Issue - meetings

Lancaster Square Routes

 

 

Meeting: 29/05/2012 - Cabinet (Item 12)

12 Lancaster Square Routes pdf icon PDF 139 KB

(Cabinet Member with Special Responsibility Councillor Hanson)

 

Report of Head of Regeneration and Planning

Additional documents:

Minutes:

(Cabinet Member with Special Responsibility Councillor Hanson)

 

Cabinet received a report from the Head of Regeneration and Planning to propose changes required to better manage access to and traffic within the city centre pedestrian zone, to suggest how to progress these and to update more generally on associated progress with the Square Routes initiative.

 

The options, options analysis, including risk assessment and officer preferred option, were set out in the report as follows:

 

 

Option 1: Make no changes to the traffic management system.

Option 2: Formally request the County Council to consider the traffic management proposals as per Appendix 3 and undertake to implement the associated changes to City Council management practice on an experimental basis.

Option 3: Formally request the County Council to consider the traffic management proposals as per Appendix 3 and undertake to implement the associated changes to City Council management practice on a permanent basis.

Advantages

None.

This option involving an Experimental Traffic Order utilises a regulatory mechanism that builds in requirements to monitor and review and if thought necessary then revise or revoke any changes. This flexibility is needed where changes to traffic management are brought in within a complex environment and not all consequential changes can perhaps be known. 

 

Advantages otherwise are as set out in full in section 2 of the Report.

This option would involve a revision of the TRO on a permanent basis without any experiment. In principle it might enable changes to be brought forward in one tranche

Disadvantages

No attempt is made to try to address the deteriorating conditions for pedestrians in the zone that are impairing peoples’ experiences as pedestrians, impacting on the trading environment and giving rise to increasing safety concerns. Further, it precludes the ability to take the opportunities arising out of  the Square Routes initiative and improvements to make more of Market Square as a meeting place, for a better outdoor market and as an entertainment venue and with all the benefits that these might bring.

The raft of changes put forward in this proposal is quite complicated but inevitably so. Several elements will have some early workload implications for council officers e.g in revising the permit system and informing the public of the changes. Once in effect however the changes should make for better management of the pedestrian zone and less requirement on various city and county council officers and police officers and PCSOs and  to deal with traffic management and related problems pedestrian problems in a reactive manner.

This option is not favoured by the county council’s highway officers. It would not be a best practice approach. It would be much less flexible in practice than an experimental order and is without the ability to monitor and consult in operation then review and revise and, potentially terminate any changes. Conversely an experimental order provides for this. This option would likely prove much more challenging and take very much longer, involving the highway authority evidencing the need for and considering changes that  ...  view the full minutes text for item 12