WHEN Herefordshire Council first commissioned Cardiff-based planning consultants DTZ to find the best way to integrate the existing city centre with its planned redevelopment of the site now administered by ESG, it was told that the Inner Ring Road was a physical barrier that needed to be eliminated.
Six years on and Newmarket Street and Blueschool Street remain the big stumbling blocks and could yet prove to be the Achilles Heel of the entire scheme.
An early plan created a seamless join between the two zones by building over the unloved dual carriageway, with east-west traffic movement being handled by a new Link Road. This was to be a brand new £6-million urban highway, carved through the redundant railway sidings and industrial wastelands to the west of Hereford Station, marked by major roundabouts at the bottom of Aylestone Hill and at the north end of Edgar Street.
But a council traffic census soon put paid to this idea when it was revealed that the city’s traffic growth couldn’t be handled by the new Link Road alone. So Newmarket Street and Blueschool Street were reprieved, but were to be ‘downgraded’ for use only by emergency services, buses and taxis. How such restricted access could be policed wasn’t discussed.
Meanwhile, land acquisition and funding problems have forced ESG’s strategists to radically amend the path, length, width and time scale of the planned urban highway’s route. Scheduled to take three years to build, it is now to be an 800m-long road, reduced to just one lane in each direction (except at junctions), with no dedicated bus lane or protected cycle lanes, interrupted by no less than four sets of traffic lights and pedestrian-controlled crossings. Bizarrely, ESG’s highways experts have saved one last surprise for the frustrated drivers travelling from east to west: at the junction with the A49 (Edgar Street), vehicles will be banned from turning right in the direction of Leominster and Ludlow!
The IOC campaign also understands that the Royal Mail Sorting Office’s car park will only be given up if alternative parking for its 200+ Post Office vans can be provided by ESG. A pretty tall order.
The pedestrian bridge between Centenary Square and the Central Library in Birmingham is a perfect example how to get pedestrians over a ring road without inconveniencing either drivers or pedestrians. The footway goes up a gentle slope to rise above the road, whilst the road goes down a gentle slope to dip below the bridge. The bridge is so wide and bordered by flower beds so pedestrians can easily not even notice they are on a bridge. It is a simple concept.