| Topic: | Car free day throughout the Chiswick High Rd area? | |
| Posted by: | Karen Liebreich | |
| Date/Time: | 12/07/18 10:15:00 |
| I organised the closure of TG Terrace for the opening of the Timeline murals. It was quite a learning curve... It would be fairly easy to close TG Terrace and Devonshire Road for Carfree Day, if someone could be bothered to organise it (and don’t look at me). Mike Moran of Top Hat already does a lovely job for the Devonshire Street party, and we already have the TMP in place for TG Terrace (Traffic Management Plan – I now have a certificate in street closure jargon!). Chiswick High Road would be more challenging, but could be done for portions of it. Car traffic is not like water – it doesn’t necessarily spurt out elsewhere, people adapt. As long as there still is good prior information and public transport provision for those who can’t walk or cycle, it could be a fun experience.* It is not at all a council suggestion (Paul C blaming overstaffed bureaucracies – LBH transport department is skeletal and certainly far too busy to be thinking of doing this); nor is it a pro-cycling conspiracy. This would have to come from local people in association with local traders. Car-free days are held all over the world, and increasingly in London too. Close by, King St in Hammersmith, the North End Road (a major bus route) close regularly - even Regent Street is closing every Sunday this month. Far from being a catastrophe for local traders, the closure attracts shoppers in their thousands. In Palermo, for instance (and who’d have thought it, with Italians supposedly wedded to their cars) they close the main shopping drag every Sunday early morning by dropping big concrete barriers down with a forklift truck; the road is absolutely heaving with pedestrians all day (even cyclists can’t get through!) and they re-open late in the evening. There were huge protests from traders at first, but now many of the other streets in the city are also following suit. Paris closes the Champs-Elysees the first Sunday of the month, and also the Marais and other areas on a regular basis. New York closes Broadway and many other streets. (I can already hear the cries that Chiswick is different, what works everywhere else in the world can’t possibly work here ...) Given that our High Road area is already facing the same crisis as all others (I know, we’re different...) with weekly closures of shops (goodbye Quantus this week) and an increasing proportion of boarded-up or charity premises, perhaps we need some new ways of thinking. A single day of road closure may be a tiny experiment to see how it goes... If there is a widespread interest, and traders and people want to take this idea forward, I’m willing to help. [*I could write you out all the predictable responses on the forum from the usual suspects beforehand to save time perhaps... ] |