We strongly support the need for Park-and-Ride facilities to
the east of the City.
When it comes to site selection we believe that the most
important criteria should be that its location should make it attractive to
drivers coming to the city i.e. close to main routes into the city and close
enough to the city to offer a reasonable short journey to the city centre. The
site chosen should also meet the forecast maximum demand for at least the next
10 years.
The selected site should operate for 7 days a week until
late, with secure overnight parking, to enable its use by evening visitors and
those staying overnight in Bath. The public transport to and from the city
centre should use low emission vehicles, and be inexpensive to use.
Our concern is pollution, particularly small particulates,
and its reduction in the short term. Pollution is damaging people health now
and we need to be implementing changes to traffic management without further
delay.
Air pollution was described by the Times newspaper earlier
this week as the 'most serious and costly occupational hazard of city life'.
A Canadian study cited by the paper showed that those living within 50m of a
busy urban road were between 7% and 12% more likely than those living more than
300m away to develop dementia. A separate German/Finnish study concluded
that diesel cars are likely to release twice as many small particulates than
heavier vehicles due to the stricter testing regimes the latter are subjected
to. Last week the High Court ruled that the government's air quality plan
was so far below adequate standards as to be effectively illegal.
We have spent years, considerable sums of money and
consulted many experts to come up with a transport management plan it is now
time to stop debating and implement it before more people are harmed.
The opponent of the eastern park and ride are asking you to
revisit the plan, question all the assumption and further delay taking action
to address the causes of pollution in the city centre while another plan is
created. In addition to this many of their proposed “solutions” depend on changing
technologies and changing human behaviour both of which are long-term
aspirations rather than short term goals.
It is worth noting that even they propose additional parking
capacity to the east of the city but they want to take longer creating it and
spread it over multiple locations so it will be harder for drivers to locate.
One of the factors that increase pollution in the city
centre is people driving around the city seeking somewhere to park. While we
applaud the plans to build more out of town parking, we also recognise that
people will need to and will want to drive their cars into the city for the
foreseeable future. Indeed local businesses have repeatedly said that Baths
economic viability requires vehicular access to the commercial heart of the
city.
We, therefore, believe that it is important to have better
planning for what to do with vehicles coming into the city that need to park.
We would, therefore, like to see:
More parking capacity in the city centre.
An end to, the failed policy, of granting planning consent to hotel developments which have no parking provision
A proper strategy for managing coaches visiting the city
A firm principle that parking spaces cannot be removed without a plan to provide additional capacity elsewhere
That on street parking should be primarily for residents' use but with clear allocation of bays that businesses can use for their customer loading and collecting
Our research also shows that a key factor in reducing
pollution from vehicles in the city centre is reducing the amount of stop-start
driving they do. This means removing unnecessary obstructions, for instance,
reducing the number of traffic lights, and ensuring traffic lights are better
coordinated to avoid the build-up of queues.
We would also like to see the introduction of a clean air
zone.
