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People
who live and work in some of Britain's grandest mountain country have
reacted with anger to proposals to curb private cars and force visitors to
use park and ride schemes.
Alarmed
by the increase in traffic in Snowdonia
on roads
designed originally for the stage coach, planners have drawn up
proposals which include turning popular routes such as the A5 and the
Llanberis Pass into
rural clearways, with
tight parking restrictions. The
aim would be to force visitors to leave their cars in towns such as
Betws-y-Coed and Bethesda and continue their journeys by bus.
Residents
say this would ruin the local tourist trade still struggling to recover a
year after the outbreak of foot and mouth disease. They
claim the climbers walkers, and campers who flock to Snowdon the Glyders and
the Carnedds in cars would head instead for the Lake District and the Peak
District.
An
experimental scheme involving coning off laybys was ruined by direct
action when residents moved the cones. One hotelier erected a sign
proclaiming "Welcome to Snowconia". "At
present 92% of tourists who come to Snowdonia come by car," said Owen
Wainwright, who owns one of Betws's many hotels and B&Bs and welcomed
guests on only 11 days between January and June last year. "Britain is
a nation of car lovers. If visitors cannot use their cars here they will not
come to northern Snowdonia."
This
week arguments erupted in both Welsh and English as 200 people packed the
memorial hall in Betws for a consultation called by the Snowdonia green key
partnership, an alliance of the national park authority, local councils and
the Wales tourist board, to discuss its draft traffic strategy.
"Northern
Snowdonia is one of the most economically deprived areas in Europe,"
Peter Ogden, planning officer for the national park, said. "This
initiative is not about banning cars. It's about suggesting ways to benefit
the community, visitors and the environment. Some people come to the area
and spend very little money. If we can increase the amount of money that all
these people spend in the area this can only be beneficial for
everyone."
The
meeting did not agree on a show of hands, only one supported the traffic
strategy.
The
Freedom to Choose group highlights estimates of the economic impact of the
scheme. One study suggests that if there were a 2% drop in visitor numbers as
a result of the park and ride proposals up to £1.7m could be lost in
revenue, leading to the possible loss of 76 jobs.
Alison
Cousins, clerk for Capel Curig's community council, said: "We are
terrified. This document is full of
risks that we are not willing to take. "This
is a very fragile economy and any damage
to the supports of this
vulnerable structure could prove disastrous." Mrs
Cousins runs a gallery in Betws with her husband Mike, who said: "The
foot and mouth epidemic showed just how dependent we are on tourism in this
region. The place was a ghost town."
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