The centre of Newcastle Upon Tyne and the town planners must be over the moon. Buses , Pedestrians , not a car in sight. Most people that I know avoid the centre like the plague because it is not a great experience. There is the internet or out of town if you want to buy things now so why put yourself through a nightmare when you don’t need to do so.
An old image from the centre , looking down from up there will be very different to fifty years ago.
So why does it matter? This is the site of a new major development. Public transport is severely stressed so this development will be bringing 9000 workers into the centre of the city. A large proportion will be civil servants so it makes you wonder why the government is pushing them back into town. Maybe when they can’t get parked they will have to wfh? Who knows?
So what happens if you have a disability? This is a bay that I found ,but it is already taken . So what do you do? Go home? Parking needs to be near to the destination for people with disabilities , that is sort of the point of the special bays.
I found another one , but there is only one bay and guess what? Already occupied.
Wherever you go there is a distinct feeling that cars are not welcome.
So if you look at the sign you will see that it is a route to Gateshead, so pure genius , make the street a no entry one. Every thing possible to annoy the motorist has been done. No wonder no cars are on the street.
A brand new office block in the background and clearly a lot of development going on here. Are we going to get a fantastic new urban development but no people because they can’t get to them. Don’t tell me that they can all cycle, this is the North East with bitter winters and actually where would you store your bike?
Maybe they should be building car parks rather than knocking them down. There is not much space on the roads.