Kentish Gazette Canterbury & District
No more room in our stretched city
The 4,000 new homes proposed for South Canterbury would mean the city’s population will increase by around one quarter.
It represents a population the size of Birchington or the population of the entire city and its suburbs in the 18th century.
This is a massive bloated enlargement on a scale never previously envisaged. Around, say, 6,000 new residential cars on our city’s roads if parked end to end would stretch some 24km.
These cars will clog up our existing, already often gridlocked, roads as no comprehensive outer ring road system is planned.
The impact on the three existing city feeder roads in South Canterbury will be to extend the morning rush hour blockages – perhaps extending the commuting times to 7am to 9pm.
All this meaning considerable extra air pollution and a radically diminished quality of life for all residents both new and current.
Imagine the area of the medieval walled city transposed three or four times over into prime farmland to the south and you’ll visualise the scale of this. Yes, we need new homes, but Kent is a vast county and they don’t have to go in this concentration in one place.
The jobs for 4,000 new households in this region are not to be had at present and one predication is that this scheme will falter through lack of buyers as new plots go unsold.
This scheme must be radically scaled down or else the city’s traffic will literally grind to a halt over some parts of the day.
There are currently no main road cycle routes into the city from South Canterbury and there is no room to widen existing roads for the future.
As a planning exercise, to “achieve” these vehicular negatives, is not just nonsensical, it is madness for the city as a whole. A city where park and ride has been our partial salvation up to now. These new cars are city residents’ cars, which will criss-cross the city and will add greatly to current volumes of traffic permanently.
The city council welcomes your comments before the end of August at planning.policy@canterbury.gov.uk. Your views really do carry weight and if they are not expressed, the scheme will go forward unchallenged. It is an opportunity for us all to exercise our democratic rights. Mike Butler, Old Dover Road, Canterbury this has moved to Wincheap, does the money still go to the club? Brian Amos, Deansway Avenue, Canterbury