Traffic, parking main topics at regeneration of Town drop-ins

Three areas are the focus of the project, which is being undertaken by the Planning Department and consultants Tibbalds Planning and Urban Design.

Ideas have been encouraged for what could happen in the Lower Pollet, South Esplanade and Mignot Plateau and Mansell Street/Le Bordage at the drop-ins, the last of which took place on Saturday at the George Crossan Gallery in the Market’s Inner Street.

Principle conservation and design officer Alun White said the next step after garnering views would be to analyse them: ‘From there we will put out a draft development framework for wider consultation,’ he said.

That is likely to take place in the spring.

So far, the bit issue has been parking: ‘It’s cropped up a lot,’ he said. ‘A lot of people say they want more parking while a lot say they want less parking and the space turned into a public space.’

Paid parking was one of the ideas that parish resident Martin Search said was important to help keep Town alive.

He had a lot of suggestions, several of which he accepted were controversial but which in his opinion were necessary – creating a multi-storey paid car park at Frossard House was one of them.

‘Frossard House’s car park has the infrastructure in place for a multi-storey,’ he said. ‘People could be charged for it, and if you have paid parking on the piers the multi-storey could be subsidised.

‘There is nowhere else in the world where you don’t have to pay for parking in a town area. Yes, you’d lose about 25% of the cars, but you’d create more space.’

He also thought that the seafront should be ‘half-pedestrianised’ and a one-way system brought in so people coming from the north of the island parked at the north end of town, and those from the south at the other end.

‘You have to look to the next 100 years, not the next 10,’ he said, adding that he would love to see trams brought back to carry people up and down the east coast.

Zoe Lihou was a bit concerned that ideas were being looked at in isolation: ‘It does feel a bit piecemeal to me,’ she said. ‘The harbour is one project and the traffic review is another so we’re looking at things in isolation. It’s quite tricky to see how it fits together.’

And she said not all the targeted areas of Town were looking too bad: ‘The Pollet has upped its game in recent years and it’s already looking quite classy.’

In her opinion, traffic flow was the big issue that needed to be addressed: ‘People are very quick to say “stick a car park here and there”, but you’ve got to be able to get to it.’

Work was needed in the Mansell Street and Bordage areas to clean up some of the buildings there, said Mrs Lihou, and she wondered if offenders carrying community service orders imposed by the court could be used.

Mrs Lihou is likely to be keeping a particularly close eye on the project – next month she takes up the role of St Peter Port junior constable.