Pedestrians-only plan for busy city street suggested
MOVE WOULD BE PART OF CHANGES AHEAD OF EXHIBITION
BUS passengers are being encouraged to air their views on the potential closure of a major city centre road.
Newcastle city council has mooted plans to pedestrianise Blackett Street before the Great Exhibition of the North begins in the summer.
The experimental scheme would ban all buses and taxis from using the road in order to make the area safer for shoppers and improve air pollution.
But campaigners have raised fears that the proposed changes could have a negative impact on bus passengers.
Dawn Badminton-Capps, director of Bus Users England, says some passengers have been concerned about the potential change to their bus route.
She said: “Eight million journeys start or stop on Blackett Street each year.
“That’s a large number of people and a quarter of those people are bus pass holders.
“We’re extremely concerned about what that will mean for those passengers if we don’t allow buses through that street.”
Campaigner Dawn also claims the elderly and people with disabilities may have to walk further to reach their destination.
She said: “Passengers across Newcastle should have a say on what’s going on.
“Where are people going to be getting on and off buses and how far will they have to walk?
“Is it going to affect more vulnerable passengers?
“We’re concerned that moving the buses out to already busy roads will increase congestion, cause potentially more accidents and increase air pollution.”
Newcastle City Council’s proposals for Blackett Street are still being finalised, but the local authority has assured bus users that they won’t be inconvenienced.
Members of Bus Users UK, along with a representative from Stagecoach North East and charity Disability North, travelled on buses around Newcastle on Friday and spoke to passengers about the plans.
Alison Blackburn is chair of Newcastle Disability Forum and a blind bus passenger.
She said: “If the services on Blackett Street were to be got rid of, I would find this extremely difficult.”
“If those services are changed to somewhere else I have actually got to learn completely new routes around the city,” she adds.
Views are set to be passed on to the council, which is due to launch a public consultation on the changes in the next few weeks.
Other plans to transform Newcastle city centre include a new event space around Northumberland Street and a huge cleaning operation.
An initial £3m would be spent on Northumberland Street, which attracts 13 million visitors a year and supports hundreds of jobs.
It has been suggested that the first changes will be in place for the Great Exhibition of the North, and then for the city’s hosting of rugby’s European cup finals in 2019.
A Newcastle City Council spokesperson said: “Newcastle City Council has ambitious plans for the city centre. Subject to statutory consultation, a key part of this would be removing buses from Blackett. A public consultation will follow later in the year where we will set out the detail and allow people to judge for themselves our plans for improving the city.”