100 firms object to South Street plans

Gordon Berry, The Courier, 17 November 2004

A body representing over 100 St Andrews businesses has lodged objections to plans that they say could lead to potentially damaging alterations to South Street.

The letter from the St Andrews Merchants Association to Fife Council and Scottish Enterprise Fife claims the submitted plans have “effectively ignored” views strongly expressed during a “somewhat poor” consultation process.

A storm has already blown up over planned removal of trees as part of the scheme, and the association has raised two other areas of concern - the “wholly unnecessary decimation” of parking provision and the effect on the South Street/Bell Street roundabout area.

Association secretary Bob Inch said that while the plans may reflect the vision of Fife Council's transportation service, it is not believed that the public would support them. Nor is there any support from the community council, or, it is believed, from most local councillors.

On parking, Mr Inch said the effect would be to eradicate two out of three existing spaces in one area, and one in three in another.

“The loss of town centre panting spaces is a serious issue for traders and shoppers and should not be permitted without exceptionally good reason. A study of the plans shows that, if the wider-angled parking proposed for the south side of the street was permitted on both sides, the loss of spaces could be minimised. The west end of South Street is a good example of how such angled parking works well.”

“The council officials behind these plans have made no secret of their plans to eliminate (failing which, reduce to an absolute minimum) cars from the centre of town, Ignoring the fact that St Andrews is not of the same size or layout as Dunfermline and Kirkcaldy and traffic management models applied to larger towns are not applicable here,” he said.

He said council officials were aware their proposals would lead to increased congestion and that they “bizarrely” welcomed this outcome based on an “erroneous and whimsical” notion that town residents, shoppers and tourists would leave their cars at home and walk, cycle or use inadequate public transport.

“Hopefully our elected members will not suffer from the same delusional notion. Many smaller shops in St Andrews centre depend on on-street parking for short term shoppers. Businesses will suffer and some may be forced out of town if a reasonable on-street parking allocation is not provided”

He said the next phase of council proposals focused on Market Street and, although full plans are not yet published, it is understood they seek to remove on-street parking from Market Street altogether.

“The planning committee has the opportunity, at the South Street proposal stage, to make clear that further loss of on-street parking in St Andrews is not acceptable”

On South Street/Bell Street, he said all regular shoppers are aware of traffic congestion caused by the pedestrian crossing being sited so close to the end of Bell Street.

“Representations to the council to move the crossing north of its current location to reduce the potential to jam traffic fell on deaf ears. The plans incredibly provide for the crossing to be moved even closer to the roundabout, making things substantially worse.”

Mr Inch also referred to provision for the pavement in front of the Simply Scotland shop to be built out five metres into the road to provide cycle racks.

The effect of this proposal, he said, would be to limit traffic exiting the west end of South Street to one vehicle at a time, thereby adding to what is already a terribly congested location.

The council, he said, has the opportunity to ease congestion at this location by abandoning this pointless proposal and marking out, at far less cost, two separate lanes - one for traffic proceeding straight ahead and one for traffic turning left into Bell Street.

“On an additional note, it is extremely disappointing that with £20 million of Scottish Enterprise Funds to spend on improvements to St Andrews that the transportation department is seeking to waste so much of this money on proposed changes that will have an adverse rather than a beneficial effect.

“This is a rare opportunity to make a substantial difference to the town. The council should not permit these funds to be squandered,” said Mr Inch.