Winchester Area Plan - Trust Annual Report 1984
Following the Trust's comments on the 1983 Draft Area Plan (which were summarised in the last Annual Report) Trust representatives were invited to a meet¬ing with the planners before Christmas to discuss alternative strategies for dealing with Winchester's traffic. Members may recall that the Trust proposed that there were two alternatives to the destructive and ultimately ineffective road improvement strategy favoured by the planners: (i) to restrain the traffic to an acceptable level (by restricting car parking and making it more expensive) which would also restrain economic activity; (ii) to replace the inefficient and damaging motorcar-based transportation system with one that would ensure and improve the access and mobility of people, with beneficial environmental and economic results (extended pedestrianisation and park-and-ride).
The Trust representatives were disappointed to learn that no proper study of the radical alternative was being contemplated, and pressed for another meeting to try and sort out some formula for progress. Since Christmas, however, the Trust has heard nothing of the Planning Department's thinking except what it has garnered from such sources as Council minutes. the hints are that there will be a move towards a restraint option, with such schemes as the North Walls widening and the Peninsular Barracks link likely to be dropped. It is to be hoped that eschewing the highway improvement option is not just a wait-and-see policy but something more positive. The Trust has repeatedly observed that there is plenty of time to sort out Winchester's problems since they are not yet of a great order, but any procrastination in facing up to those problems may be the thief of that margin. There must be no suggestion that road schemes are merely being kept in abeyance while we see if by doing nothing the problems we fear actually materialise. Doing nothing, with the threat of old methods return¬ing, merely prolongs blight.