Sometime around 1995 the Snowdonia National Park Authority began to become concerned at the amount of roadside parking on Bank Holidays at three or four places in the Park. Determinedly ignoring the obvious course of creating more car parking space, they obtained a study which suggested that stopping roadside car parking and closing the existing car parks would stop the cars ever coming to the area. Any visitors would have to leave their cars outside the park and journey in by bus. This might just possibly work for commuters in a town, but is likely to be ineffective in deterring people from 200 miles away who are making an annual visit. Of course it also overlooks the authorities' total failure to get people to comply with present car parking bans.

It should always be borne in mind that the Park's own figures (for a different piece of Objective 1 funding) show that hill walkers alone contribute £80,000,000 per year to the economy of Northern Snowdonia. This equates to 2,500 jobs and should not lightly be put at risk. It would be all too easy to implement a half baked scheme which frightened off visitors and produced widespread unemployment. Very few people would thank you for that. The old medical adage "Do No Harm" applies here as it does in many areas of life, but despite the economic importance of visitors there was no Market Research into what they wanted, nor, indeed, were the farmers, visitors, local walkers and climbers, or local service providers approached for their views.

Nevertheless, throwing caution and sense to the winds, the Park Authority then brought other authorities into a consortium and they commissioned consultants to make a further study - the Northern Snowdonia Study. Modest consultation (which again omitted the visitors, farmers, local walkers and climbers, and local service providers) produced a fairly uniform response that there was no traffic problem but there was an occasional car parking problem in a very few places. The consultants dutifully produced a traffic management scheme based on extra park and ride buses, with visitors compelled to ride the buses from Gateway car parks because the roads were to be made clearways and the central car parks were to be closed or made as expensive to use as paying the parking fines.

This study has been examined in depth by concerned groups such as 'Freedom to Choose - Snowdonia' who have shown that the traffic data is internally inconsistent, is much higher than reality, and does not correspond to figures provided by the National Assembly for Wales. In actuality, the traffic is very low and falling. There is no traffic problem and the proposed traffic management scheme is needless, useless and unworkable.

A further consultant's report on finance and economics has been similarly shown to be misguided - for example, to balance the books it assumes passenger figures which require larger car parks than the Gateway ones which are actually to be provided. The Park Authority themselves in a series of public meetings have accepted that both these studies are of no value and have blithely written off the £70,000 they have cost.

We are now in a position where no-one has good data to show that there is a problem but the Park are still determined to have park and ride buses which can only be financed by compulsory use of peripheral car parks which virtually no-one wants. Public consultation meeting after public consultation meeting has rejected the proposals despite attempts to stage manage the meetings reminiscent of Old Tyme Music Hall. Opposition has been almost total, supporters of the scheme at the public meetings have never been estimated at more than 10% of those present.

There is no basis for the policy, there is no funding for the policy, and inquiry of the National Assembly for Wales shows that there is little likelihood of funding either under Objective 1 or by other means unless the policy is so heavily modified as to become something else altogether. It is time to think of something different.

There is, of course, always the option to do nothing which is often the best policy even if not favoured by young hotheads. But we can be cleverer than that.

We can build lots of small landscaped car parks as is done in the Lake District and in Australian and American National Parks. We can make the car parks free so as to encourage visitors. We need to attract more visitors so as to get over the ravages of foot and mouth and so as to support farmers if the subsidies are abolished. It would not be prudent to rely on continuing farm subsidies and other income must be found.

We can build permissive footpaths alongside roads but over the wall with a four strand wire fence and gravel surface as is done in other National Parks which have narrow roads. We can commission new permissive footpaths so that the farmhouse B&Bs and the Youth Hostels are linked into a network for walking holidays. We can link up the bridleways so that pony trekking can flourish. We can commission bike paths to capitalise on mountain biking. We can encourage canoeing and white water rafting. We can bring more crags into use to encourage climbers to come here. We can look everywhere to see how we can encourage people to enjoy but not destroy the wilderness.

We can, in other words, begin to look upon the National Park as a resource to be used to increase enjoyment and employment, rather than as a set of problems. This, surely, must be the way forward.

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