We need a proper joined-up transport strategy

Written October 2023

BY happy coincidence, this week’s Journal carries a story on how our city centre could look, car-free.

I saw it online, just after a meeting with Wiltshire Council’s cabinet member for highways, Caroline Thomas, and one of their senior officers on Tuesday.

Your city council had invited them, plus neighbouring parish leaders, to discuss our traffic chaos and the lack of realistic plans to sort it.

We are all being asked to comment on proposed new housing sites in Wiltshire’s Local Plan Review, focused around Harnham, Old Sarum and Laverstock.

These will hugely increase traffic, in particular on the Harnham Gyratory and Castle Road – with knock-on effects on the entire ring road and those brave souls who venture onto it.

But there is no comprehensive transport strategy upon which to base our responses. It’s running late.

To my mind, this makes a nonsense of ‘consultation’. Although I didn’t put it that bluntly to Cllr Thomas, she clearly understood.

But understanding won’t change anything, because the system isn’t about listening to people first and foremost, is it?

It’s about meeting targets imposed by ministers at the behest of developers who pour money into party coffers and are insufficiently challenged by cash-strapped, understaffed councils, cowed by the threat of a builders’ free-for-all if they don’t maintain a five-year land supply.

And it’s totally failing to meet our biggest need, for genuinely affordable rented housing that doesn’t get flogged off.

Readers may know that I help to run a Facebook group, SOS – Save Our Salisbury, launched during the People Friendly Streets/cycle lanes fiasco.

I’m not against making the city centre pleasanter for pedestrians and cyclists, and if this means partial pedestrianisation, so be it. It looks lovely in the AI-generated images in the Journal.

But only if – and it’s a big if – local people have been listened to about how it would work for them. Only if there is adequate, attractive, affordable provision for visitors to park. And only after a parking study – long promised by Wiltshire – shows how this can be achieved.

With our great new attractions, Bradbeers and Primark, Salisbury should tempt shoppers from across the income spectrum.

But I am concerned about the combined effects of roadworks, jams and the current limited parking options.

Some readers will ask: ‘Why can’t they use the park and ride?’ And if a way could be found to ease the queues that the buses get stuck in, I might agree.

Back to square one.