Lest we forget … Here’s Labour leader Helen Holland’s “explicit endorsement in the media” for Gloucestershire County Cricket Club’s car parking arrangements over the education of the city’s children.
Bristol Evening Post: We’re bowled over by world class ambition
Bristol Evening Post (England) – Monday, March 31, 2008
The leader of Bristol City Council has given her support to Gloucestershire County Cricket Club’s “World Class West” campaign which is aimed at bringing more international and first class cricket to the region.
Helen Holland met with GCCC team captain Jon Lewis, chief executive Tom Richardson and other team and Academy players outside the Council House on College Green to mark the occasion.
The club launched World Class West last month at the House of Commons. During the next few weeks a series of local events will be taking place to gather support for the campaign.
Ms Holland said: “Our city’s aspiration to win a rightful place among the UK’s leading cities is reflected not just in the developments we see at Harbourside and Cabot Circus but also in the ambition of all of our amateur and professional sports’ clubs.
“I welcome GCCC’s World Class West campaign, giving cricket fans the opportunity to watch more world class games while also helping to raise Bristol’s profile.”
The GCCC ground at Nevil Road, Bishopston, has around 3,600 permanent seats, with the capacity to increase that to 15,000 with temporary seating for larger matches.
World Class West would like to see this increased to 10,000 permanent seats. And it also wants the ability to bring in another 10,000 temporary seats – giving a full capacity of 20,000.
This would allow Nevil Road to compete for matches alongside grounds such as Trent Bridge in Nottingham, the Rose Bowl in Hampshire and Sophia Gardens in Cardiff.
The club has been at Nevil Road for more than 100 years. It was established in 1871 and counts cricket legend WG Grace among its founding fathers.
They seem to have overlooked the fact that the local highway infrastructure cannot possibly cope with an influx of 20,000 spectators, even if it were possible to accommodate the car parking.
Each car parking space requires 5m x 2.5m plus an allowance for access roads (as much again?), so about 25 square metres in total for each car, or 25 hectares per 10,000 cars (what might be expected for 20,000 spectators?).
By comparison the entire existing cricket ground, including buildings, pitch, parking and circulating roads is just 4 hectares, so the equivalent of another 5 cricket grounds is required to accommodate the car parking, or say one extra ground if a 5 storey car park were built.
All that assumes that the overwhelming majority of spectators come by car, which is what you would expect if their choices were not restrained by lack or cost of parking and highway infrastructure. Anyway it looks like an intractable problem unless a radical approach is taken to traffic restraint.
As I mentioned before an option might be to provide car parking remote from the ground, somewhere with adequate highway infrastructure and public transport links, and run shuttle buses between that and the ground.
If say Parkway station (currently 1,100 spaces) were chosen as one of the remote car parks (assuming a weekend event) with shuttle bus connection then the option of arriving at Parkway by train would look relatively attractive since the bus shuttle transfer would be required in any case.
Remote car parking would also encourage travel to the ground by foot, bike or local bus since a shuttle bus journey would be required if arriving by car, so the capacity required for a remote car park might be a lot less than an on-site car park.
OUT FOR A DUCK ! FULL COUNCIL BUDGET MEETING – LABOUR ADMINISTRATION RESIGNS
THANKS HELEN
BYE !
DUCK SOUP!!
MAYBE WE CAN HAVE OUR CITY BACK NOW PLEASE.
Blobby
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