26 January 2017
The Bath and North East Somerset Council have decided to go ahead with the Park and Ride in the East of Bath.
After a big protest outside the guild hall, the B&NES Council Cabinet decided to go ahead with their controversial plans.
The Green Party reaffirms its strong opposition to the creation of the Park and Ride with both Parliamentary Candidates attending the protest outside the Guildhall.
Site B was voted for as the preferred site with only 1 vote against. To build the Park and Ride on Site B, an area that will require building over existing farmland and risk the livelihood of a local farmer of New Leaf, will now go into planning.
The council's own report has highlighted that this will only keep traffic at capacity, and not release the current congestion issues in the city centre and current air pollution problems.
Site B will cost £17.5 million and will have a net deficit of over £100 thousand per year.
Sally Calverley, the Green Party North East Somerset Prospective Parliamentary Candidate has said "This decision will go down in history as the day the council failed its residents. They have voted for a White Elephant, an unsustainable solution that fails to deliver value for money, fails to tackle congestion and fails to address air pollution in the city.
By the time the Park and Ride is built it will already be obsolete - the council have missed the opportunity to take into account the changes to driving technologies, from electric and driverless cars.
This failure by a council unable to plan for the future is a real kick in the teeth for B&NES residents who deserve better. This shows the need to have a strong green voice on the council, a party that listens and has an evidence based approach to fixing problems for residents. This is the wrong answer for the right question, we should be tackling congestion and air pollution issues, but this Park and Ride is not able to deliver that."
The Green Bath Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for Bath Eleanor Field has said "This does not tackle the important issues facing Bath and its residents. Air pollution is an issue that needs tackling, with a common sense approach. This solution is not fixing these problems. It destroys our local countryside to no benefit to the environment or residents.
We need the council to listen to residents, not force through an expensive, needless Park and Ride that will not have help the councils constituents."
Darren Hall, the Green candidate for Metro Mayor has called the plans "half-baked" and "clueless".
"At long last, BaNES Council has finally listened to residents and realised Bath has a congestion and air-pollution problem. Now they are determined to force through this half-baked response that seems, frankly, clueless."
"Trying to solve the congestion problem by bulldozing green spaces to build more car-parks is a strategy doomed to failure. Residents don't want it, motorists don't want it, campaign groups don't want it. Air pollution is killing 30,000 people per year in this country. What we need is fast, clean, efficient public transport. We need a 21st Century solution, not one from the 1970s."
Bath and NE Somerset Green Party RSS Feed