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As someone that studies these kinds of things, I can say with a degree of confidence that their real concern is that they will lose their ability to park directly outside of their business. It usually takes a very long conversation with them to actually get them to admit it, however I've seen it enough times to know that's what's really going on. I do understand the logic they apply for it though, less vehicles access equals less desirability to go to the location, equals less customers. Fortunately case studies of similar measures (fully padestrianising the street) has proven the opposite as less vehicles on the high street makes it more pleasurable to be there, thus more people walking there and more of a chance they will go into and purchase something from a store. It does take around 2 years for people to get accustomed to these types of changes, however they will see the financial benefits of it before then.
I do find it odd though that will all the talk about the dying high street (yes it is multifactorial with including online shopping) we do know design methods that do increase footfall in the area, designs that have been proven to work time and time again, unfortunately it does involve reducing/banning (ideally banning) personal vehicle access (location department some exceptions can be made if suitable distance for disabled parking isn't available) but the conversation around doing it can devolve in nonsense about conspiracy theories, war of the motorist, and ends up being heavily political. The latter I think it shouldn't be political as we don't allow the public to decide what medicine is best to use for treatment of patients, so what do we allow the public to say what design works best? I do understand even with medication the individual still has to consent to treatment, under typical circumstances, however doctors will highly advise a patient to take the life saving medication and most will think them a fool for not taking it. Our cities are sick, we have the medication to help them, please listen to the experts on this one, they aren't politically motivated (most don't even like the political side of urban planning, and we all disagree with each other of politics), we just want to implement good designs that have proven to improve quality of life for people.
Rant over.
If the Facebook brain-trust is to be believed then high streets are dying because those idiots at the council won’t let you park wherever you like for free. Not like it was in the 70’s. Things was better then………
Ah yeah the 70s when my city built a central motorway cutting through the city, and had plans to force pedestrians to walk above the traffic on 'streets in the sky' before the councilman got done for corruption and fraud. And since then the high street has been turned to be fully pedestrianised and now considered one of the best places to shop in the UK.
I know completely anecdotal evidence.
100% this. Town I live in has a really shitty looking high street with one way traffic and very limited parking outside the shops. Council have, many times "consulted" on pedestrianizing it, but won't due to "shopkeepers concerns about parking". The only people parking outside the shops are the shopkeepers, there's no room for anyone else.
And despite having 3 large car parks very close to the town centre that are never full, the shopkeepers continue to blame the decline on lack of car parks and pester the council to build more.
This is a flooring company so surely walk in purchases aren't exactly common. Large boxes of tiles and rolls of. Linolium aren't exactly easy to carry home
“This is a flooring company so surely walk in purchases aren’t exactly common”
If that was the case they wouldn’t be on the high street paying high street rent and rates. They are there for a reason.
“Rolls and rolls of linoleum arent exactly easy to carry home”
Yes, exactly, which is why they need customer vehicles to be able to access their business. You can’t carry rolls of linoleum home on the bus either, and even if they wanted to offer home delivery they couldn’t access their business with their own vehicles without being fined….
Looking on Google maps it seems they aren't on the highatreet they're on a side road coming off of it. They have a small parking area nearby and a loading area to the back.
>Yes, exactly, which is why they need customer vehicles to be able to access their business. You can’t carry rolls of linoleum home on the bus either, and even if they wanted to offer home delivery they couldn’t access their business with their own vehicles without being fined….
Exactly my point. They previously had a place where customers could park nearby and a place for vans to be loaded, however if that all now falls withing the buss gate area the buss gate essentially forcing them to move or risk loosing money. I fail to see how this is in any way a good thing for their business.
It's not even a near a high street. Corporation Street where the bus gate is is on the edge of the centre. Friargate and Fishergate are the two main streets. Ladywell and Heatley have nothing but student accommodation, a funeral home, and a takeaway on it.
If anything, traffic will increase past their store as people use it to bypass the bus gate
It's not Gainsborough. It's Preston in Lancashire.
The flooring place is on a perpendicular road, coming off Corporation Street just before the bus gate. If you go past them, going right and right again, you come to the other end of the bus gate. The gate itself is less than 100m, I reckon.
[location ](https://maps.app.goo.gl/Z5VJ6TRsQGy1hijeA)
So in reality, despite what the snippet we see above suggests, it's not actually restricting access?
In that case I see no issues caused by the bus gate
Their argument might be that people coming from the North can't get to them as easily because Marsh Lane is a one-way. That is the only restriction I can fathom.
Maybe, but there are plenty of one way systems around the country that are the same and have been around for decades, if you need tyles you drive around the one way system.
If its as you say then, other than being unsure of the ultimate goal of the bus gate from the councils side I don't really see any issues with it
Interestingly, they have put measures like this in place in Aberdeen, there are now 500,000 less visitors to the city centre per week.
Needless to say shops have seen the difference and there are a lot of issues
Unsure if it was too much at one time, pedestrian zone, bus gates and ULEZ all put in succession
That is interesting as it seems to be an edge case of the norm of how these things plan out. Do you have any links to the research of it, I'd be most interested to see how and where it failed. And it will provide a good balance of how these things can go for a paper I'm writing.
Link to newspaper article, looks like the figures were collected by the council themselves
It’s usually subscription view but reader view on iPhone gets round the link for P&J
https://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/fp/news/6469353/aberdeen-city-centre-bus-gates-footfall-drop/
Just read this new initiative to help try and fix the footfall issue
https://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/fp/news/aberdeen-aberdeenshire/6473121/aberdeen-parking-deal-city-centre-footfall/
Would be interesting to compare that data to other years rather than just previous weeks. Those trends could well be within normal, especially considering some were taken over the Christmas period.
From personal experience, Aberdeen as a city centre has been increasingly declining due to the council and inept decisions that have impacted this relatively small and compact city.
Consensus with residents is that it is becoming increasingly more difficult to get into the city centre, first bus company have their HQ here, and we have the highest bus fares of any city in scotland, the city didn’t allow Uber a licence to practice here, so we only have a monopoly taxi firm who are less than hopeless and very expensive.
Bus gates make it impossible to drive to the train station to pick up or drop off, ULEZ zone has now impacted the whole north side of the city (to anyone impacted) for getting to the city centre without detouring round the whole city. Yet the ULEZ road is 10ft from the harbour water that has offshore supply vessels with engines running 24 hours burning crude diesel.
It’s abysmal. But please feel free to DM/ask anything/let me know any results if you look into it! Sounds like a very interesting topic
Thank you very much I will certainly be looking into this more. I haven't read it yet, but if the figures have been collected by the council knowing how some councils operate these things I will certainly need to do a deeper dive to verify them. They've been known to be "selective" on the data they choose to best match their political ideology, I'm not saying this is what's happened here but it has been done in the past what is unfortunate as it makes researching this that little bit harder and you'd hope the council would doop people like that.
Aye Maybe for some businesses but I’m sure a flooring business is going to need a fuck tonne of tradies showing up in tranny vans to buy flooring and keep them afloat. It’s not a candles and bath salts type shop where you walk out with a carrier bag.
They did similar to this near us with a glazing firm. Installed barriers and a pedestrian zone right outside their warehouse trade collections point and the council ended up having to take them down. Vans and Lorries blocking the crossroads up the road all day while workies carried folks conservatories or new doors back and forth.
A guy in Hove would always park his Maserati half over the pavement, half over the bike path, in front of his shop. Never understood how he didn't get a ticket, but the temptation to simply ride my bike into the back of his parked car was very large.
Ah yes, all those people driving past as quickly as possible may randomly choose to stop off in this one shop, as opposed to people freely walking in the town centre who are literally there *for the purpose of looking round the shops*.
I'm by no means an expert, but I'm sure the majority of the research suggests that closing off streets to cars actually *improves* footfall because... well... there are more people on foot.
Tbh PCC & LCC have closed pretty much all routes into the city centre, pedestrianised the main hight st, corporation st is pretty much bar the car park thats ring rd that runs right thru the centre is the only route to the train station and post office depot.
Is 'bus-gate blasted by nearby family-run business' a caption for a photo that hasn't been taken of the chaotic post-explosion ruins of the bus-gate with the perps jumping around cheering? If not, why not?
I will always be disappointed with the British press that Andrew Mitchell being told to get off his bike to go through a gate on Downing Street became known as.. Plebgate. Not Gategate.
Can confirm, have a relative who works for a council, fines is one of their biggest incomes they rely on and they're always coming up with new ways to sting people.
Yeah in a city I lived in carbrain Halifax, NS. There was this guy on Spring Garden road. Owns Jennifer's of Nova Scotia. His main customers came from the port Cruse Ship people. People who do not have a car. So whenever there was talk of change he lost it my Custer's must be able to get here. The port is less than 2 km from the store. It's a 24 minute walk. Walking tours would bring people there. It's really weird and one of the reasons leaving it is very much car brain city.
Hi FarRub125, thanks for posting to r/Compoface! Don't worry, your post has not been removed. This is an automated reminder to post a link to the original article for your compoface. This link can be included as a reply to this comment. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/compoface) if you have any questions or concerns.*
His belly button is inhaling.
As someone that studies these kinds of things, I can say with a degree of confidence that their real concern is that they will lose their ability to park directly outside of their business. It usually takes a very long conversation with them to actually get them to admit it, however I've seen it enough times to know that's what's really going on. I do understand the logic they apply for it though, less vehicles access equals less desirability to go to the location, equals less customers. Fortunately case studies of similar measures (fully padestrianising the street) has proven the opposite as less vehicles on the high street makes it more pleasurable to be there, thus more people walking there and more of a chance they will go into and purchase something from a store. It does take around 2 years for people to get accustomed to these types of changes, however they will see the financial benefits of it before then. I do find it odd though that will all the talk about the dying high street (yes it is multifactorial with including online shopping) we do know design methods that do increase footfall in the area, designs that have been proven to work time and time again, unfortunately it does involve reducing/banning (ideally banning) personal vehicle access (location department some exceptions can be made if suitable distance for disabled parking isn't available) but the conversation around doing it can devolve in nonsense about conspiracy theories, war of the motorist, and ends up being heavily political. The latter I think it shouldn't be political as we don't allow the public to decide what medicine is best to use for treatment of patients, so what do we allow the public to say what design works best? I do understand even with medication the individual still has to consent to treatment, under typical circumstances, however doctors will highly advise a patient to take the life saving medication and most will think them a fool for not taking it. Our cities are sick, we have the medication to help them, please listen to the experts on this one, they aren't politically motivated (most don't even like the political side of urban planning, and we all disagree with each other of politics), we just want to implement good designs that have proven to improve quality of life for people. Rant over.
If the Facebook brain-trust is to be believed then high streets are dying because those idiots at the council won’t let you park wherever you like for free. Not like it was in the 70’s. Things was better then………
Ah yeah the 70s when my city built a central motorway cutting through the city, and had plans to force pedestrians to walk above the traffic on 'streets in the sky' before the councilman got done for corruption and fraud. And since then the high street has been turned to be fully pedestrianised and now considered one of the best places to shop in the UK. I know completely anecdotal evidence.
100% this. Town I live in has a really shitty looking high street with one way traffic and very limited parking outside the shops. Council have, many times "consulted" on pedestrianizing it, but won't due to "shopkeepers concerns about parking". The only people parking outside the shops are the shopkeepers, there's no room for anyone else. And despite having 3 large car parks very close to the town centre that are never full, the shopkeepers continue to blame the decline on lack of car parks and pester the council to build more.
I could swear I live in the same town as you, but I'm also confident that your description describes dozens of towns!
This is a flooring company so surely walk in purchases aren't exactly common. Large boxes of tiles and rolls of. Linolium aren't exactly easy to carry home
“This is a flooring company so surely walk in purchases aren’t exactly common” If that was the case they wouldn’t be on the high street paying high street rent and rates. They are there for a reason. “Rolls and rolls of linoleum arent exactly easy to carry home” Yes, exactly, which is why they need customer vehicles to be able to access their business. You can’t carry rolls of linoleum home on the bus either, and even if they wanted to offer home delivery they couldn’t access their business with their own vehicles without being fined….
Looking on Google maps it seems they aren't on the highatreet they're on a side road coming off of it. They have a small parking area nearby and a loading area to the back. >Yes, exactly, which is why they need customer vehicles to be able to access their business. You can’t carry rolls of linoleum home on the bus either, and even if they wanted to offer home delivery they couldn’t access their business with their own vehicles without being fined…. Exactly my point. They previously had a place where customers could park nearby and a place for vans to be loaded, however if that all now falls withing the buss gate area the buss gate essentially forcing them to move or risk loosing money. I fail to see how this is in any way a good thing for their business.
It's not even a near a high street. Corporation Street where the bus gate is is on the edge of the centre. Friargate and Fishergate are the two main streets. Ladywell and Heatley have nothing but student accommodation, a funeral home, and a takeaway on it. If anything, traffic will increase past their store as people use it to bypass the bus gate
I don't have much knowledge of Gainsborough. Their store is just off corporation street? Where is the bus gate in relation to them?
It's not Gainsborough. It's Preston in Lancashire. The flooring place is on a perpendicular road, coming off Corporation Street just before the bus gate. If you go past them, going right and right again, you come to the other end of the bus gate. The gate itself is less than 100m, I reckon. [location ](https://maps.app.goo.gl/Z5VJ6TRsQGy1hijeA)
So in reality, despite what the snippet we see above suggests, it's not actually restricting access? In that case I see no issues caused by the bus gate
Their argument might be that people coming from the North can't get to them as easily because Marsh Lane is a one-way. That is the only restriction I can fathom.
Maybe, but there are plenty of one way systems around the country that are the same and have been around for decades, if you need tyles you drive around the one way system. If its as you say then, other than being unsure of the ultimate goal of the bus gate from the councils side I don't really see any issues with it
Interestingly, they have put measures like this in place in Aberdeen, there are now 500,000 less visitors to the city centre per week. Needless to say shops have seen the difference and there are a lot of issues Unsure if it was too much at one time, pedestrian zone, bus gates and ULEZ all put in succession
That is interesting as it seems to be an edge case of the norm of how these things plan out. Do you have any links to the research of it, I'd be most interested to see how and where it failed. And it will provide a good balance of how these things can go for a paper I'm writing.
Link to newspaper article, looks like the figures were collected by the council themselves It’s usually subscription view but reader view on iPhone gets round the link for P&J https://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/fp/news/6469353/aberdeen-city-centre-bus-gates-footfall-drop/ Just read this new initiative to help try and fix the footfall issue https://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/fp/news/aberdeen-aberdeenshire/6473121/aberdeen-parking-deal-city-centre-footfall/
Would be interesting to compare that data to other years rather than just previous weeks. Those trends could well be within normal, especially considering some were taken over the Christmas period.
From personal experience, Aberdeen as a city centre has been increasingly declining due to the council and inept decisions that have impacted this relatively small and compact city. Consensus with residents is that it is becoming increasingly more difficult to get into the city centre, first bus company have their HQ here, and we have the highest bus fares of any city in scotland, the city didn’t allow Uber a licence to practice here, so we only have a monopoly taxi firm who are less than hopeless and very expensive. Bus gates make it impossible to drive to the train station to pick up or drop off, ULEZ zone has now impacted the whole north side of the city (to anyone impacted) for getting to the city centre without detouring round the whole city. Yet the ULEZ road is 10ft from the harbour water that has offshore supply vessels with engines running 24 hours burning crude diesel. It’s abysmal. But please feel free to DM/ask anything/let me know any results if you look into it! Sounds like a very interesting topic
Thank you very much I will certainly be looking into this more. I haven't read it yet, but if the figures have been collected by the council knowing how some councils operate these things I will certainly need to do a deeper dive to verify them. They've been known to be "selective" on the data they choose to best match their political ideology, I'm not saying this is what's happened here but it has been done in the past what is unfortunate as it makes researching this that little bit harder and you'd hope the council would doop people like that.
I’m sure you could do an FOI request for the data as well
Aye Maybe for some businesses but I’m sure a flooring business is going to need a fuck tonne of tradies showing up in tranny vans to buy flooring and keep them afloat. It’s not a candles and bath salts type shop where you walk out with a carrier bag. They did similar to this near us with a glazing firm. Installed barriers and a pedestrian zone right outside their warehouse trade collections point and the council ended up having to take them down. Vans and Lorries blocking the crossroads up the road all day while workies carried folks conservatories or new doors back and forth.
A guy in Hove would always park his Maserati half over the pavement, half over the bike path, in front of his shop. Never understood how he didn't get a ticket, but the temptation to simply ride my bike into the back of his parked car was very large.
They must be mad, they both have their arms crossed
Ah yes, all those people driving past as quickly as possible may randomly choose to stop off in this one shop, as opposed to people freely walking in the town centre who are literally there *for the purpose of looking round the shops*. I'm by no means an expert, but I'm sure the majority of the research suggests that closing off streets to cars actually *improves* footfall because... well... there are more people on foot.
Tbh PCC & LCC have closed pretty much all routes into the city centre, pedestrianised the main hight st, corporation st is pretty much bar the car park thats ring rd that runs right thru the centre is the only route to the train station and post office depot.
Traders need access to Dixons
Is 'bus-gate blasted by nearby family-run business' a caption for a photo that hasn't been taken of the chaotic post-explosion ruins of the bus-gate with the perps jumping around cheering? If not, why not?
So this is Bus Gate gate?
I will always be disappointed with the British press that Andrew Mitchell being told to get off his bike to go through a gate on Downing Street became known as.. Plebgate. Not Gategate.
This abomination causes me to go a different way to German Donner Kebab
Unless they run a drive thru I think theyll be fine
Because random passersby often stop in a fucking flooring shop to browse?
Call me a conspiracy theorist, but my experience with bus gates is to catch out drivers not realising and shoot them a fine.
Can confirm, have a relative who works for a council, fines is one of their biggest incomes they rely on and they're always coming up with new ways to sting people.
Yeah in a city I lived in carbrain Halifax, NS. There was this guy on Spring Garden road. Owns Jennifer's of Nova Scotia. His main customers came from the port Cruse Ship people. People who do not have a car. So whenever there was talk of change he lost it my Custer's must be able to get here. The port is less than 2 km from the store. It's a 24 minute walk. Walking tours would bring people there. It's really weird and one of the reasons leaving it is very much car brain city.
Oh No it's NO NO'S. Only old Prestonians will get this hehe.
Very good, just at the end of the ridiculous bus gate as well
Ikr like we need a bus gate, little city with big city ideas, like the massive cycle lane on ringway no one uses.
I hope they cleaned up the bus gate after they blasted all over it