LET’S TURN GREY STREET GREEN
Plans hatched to ban cars
CARS could be banned from Newcastle’s iconic Grey Street, according to the city’s Labour leader.
Nick Forbes has revealed his ambition to pedestrianise the famous street as part of efforts to transform the city centre into a cleaner, greener environment.
Newcastle City Council has long-standing plans to permanently shut Blackett Street, which runs past Grey’s Monument, to traffic and has imposed a series of temporary closures there in recent years.
But now it seems that the vehicle ban could eventually stretch down Grey Street too, potentially creating a huge carfree zone running all the way up to the top of the Northumberland Street shopping area. After Coun Paula Holland called for more city centre streets to be pedestrianised in the way that Northumberland Street has been, Coun Forbes told a council meeting on Wednesday: “Grey Street is often talked about as one of the most beautiful streets in England.
“I would like to be able to pedestrianise it over time.” He added that the council is “unpicking” work done in the 1960s and 70s to redesign Newcastle in favour of drivers, saying that creating more pedestrianised zones would be good for business and people’s health.
Grey Street, home to the Theatre Royal, is famous for its stunning Georgian architecture and has been voted the best street in the UK by BBC Radio 4 listeners.
Efforts to close Blackett Street have been met with heavy opposition from bus operators, who say that shutting the busy route will cut off access to the city centre for their passengers. And while the council has insisted the plans will go ahead at some point, the authority has been limited to imposing temporary traffic bans during events such as the Great Exhibition of the North and the city’s upcoming expanded Christmas markets.
Coun Forbes said a permanent closure will have to wait until a new bus loop around the city centre is finalised - something that cannot be done until the government publishes an adjudication on what changes the council needs to make to infamous bus lane signs in John Dobson Street.
The council leader said it was “frustrating in the extreme” that the Traffic Penalty Tribunal had not published its findings on the controversial bus lane, after two years of waiting.
Pictures revealed by property consultants Avison Young last month also revealed that developers hope to see New Bridge Street pedestrianised to its junction with John Dobson Street as part of a £200m leisure, shopping and housing scheme.