuted payment is £2,500 per space, which reflects the cost of providing a park-and-ride space, as well as the discounted costs of maintaining the site and running the park-and-ride buses.
Commuted payments now total over £300,000, but the depressed property market means that it is unlikely to grow much in the next few years. Parking charges generate £2.5m a year.
York’s achievement was recognised by the British Council of Shopping Centres, which awarded the 1992 shopping environment award jointly to York and Horsham. However, York is aware that competitive conditions are changing. Meadowhall, the Metro Centre, Princes Quay, Hull, and a reviving Leeds are all seen as competing centres.
Extending the pedestrian hours has been advocated, but the scope is limited in the absence of continental-style servicing patterns, the study concludes.
Oxford
A commitment to traffic management rather than increased road capacity became policy in Oxford as early as 1973. Since then, measures have included off- and on-street parking, bus priority, some pedestrianisation, public transport, traffic management, improved cycling facilities, planning controls and an extensive park-and-ride system.
There are four park-and-ride car parks near the bypasses. In 1992, on an average day, 4,500 passengers used the bus services into the centre.
As in York, commuted car space payments under section 106 of the Town and Country Planning Act have been used to finance park-and-ride.
Noel Newson, the city council’s chief assistant engineer, told the PTRC conference that over £2m had been raised from commercial developments. The arrangement did not seem to have discouraged either retail or office development in the city centre, he maintained, even though there was no parking for either staff or customers. “The ability of park-and-ride to meet people’s needs has been recognised,” he said.
Oxford’s draft plan envisages doubling its park-and-ride capacity in the next decade with new services linking locations outside the centre, such as hospitals and Oxford Brookes University.
Cambridge
Although pedestrianisation in Cambridge is more recent it is much more controversial. A public inquiry into the county council’s proposal to make its experimental traffic order permanent from December finished in June.
Among those who objected were the city council, which wants a wider pedestrian area, and the university, which is worried about access. But it is the scheme’s ban on bicycles (except in Trinity Street) that has attracted international attention – and Cambridge is also exploring road pricing. All vehicles, including buses and cycles, are prohibited in the pedestrian area between 10am and 4pm, Monday to Saturday.
Another unusual aspect of the Cambridge scheme is that access to the pedestrian area is controlled by gates operated by “smart cards”. Barry Louth, the city’s principal traffic planner, says that the net effect of the permit system is to limit entry, during restricted hours, to 50 card holders a day, with no more than eight present at any one time. The maximum speed is 10mph.
On monitoring, Louth says that a wide-ranging group, including property owners, businesses and traders, is providing feedback on the scheme. The aim is to form a group with a much broader remit, as in Cambridge’s twin town of Heidelberg.
