No-car day is mystery (From Hampshire Chronicle)

No-car day is mystery

9:34am Thursday 25th September 2008 in

• Skip social links
• Print
• Email
•  

MANY people stayed away from Bishop's Waltham High Street at the weekend rather than take advantage of the "In Town Without Your Car Day".

The parish council's tourism and communities committee, in agreement with the chamber of trade, decided to close the street on Saturday, September 20, as part of European MobilityWeek, which ran from September 16-22.

It was established in 2002 after two successful such events were organised by the European Union.

The aim of Saturday's event was for visitors to take advantage of what Bishop's Waltham's High Street had to offer and for traders to bring out their shops onto the street, all the while reducing the town's carbon emissions for the day.

However, lack of signage on main roads and ignorance of the event from some traders led to people staying away from the High Street thinking it was closed completely.

Andrew Grover, owner of the butcher's shop in High Street and chamber chairman, said: "The day was not as popular as we would have liked. If it had been better advertised, perhaps more would have come."

Mr Grover added that some of his customers thought there must have been a bomb scare, because High Street had been cordoned off.

Bob Stapleton-Burns, supervisor at Bakers wine merchant, said: "It would have worked out a lot better if someone had told me about it. I thought I was being quarantined, because they were putting up tape behind me as I came into work. It was not quite as busy as a normal Saturday, but everyone seems a lot more jolly around the town."

Debbie Walker, owner of the Coffee Shop, said she had joined a couple of other shops to put tables out in the street.

"The customers liked it, but no-one knew about the day and the town was quieter.

"They should have put banners promoting the event on the roundabouts and signs on the roads into town saying the High Street was closed to traffic, but open for business."

Terry Wilson, chairman of the tourism and communities committee, which organised the day, said: "We did put notices in the last two editions of the parish magazine.

"The day itself was for the community and not for the traders, as such. It was done to see if the community would like cars banned from the High Street. It was not done with the intention of increasing trade, although we did not expect there to be a reduction.

"As far as we are concerned, the chamber of trade are the experts in publicity and they were in charge of that and we were in charge of closing the road. This is the first time we have done this and the publicity could have been better, whether it came from us or the chamber.

"We would definitely consider doing this again next year to try to promote the town centre and the High Street. I wouldn't say that this year had been failure, though I would say there are things that could have been done better.

We have learnt a lot."

*What did you think? Add your comments below.