Created;< 2009, changed; 01/03/2020, 11/04/2012
Old this page; http://ww1.andrew-lohmann.me.uk/environment/pr_cn_ob/
Please find att info on the proposed third Canterbury park and Ride site.
This is my objection.
If any part is useful for any similar purpose, then please use--esp the references.
All good wishes,
Eric Parkinson
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Canterbury
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Director of Planning 13th. August 1997
Copies to City Councillors for information.
Copy to Chief Executive
Re. Planning Application CA/96/0030/CAN
Out-of-town car park ("park and ride") to promote unsustainable car-led
development in south Canterbury.
Dear Mr Jagger,
I have viewed the plans for the proposed out-of-town car park.
They reinforce my belief that City Council officers offer poor, misleading
advice to Council Members. Short range park and ride is for the
economic benefit of the few at the environmental expense of
everybody.
Council Members have perhaps been sheltered from the growing body
of environmental evidence against short range park and ride.
I am delighted that my letter may become a public document open to the
scrutiny of interested persons.
The more people that become aware of the shortfall of short range park
and ride the better.
The park and ride site has been proposed as a means of re-locating car
parks displaced from city centre redevelopment.
In essence, it is out-of town expansion by the back door. Instead of
building directly in the countryside, inner city car parks are displaced
into the countryside. This is clear from existing literature on the
Whitefriars development (CCC/ Land Securities!
1996) where it is noted:
The increase in the retail floor space means that there would normally
be a need to provide more car parking spaces than exist at present. In
line with normal policy, agreement will be reached with Land Securities
on the payment of contributions for the provision of replacement and
additional parking in a new park and ride site on the south side of the
city...to ensure that environmentally acceptable development takes
place" (para. 8.7)
So, will you please tell me how this resultant car park dumped in the
countryside will ensure that "environmentally acceptable development
takes place" ? Whose environment are we talking about?
Then of course, there is that term "additional parking".
I am pleased to recall the words (CCC 1997) of the Local Plan Public
Enquiry Inspector , commenting on the provision of car parks as a traffic
generator in the context of rejecting land for business allocation.
Business allocation ?--Sounds seriously similar to the Whitefriars--and yet
it is roundly dismissed with these profound words:
"Moreover, such an allocation would release a greenfield site outside
the urban area for a substantial development which it is clear from the
evidence presented is intended to have generous car parking provision,
thereby encouraging the use of private cars with serious implications for
future transport provision...." (Chapter 3, Page 3 para c1.8)
If that is the case, so clearly printed out in black and white, that car
parking on this proposed green field site outside the urban area would
encourage the use of private cars--with serious implications for future
transport provision, then why on earth is short range park and ride
considered at all? It is EXACTLY the same thing!
The Whitefriars Approved Development Brief (1996) has a few more
gems in store--perhaps that is the wrong term to use--for it makes these
interesting claims....
" The guiding principle of the transport strategy (the PARC Plan) for
Canterbury is to provide a balanced system which conserves the
environment and heritage of the city whilst allowing for travel necessary
for the economic well-being of Canterbury. The strategy involves
managing car travel and providing alternatives to it including cycling,
walking, public transport and a comprehensive park and ride system.
Traffic management measures are an important part of the strategy.
...planning and land use policies are aimed at reducing the need for
private car travel" (para10.1)
This last statement is not true. Planning and land use policies via park
and ride are aimed at increasing the need for private car travel. CCC
statistics from the Park Plan Review demonstrate that short range park
and ride encourages car use. In terms of land use, it wastes space with
out-of-town car parks. In my communications with Council Officers, it
has been established that Canterbury short-range park and ride takes
travellers away from more sustainable, lower energy modes of travel
(CCC Parc Plan Review 1995) so that up to 8% have abandoned buses
and trains.
The Parkhurst (1996) research recognises this pattern of development
in studies of nine English cities cursed with park and ride....
".....In fact, it is not unreasonable to suppose that an aggressive policy
of short-range bus-based park and ride implementation could reduce
revenue to local public transport operations, reduce their energy
efficiency and in some cases lead to service cuts...." (p.27)
Short range park and ride also promotes new journeys--by car of course.
It promotes the use of cars for the longest leg of journeys and only
supplies public transport for the shortest distance into the city centre.
It will not, repeat NOT, assist in any traffic reduction measures beyond
the urban mass. So far it has only served to increase traffic beyond
Canterbury.
It will certainly not assist the Council in addressing the challenge of the
Road Traffic Reduction Act.
One of the claimed benefits of park and ride in Canterbury is that there
has been a reduction in traffic flowing through the urban cordon. In fact
this assertion is based on selectively used figures. The Parc Plan
Review uses the 1991 peak of 165,000 vehicles/day (also a peak of
economic activity) and a dip in 1993 of 150,574 vehicles/day to
illustrate traffic reduction. The trend however (1996 figs not yet
available) has been of stability at 155,000 vehicles per day. There
should of course be no satisfaction in that.
Vehicle flows through the urban cordon are crude indicators of vehicle
activity and related air and noise pollution. Vehicles that once parked in
the city centre now park in out-of-town car parks. A number of short
range journeys have been eliminated from the city margins to the
centre. However, if the traffic flows through the urban cordon have
stabilised at 155,000 vehicles per day, then other traffic has replaced
the short range journeys. The replacement traffic will probably have
travelled further than the two km short leg it has displaced. This is
damaging long range through traffic which has taken up the space
vacated by park and ride users.
So in summary, park and ride does the following things:
* causes travellers to abandon train and bus for the out-of-town
convenience of greenfield site car parks;
* enables the growth of through traffic;
* initiates new journeys to Canterbury (by car) because of the so called
"easy" parking.
What has been established so far is that some people who will make
money out of city centre redevelopment are happy to concrete over the
countryside for unsustainable park and ride measures. It appears that
the City Council will go along with this since Land Securities will fund
part of cost of the out-of-town car park.
But there are other players in this arena.
For some time, higher education establishments have been hoping to
add additional capacity via development in out-of-town locations. That
they should wish to do this is surprising since in the future, intensively
used inner city locations will prove invaluable since they are near
sustainable long-haul travel transfer points such as rail and bus stations.
In 20 years time, park and ride will have been long gone. But that is their
problem.
Four out-of-town sites were considered, but lo and behold, along comes
an Officer of the City Council with an offer not to be refused. I refer to
the submission by Grimleys (Wilson 1996a) in which the following
comment is made...
"The Identified Procedural Difficulty and Solution....Since the
submission of the College's initial representations the Planning Officers
have encouraged the College to select a preferred site...within the last
six months particularly, the planning officers have led the College to
select the land to the south of the New Dover Road as the least
sensitive option for a second campus...." (para. 3.19)
So why this rush to assist institutions of higher education? Perhaps the
answer lies in this next (Wilson 1996b) statement....
"A final issue which was highlighted by JM (Jean Morgan) was the
possibility of a college contribution to infrastructure requirements in
connection with an educational campus to the south of the New Dover
Road. Possible improvements to the A2 junction, and the release of
college parking space for use as part of the park and ride (at weekend
and vacations when there is limited demand from the college) were
both highlighted as possible contributions." (Section 10. Para. 8)
So the secret is out. Institutions of higher education are being asked to
fund the unsustainable park and ride aspirations of the City Council
Planners.
Moreover, the institutional car parking spaces are to be used as top up
for the park and ride.
But wait a moment. Education is very much a business these days. All
institutions have business plans and some of them may seem keen to
play part-time road infrastructure developers. This sounds like a
business allocation to me.
Let me recall again the words of the Local Plan Public Enquiry
Inspector, commenting on the provision of car parking as a traffic
generator in the context of rejecting land for business allocation.
Business allocation--yes indeed, it sounds seriously similar to institutions
of higher education. And yes as we know, it is roundly dismissed with
these words. Here they are again:
"Moreover, such an allocation would release a greenfield site outside
the urban area for a substantial development which it is clear from the
evidence presented is intended to have generous car parking provision,
thereby encouraging the use of private cars with serious implications for
future transport provision...." (Chapter 3, Page 3 para c1.8)
I would want to see a full environmental impact assessment on the
effects of park and ride both on traffic flows within and beyond the city
centre before ANY land is converted to out-of town car parks to please
Land Securities or anybody else.
. There are alternatives to short range park and ride.
There is the direct use of public transport with access by walking and
cycling, and there is the development of long range park and ride .
In these models, the fundamental part of the journey is taken by energy
efficient train or bus-- NOT by car. Such schemes might, for example,
require limited improvement of outlying rail station car parks and
co-ordination of a more frequent train service at an attractive price.
Neither of these aspects are beyond the planning capability of city
council Officers.
The development of light rail around the route of the ring road as has
been explained in previous communications, is something to be taken
into account for the future.
In the Canterbury District Local Plan Inspector's Interim Report (1997),
the inspector notes "It is surprising that a traffic impact analysis has not
been made available for the park and ride site..." (para cl.14, page 4),
and indeed it is surprising that so much public money can be thrown
away on what will be short term car parks-- with limited awareness of
how the park and ride model is interacting with ALL aspects of
transport, land use and environmental impact.
In the absence of useful data from the Parc Plan Review, a short survey
was conducted on behalf of Canterbury Friends of the Earth at the
Wincheap Park and Ride site on Monday the 11th of August between
07.15 and 09.00 hrs. There were 93 respondents. This is the bulk of
users in that time span--there were three subject refusals and about 10
subjects missed due to simultaneous arrivals and unavailability of
sufficient data collection personnel.
The users were asked to supply their road of origin and postcode. For
triangulation purposes, from this data, the places of trip origin were
zoned in line with the 7 zones identified in the Parc Plan Review and
were of similar distribution.
For comparison, the sets of data on zoning of trip origins is shown
below.
Park Plan Review data FoE data from 11 Aug.
27 Aug 1995 1997
Zone 1 Canterbury % 5%
Zone 2 A291/ A28 from NE 3% 4%
Zone 3 A290 from north 3% 8%
Zone 4 A2 from west 11% 13%
Zone 5 A28 from south 40% 31%
Zone 6 A2 from south east 33% 34%
Zone 7 A257 from east 1% 5%
With regard to favouring sustainable options--such as rail and bus, rather than promoting unsustainable car-led short range park and ride, a
dispersed long-range rail based platform was used as a modelling tool to
see what alternatives could have been used at Wincheap.
Preliminary analysis of the data, suggests that 52 of the
respondents--56%--actually had trip origins that began within four Km. of
rail stations and would have had direct trains to Canterbury. Many of
the respondents could have walked or cycled to rail stations.
The data further suggests that a further 16% of users had trip origins
within 4 km of stations --but with the disadvantage of a change of trains
at Ashford.
72% of users could have been served with existing infrastructure A light
rail system would compound the low energy effictiveness of such
access.
The words of the Parkhurst (1996) research come to mind here...
"To date, bus park and ride schemes have been less able than rail
schemes to assist in the development of the overall public transport
network" (p.27)
Why was Wincheap Park and Ride built? Was it simply a cleverly
engineered stepping stone to the car-led, car dependent out-of-town
warehouse shops that have come to symbolise the Sturry and
Wincheap sites?
I shall not labour the point regarding the loss of agricultural land as a
long term resource. The Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution ,
Report 19 ( RCEP 1996) made the point that " there should be a strong
presumption against converting greenfield land to other uses" (para.
10.17) and that "....the adequacy of soil resources is a global issue.
Serious forms of soil degradation are apparent in many other countries.
The task of managing the UK's soils wisely has to be viewed against
the probability that increased food production will be necessary in
temperate countries to meet the rising world demand from a rapidly
growing population and in the face of serious shortages of water at a
global level" (para. 11.3)
The city is relatively compact, has the remains of a medieval core
which the planners did not get their hands on, and is characterised by
fertile lands--those lands to assist in feeding demand from a rapidly
growing population--- at the city margins.
In my view, the fertile land--the hopfields and orchards--are as important
to the "sense of place" of the city as the medieval core.
The inspector suggests in the Interim Report that the City Council would
be " failing in its responsibilities to residents, and as custodian of the
historic environment of the city, if it did not look to see what can be done now to help reduce traffic and congestion in the city centre...."
(c1.10)
I submit that the "historic environment of the city" includes the total city
setting.
Destruction of the green city margins with out-of-town car parks AND
the associated development that accompanies them--as at Wincheap
and Sturry--is an act of short sighted planning vandalism of Holden Plan
proportions.
There are other ways to solve the problem, given sufficient imagination,
ecourage and public awareness of local agenda 21 obligations.
.Enough mistakes from the destructivness of the Holden Plan to
Buchanan car-led road building have been made at the hands of City
Council planners. Now it is time to employ some vision for the future
rather than replicate and entrench the failure of bus-based short-range
park and ride.
I trust that City Council Members will continue to give this issue serious
consideration.
The short term economic benefits of park and ride will principally
engineer the profits of the few. This will be done at the long term
environmental expense of everybody. The small, distinctive City of
Canterbury will become a nondescript sprawl indistinguishable from other
spoilt urban environments. Please, please do not let this happen.
Yours sincerely,
Eric Parkinson.
References
:
CCC (1997) Canterbury District Local Plan. Inspector's Interim Report,
Canterbury: CCC.
CCC (1994) Technical Paper 4, Canterbury District Local Plan, District
Transport Strategies, CCC.
CCC (1995) Parc Plan Review
CCC/ Land Securities PLC (1996) The Whitefriars Canterbury Approved
Development Brief.
Parkhurst, G., (1996) The economic and modal -split impacts of short
range park and ride schemes: Evidence from nine UK cities, Oxford:
University of Oxford Transport Studies Unit.
RCEP (1996) Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, Nineteenth
Report, London: HMSO
Wilson D J M (1996a) Canterbury District Local Plan Enquiry, Objector
ref. 292, Proof of Evidence. April 1996, DJMW/MP/DN/029600344
Wilson D J M (1996b) Canterbury District Local Plan Enquiry, Objector
ref. 292,
Appendices, Section 11, April 1996, PR 57292/2118
Please Note:
In the event of any aspect of development in South Canterbury being called in by the Secretary of State, it is my wish that this response is
formally included as evidence and I assert my right to supply additional
information as becomes necessary.