Town masterplan revealed

Guildford Borough Council has published its draft masterplan for the town centre and six weeks of public consultation on it will start in October.

A key focus of the masterplan is reconnecting the town centre with the riverside area and tackling traffic problems and an overview of some of its key features has been described in a Guilford Dragon Article. Key features include two preferred options to close the gyratory system, pedestrianising North Street and potentially making the town centre a car free zone. Above all the masterplan will be used at the heart of the 20 year local plan and is meant to create more housing, office space and shopping areas while making the overall urban environment more open and attractive.

Artists impression of how the riverside could look when looking across to where the car park in front of the George Abbott pub currently is

For those interested the full draft masterplan can be seen here (warning: large file).

Commenting on it Lib Dem Councillor Caroline Reeves, leader of the opposition on Guildford Borough Council said:

Leader of the opposition at Guildford Borough Council, Cllr Caroline Reeves (Lib Dem, Friary & St Nicolas) said: “I am very pleased that this is now moving forward, we need to have a clear direction for the town so that we can stamp the identity we want on future development.

“The importance of our heritage and the countryside around us has been acknowledged, as well as the need to enhance the river and improve life for pedestrians and cyclists.

“Improvements to our traffic management are key to the future success for the town and we need to ensure that when the final Town Centre Masterplan is agreed, we hold our nerve and create a town for future generations to enjoy, and where business can continue to flourish.

“I look forward to talking with residents during the course of the consultation, we need everyone to really engage with this important document for the future of our town.”

167 years to repair Surrey’s footways

Figures revealed recently have shown that one third of all footways in Surrey are “functionally or structurally impaired” yet, at the Conservative-run county council’s rate of progress, it will take 167 years to repair them all.

The revelation came following a question from Lib Dem county councillor Stephen Cooksey whose written question received an answer admitting that Surrey County Council plans to repair just 10.4 km (or 0.6%) of footways this financial year out of the 4,933 km of footways that it’s responsible for.

A 0.6% repair rate would of cause work out as taking 167 years to repair all the footways in the county (by which time many would obviously need repairing again).

I’m all for making sure that we spend enough on roads and cycle paths but it would be nice if pedestrians were kept in mind by Surrey county too – many footpaths in Guildford are becoming actively dangerous for those who are infirm and near impassable to those in wheelchairs or with pushchairs.

Improvements to be made to A3 at Hogs Back… by 2021

Some good news in the run up to Christmas is that the A3 around Guildford, especially the Hogs Back junction, is to be included in the government’s £15 billion road improvements scheme. The bad news is that construction isn’t planned to start until 2021.

The construction is planned to include widening the A3 to reduce congestion and improving junctions including the Hog’s Back junction with the A31.

Obviously is good news but we really need improvements now and not in six years time and all of us in Guildford Liberal Democrats will be lobbying the government to make the improvements as soon as possible. What we also need are improvements to buses and cycle routes so that less people are forced to use their cars in the first place.

Personally, I’d go so far as to say that the power to make improvements to A roads should be devolved from central government to Surrey so that we can make these decisions ourselves rather than waiting on the national Department of Transport to decide whether to make improvements or not.

This, incidentally, is why we have the ludicrous situation of the Onslow Park and Ride scheme which is under-used thanks to the council building the car park but the Department of Transport refusing to build an access to it from the A3.