Are Canterbury leading the way in city life?

Status
Not open for further replies.
Amity Island said:
The city will be divided into 6 zones from next August. Driving between zones will be banned and fines issued via anpr.

www.kentonline.co.uk

Council's radical plan to ban drivers crossing 'neighbourhoods'

A huge area blighted by traffic could be split into five 'neighbourhoods' - with residents prohibited from driving directly between each.
www.kentonline.co.uk www.kentonline.co.uk
Click to expand...
Not quite that quickly, reading the article. The idea is going to be adopted into the local strategic plan next year, but won’t actually be fully implemented until 2040. They don’t even know what route the new bypass will be taking yet.
Oxford is consulting on a similar strategy at the moment, but with no new bypasses. The current bypass is clogged with traffic most of the time. I already avoid it if I can, and use the Park and Ride when I need to go in to the centre or the hospital.
 
Last edited:
Robin said:
The idea is going to be adopted into the local strategic plan next year, but won’t actually be fully implemented until 2040. They don’t even know what route the new bypass will be taking yet.
Click to expand...
It all reads as quite sensible to me. It's a couple of years since I visited Canterbury (my mother no longer lives in the south east so I guess it'll be a while before I go again) but the very centre is mostly pedestrianised, there are limited opportunities for improving traffic flow (lots of old buildings and so narrow streets) and most of the traffic already goes on the larger roads around the city walls. And most visitors use the Park and Rides outside.

Reducing the traffic even more seems quite likely to be an improvement though I wonder whether it'll actually be necessary to do anything to cause that.
 
Bruce Stephens said:
It all reads as quite sensible to me. It's a couple of years since I visited Canterbury (my mother no longer lives in the south east so I guess it'll be a while before I go again) but the very centre is mostly pedestrianised, there are limited opportunities for improving traffic flow (lots of old buildings and so narrow streets) and most of the traffic already goes on the larger roads around the city walls. And most visitors use the Park and Rides outside.

Reducing the traffic even more seems quite likely to be an improvement though I wonder whether it'll actually be necessary to do anything to cause that.
Click to expand...
I think one of the problems that has surfaced in Oxford is that people who have to travel from one bit of the centre to another, to a hospital by car because they are elderly, or have a broken leg, for example, might have to do a ten mile detour via the bypass. I think there’s a suggestion to give residents a 'pass' for so many journeys through the centre per year.
 
Amity Island said:
Rather than fining, banning and prohibiting cars, why not legalise electric scooters? these would prove popular around towns and cities and would help reduce cars.
Click to expand...
….until it rains. When I worked in central Oxford, the traffic was always much, much worse on rainy mornings, when people abandoned their bikes for the car, or gave their kids a lift to school.
 
We have a trial of e-scooters where I live - has proved very popular with students and youngsters

The ‘clean air zone’ is about to come into effect later this month too, which will involve charges for diesel, and older more polluting vehicles.

There are grumblings about the shape of the zone, because various bits of road which can’t really be classed as ‘the centre’ have been included. And which are key routes to actually avoid the centre.

Fortunately our car (a small petrol engine) is just modern enough not to be charged.
 
They're going to "improve Rough Common Road"? How are they planning to do that? That's a very steep hill (I should know, I used to walk up it from Harbledown or Upper Harbledown depending which bus stop I got off five days a week...) and to widen it at the bottom would mean losing some woodland. And further up they couldn't widen it as there are houses on both sides....
 
Amity Island said:
www.telegraph.co.uk

Police called in over abusive reaction to council's 'climate lockdown' traffic scheme

Plans to introduce permits for drivers to travel between six areas of Oxford have been likened to the Berlin Wall
www.telegraph.co.uk www.telegraph.co.uk
Click to expand...
It’s causing a lot of debate. I chose to live in a village, surrounded by fields, so I could escape for country walks. The downside of that is that I use the village shop, doctors, etc, and if I want a choice, I realise it will be a logistical problem to access other services. If I wanted to have a choice, to swap doctors, take my custom to a different shop, etc, easily, I’d have lived in a city. Now the people who live in the city, who have invested in their future there for their own reasons, are being told that their choice is to be taken away, and they will have to adopt a village way of living. It’s bound to ruffle feathers.
Its not really a new concept, when I grew up in the 50s and 60s, fewer people owned cars, they could only get buses into the centres, or walk or cycle if they wanted to go across bits of the outskirts.
The problem is, we’ve all got used to our cars, and our right (or prvilege, rather) to go where and when we want, and it’s going to cause people a lot of problems if they’re suddenly told they’ve got to reorganise their whole lives.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top