Town Planning Committee - Trust Annual Report 1985
Progress - The last decade or so has been a trying time for Winchester. Those concerned to retain the heritage and atmosphere of this City have had to fight two major battles: that of the Town Plan for the integrity of its townscape and that of the Motorway for the integrity of its landscape setting. The Trust, always taking the lead in such struggles, has often had to cope with well-meaning cynicism over the years, to the effect that nothing the ordinary citizen can do will make any difference. Much remains amiss, but "say not the struggle naught availeth" - consider what was in store for us 12 years ago.
In 1973 the proposals of the 1968 Town Centre Map were still on the books - the historic core of the City was to be preserved at the expense of much of 19th Century Winchester, by concentrating motor traffic on a girdle of modern roads, which was to circle from Southgate Street, through Christchurch Road, Romsey Road, Sussex Street, City Road, North Walls, Eastgate Street, Wales Street, St. John's Street, cutting through Magdalen Hill and out to Bar End. The Easton Lane Link Road was to cut through the hitherto remarkably preserved wilderness of Winall Moor and, most terrible of all, twelve parallel lanes of tarmacadam were to destroy Winchester’s Water Meadows for ever. Most of this, that seemed inevitable, is now gone.
Of the three-quarter-ring road proposals, only part of the Sussex Street scheme (which should serve as a reminder of what we have been spared) was carried through and only a new bridge at Durngate remains in intention. The M3 Motorway from Bar End to Bassett remains undetermined, but, whatever' else may be signified, it does not now seem likely that Winchester's Water Meadows will be sacrificed to it. The Trust can Justly claim to have played a significant part in containing these threats to the City, having been a founding organisation of the Winchester M3 Joint Action Group, which forced a rethink on the M3 at the 1976 Inquiry and having played a major part in blocking the Easton Lane Link Road at Public Inquiry, which was probably the turning point for the Town Plan. It is to be hoped that the Trust can now look forward to a period in which it can direct itself towards seeking positive improvements to Winchester's atmosphere and environment.
The Motorway - Nine years after the opening of the M3 Inquiry which put Winchester abruptly and noisily into the national news, an altogether quieter replay has taken place this summer in Eastleigh. Winchester's Water Meadows have been saved by the new proposals and the City also enjoys the benefit of connecting those meadows to St. Catherine's Hill again, with the digging-up of the Bypass. The preservation of the meadows was the prime consideration of the Trust and probably of most of those who attended the 1976 Inquiry, which explains the generally more muted response to the Eastleigh Inquiry.
It would be an insensitive mistake, however, if we allowed relief at Winchester's reprieve to blind us to the ecological and landscape cost of this scheme elsewhere. The cutting through Twyford Down is a grotesque intrusion into fine landscape, which is far more of a cost than the removal of the By-pass is a benefit. The Trust can only support the scheme to the extent that it is better than any proposal for a Motorway along the valley. The Trust has argued at the Inquiry that economically and environmentally the logical recommendation for the Inspector to make is "Do-Nothing", but that since this is politically impossible, the political decision to build a Motorway should take on board the environmental consequences of that decision - the Department of Transport should spend the necessary money to make the scheme environmentally acceptable. During the Inquiry pressure built up for a tunnel scheme through Twyford Down. The Trust supported this proposal, despite its very large projected cost. The cutting is likely increasingly to be seen as an enormity and much more may yet be heard of the tunnel option.
Winchester Area Local Plan - The Trust may be beginning to sound 'trite when it repeats "Either the City adjusts to the demands of the motor car or the motor car adjusts to the needs of Winchester", and yet this remains the stark reality of the planning choice that will come before the Town Plan Inquiry this Autumn.
As long as it remained a planning goal significantly to increase economic activity in the City Centre, this choice dictated one of two strategies: either increase highway capacity and parking provision, or increase the accessibility of the Centre for people (rather than cars) by providing an efficient public transport system (the "alternative strategy"). A third option (that of restraint) was always possible, but only if it was first accepted that conservation was more important than further economic growth. This was the strategy described as "safe" by the Trust and it is now the choice that has been made by the City Planners. The restraint of traffic will carry the penalty of a limited economy, though we may hope that some economic growth will occur by evolution to a less car-dependent form of shopping.
The Trust while fairly feeling some satisfaction at its part in bringing about this much healthier Town Plan, must recognise that the Planners, who (unlike the Trust) have so many different interests and considerations to balance, have shown considerable integrity and courage in taking such a fundamental change of direction. The new Winchester Area Local Plan is a good basis for real progress to be made in Winchester.
Car Parking - The Plan provides interesting groundwork for a debate that the Trust has long sought and which it is hoped will figure large in the Plan Inquiry - the costs and benefits of central car parking provision. We knew already that parking was heavily subsidised in Winchester. We know now that the City is exceptionally well supplied with car parks and that historic cities can function, economically, perfectly satisfactorily with a much lower provision of parking space.
The City having now accepted that the environmental costs of growing central traffic can be contained by restraint on car parking (and the Plan has recently been modified to hold the parking provision at the current level rather than allow an increase for new development) the intriguing possibility arises that the central environment may actually be improved by reducing the number of car parking spaces in the centre.
Now that the major engineering "solutions" to the City's traffic problems are eschewed, the Trust need no longer preach a radical alternative and can return to its often-stated preference for an incremental approach to improvement. The aim of the radical alternative, however, with its promise of extending the environmental and economic success of pedestrianisation without choking the streets with traffic, is one we would still wish to see pursued. We hope to see a gradual experimentation with removing central car parking provision and increasing access by improved public transport.
The experimental (i.e. reversible) approach ought to reassure those who fear that reduced central parking will have severe economic consequences (just as High Street pedestrianisation was feared). We may all come to learn that what stands in the way of redeveloping the Central Car Parks area (i.e. in the way of any significant economic development in Winchester - assuming we want it) is the supposed need to retain central car parking.
Discussion Papers - It is to be hoped that, following the M3 and Local Plan Inquiries, the Trust will have more leisure to tackle other town planning matters in greater depth. The Town Planning Committee has recently produced a Discussion Paper on the role and problems of Offices in Winchester, and will shortly produce another on Tourism. It is intended that more such papers, which it is hoped will open up debates on serious matters, will be produced over the next year.