|
The
Northern Snowdonia Park is to become a clearway, our casual access
'controlled', all linear parking areas habitually used closed, parking
restricted to a few urban style car parks at high charges with time
limits. We will be asked to approach from outside the Park by bus and
abide by a timetabled experience, random deviations now made impossible.
This contradicts the ethos of National Parks. The area is being asset
stripped in the interests of the Gateway towns. We support an increased
bus service and regeneration; but these 'compulsory' methods will have a
disabling effect. Visitors will diminish, commerce suffer, the experience
will be impoverished and those living inside the Park endure a foreign
initiative that misinterprets the spirit of place.
-
The
access to the area is being commandeered. The area concerned is a
National Park which, by Act of Parliament, fosters 'air and exercise
and the study of nature', and is obliged to facilitate access to these
experiences. It is intended as an antidote to the work place of
control and stress and its beauty provides a place for spiritual
regeneration. These principles are severely compromised by this scheme.
-
The
proven preference of access by car, especially efficient in the
growing trend of weekend visits, is being forcibly limited, not to
foster any healthy interest in the qualities of the Park but
(supposedly) to create a commercial inducement elsewhere. This is a
form of asset stripping. The public will go away.
-
The
encouraged form of access, by bus, would be inconvenient (for
common‑sense reasons), restrictive, stressful, urban orientated,
time tabling our leisure into yet more unease. People come to National
Parks to escape from this.
-
People
would be measured as clients and theme seekers, not as hill walkers
etc.
-
Buses
are more polluting than the cars they abstract. (See Dept. of
Environment. Transport and the Regions. The Environmental Impact of
Road Vehicles). There is no environmental benefit. The average number
of people on present service buses inside the designated area is less
than 1.5!
-
Access
should be increased; safe, virtually invisible provision can easily be
made at roadsides, masked by tree planting. Negative policy by the
Park Authority over the years has created the definition 'parking
problem'. It is not a 'fault' of the visitors. Traffic numbers are
low, contrary to general belief, and all affected roads in the area
are trunk roads i.e. most vehicles are not tourist vehicless.
-
The
scheme pretends to foster a disapproval of car dependence, yet is
eager to build extensive car parks in the Gateways. This action
exposes an hypocrisy, an acknowledgement that the car is an essential
in any economic scheme.
-
The
clearway will limit convenient parking. The minimal provision within
the Park will foster a run about culture, environmentally disastrous,
making the experience of Snowdonia superficial and stressful. True
engagement with place and spirit of place is being down graded.
-
It
will now be harder to get to these exceptional areas reserved
specifically for our enjoyment than to any insignificant place of
indifferent quality.
-
The
local populations are having their free access to their own surrounds
stolen, to be returned to them at a special rate! This is expensive
theft. It redefines the residents as mere customers, a visitor in
their own environment. It will give a sense of vacancy and impotent
culture.
-
Gateways
are redefined in terms of overloaded tourism. We should fear for the
architectural integrity and social culture. The document asks us to
spend less time in the hills and more in the towns!
-
Visitors
are now threatened not welcomed. They will choose to go elsewhere
where such restrictions do not exist.
-
The
scheme is essentially insensitive and based on a misunderstanding of
what Snowdonia means to people. It must not serve as the basis for any
initiative. Its document neither explains its reasoning nor supplies
comprehensible data. It attempts to persuade, not inform. We support
an improved bus service and a caring regeneration initiative, but not
on these terms, terms which we believe will kill the goose that lays
the golden eggs.
|
