Traffic in Winchester - TrustNews August 1989
A Personal View C J Gillham
This article will attempt to demonstrate that Winchester's future environmental well-being and economic prosperity depends on a radical change in the Council's transport policy and actions.
The Nature of Traffic in Central Winchester
The least known fact about this traffic (established by County Council research) is that very little of it is through traffic, for the following reasons:
- The city is very well by-passed by major roads, which are now better sign-posted than before.
- Most trips from one part of Winchester to another do not need to use the centre. The relatively small number of east/west trips currently forced on to the central system by the College Street closure will have adequate alternative routeing when the M3 side roads are completed.
The great majority of the traffic in central Winchester, therefore, arises from journeys to or from the centre itself.
Traffic is a Problem
The Trust has contended for some time that traffic in central Winchester is already well beyond the acceptable level. This is also, apparently, the view of the City Council who, more than 10 years ago, set environmentally acceptable limits for traffic in many of Winchester's streets; these are now well exceeded. Traffic is now seriously affecting residents of the streets it invades, filling their houses with exhaust fumes and noise, and devaluing the properties themselves. Motor traffic is also seriously detracting from the quality of shopping streets (Jewry Street, for example, is a dirty, unpleasant and sometimes frightening place for pedestrians) and trade in these streets must suffer.
It is also worth saying that for motorists themselves the level of traffic is a problem. Forty years ago the mobility offered to those fortunate enough to possess a motor car was a remarkable boon. And those without cars at least had the mobility of an extensive public transport system. Today, when nearly half the population has cars, mobility for those with cars is reduced by traffic levels, and for those without cars, by the competitive, destructive effect cars have had on public transport. With traffic growth there is a point beyond which residents, shoppers, commuters and tourists are all worse off. The Trust holds that, for Winchester, that point has already been passed.
Change of Land Use in and around Winchester is not the Answer
If traffic is a problem and most central traffic is associated with central land use, such as shops or offices, in theory it could be argued that those major traffic attractors should be sited elsewhere. To some extent the market is already pushing us in this direction. Out-of-town superstores are springing up everywhere and the tendency is for them to get bigger, and provide a wider range of shopping services which could, in theory, cater for most shopping needs. Many offices, too, are moving out of towns, to science parks, country houses or redundant rural buildings. .Indeed, this tendency is encouraged by Government relaxation of regulations on agricultural use of land and buildings.
However, this blurring of town and country is definitely not a solution for Winchester, whose magnificent environs are one of the most attractive features of the City; indeed such encroachment on the countryside outside Winchester would go directly counter to the Local Area Plan and the County Structure Plan which the City Council is now resolutely defending. There must also be a presumption in favour of continuity of historical function. Winchester's center has always been a place for shops and administrative and professional offices and it does not seem right arbitrarily to change this, especially since these functions are not intrinsically damaging, except sometimes in scale! My conclusion is that substantial changes in land use in and around Winchester of this kind seem neither necessary nor desirable and should certainly not be engineered as a means of tackling the traffic problem.
Increasing Road Space is no Answer
At the time of the three-quarter ring road debate, there was a view that the historic core of the city could be preserved and the expanding demands of traffic met by a comprehensive road-building scheme. It probably would be possible to devise a scheme which served a shopping center adequately for any likely traffic predictions. What is clear now, however, is that the three-quarter ring road would not have had sufficient capacity to perform this function; and yet the ring road was an immensely damaging scheme, which nowadays people would find hard to believe was ever contemplated.
The Trust has always argued that road building in a historic city never solves a traffic problem, but merely defers it. The City Council came to accept this view by the time of the Town Plan of 1985 and have recently reiterated it.
Car-Parking - the Essence of the Problem
We do not want to deter people from coming into Winchester, but we do want to deter motor traffic. And here we are forced to make a distinction which many (and in particular the City Council) have ever brought themselves to make; what attracts people to make trips into Winchester are the activities (shopping, offices, entertainment) and its heritage and townscape - on the other hand, what attracts motor traffic are car-parks.
Policy and Actions of the City Council
Written into the Town Plan Inquiry documents is a commitment of the City Council "to reduce traffic" in Winchester. So let us consider what actions the Council have taken to honour their commitments. The Brooks Development increases the parking provision over what was on the site previously. Further car-parks have been built at St. Peter's School, Park Avenue and at Durngate. Massive extra parking is being forced on the Peninsula Barracks development by the Council. In a recent residents' consultation document, the City is undertaking to look for more parking provision for shoppers.
However, a recent leaflet, "A City for People", produced by the City Council, contains a strong gleam of hope and enlightenment. It states that the Local Authority is examining the possibility of a Park and Ride Scheme for their employees. This very positive idea heralds the solution advocated by the Trust later in this article. We also welcome its encouragement to bus companies to introduce smaller buses because the present use of large buses, often half empty and exhaling diesel smoke fumes, and constantly traversing the city, is neither good for the environment nor for the older buildings. It is a pity that in the same leaflet they mention the introduction of a completely contradictory measure of reducing the maximum stay of cars in central car-parks to "increase turnover" - ie: to increase traffic! No mention of any measure to reduce car-parking provision is made.
As long as car ownership, the local economy and the population of Hampshire continue to grow, so traffic in Winchester will grow, until one of two things stops it:
- Car parking provision becomes saturated.
- Road space becomes saturated.
Since neither of these conditions has yet come about, it is an inescapable conclusion that traffic in Winchester is set to increase significantly, even if the City Council were now to honour its commitment (given at the Town Plan Inquiry 1985) not to increase central car-parking provision. If car-parking places which are currently used by commuters were released for short-term use, the commuter traffic would be replaced manyfold by shopping traffic.
Solving the Problem
Thus, while the City Council is committed in words to the reduction of traffic in Winchester, it is committed by its actions to a massive increase in traffic. If it is to keep its word, the Council has no choice but to bite the bullet very soon. It should immediately abandon its requirement of large-scale parking provision at Peninsula Barracks (the consequences for traffic in St. Cross Road and Southgate Street of this requirement alone will be very severe). It is essential in my view that the opening of the Brooks Development be preceded or accompanied by compensating reduction of car-parking in the centre. Certainly the supposedly temporary sites at St. Peter's School and Park Avenue should be closed, but this must be accompanied by the shutting down of some of the most central car-parking, such as Cossack Lane and/or Friarsgate.
However inescapable the logic of this, the Council will undoubtedly be fearful of the consequences of the action they must take. Many motorists will deplore the loss of central parking and many tradesmen will regard the reduction of car trips as threatening their livelihoods. This latter fear, however, is to confuse the means with the end for, in reality, traffic congestion impedes access to the centre for all and consequently limits the growth of trade.
There is, however, an alternative to traffic congestion that allows improved accessibility to the town centre and growth in trade. A Park and Ride scheme, linked to a comprehensive public transport system that frequently and reliably inter-connects peripheral parking, rail services and residential areas with principal city centres of activity, would be the efficient means of serving Winchester's economy. The provision of such a system will almost certainly require some degree of public subsidy, at least in the short-term, but the Council would not need to raise extra money, since it merely has to redeploy some of the massive subsidy required by the present car-parking policy. The closure of car-parks, such as Cossack Lane would, in fact, release very valuable assets which would be needed for equivalent parking provision on the City's periphery. The difference would almost certainly pay for a comprehensive public transport system.
There are many examples of successful Park and Ride systems in the UK and elsewhere. Oxford, for example, has increased its office and shopping floorspace very considerably in the last twenty years and yet its central traffic levels are no higher than they were twenty years ago. Winchester, being much smaller than Oxford, will need to evolve its own system but it is certainly not too small – Cornish towns, such as Mevagissey, little larger than villages, run quite successful Park and Ride services.
Winchester has to do something. It can no longer buy time with the destructive measures that once were contemplated. The right choice (in my view, the only choice) of Park and Ride is no more risky politically and economically, than was the pedestrianisation of the High Street. The latter was the subject of considerable resistance by traders. Which of them today would want to retrace that step?