Alresford, Parking and Pedestrians

 Alresford is a nice town. The cafes are fun, the little shops are diverting and the restaurants and pubs are generally pretty good. Overall, I like it, but it’s slightly spoiled by the large numbers of cars that park along the edge of the main public areas. 

Sitting about ten miles east of Winchester, it has a bypass (the A31) that carries most of the through traffic away from the town centre and a small station served only by the Watercress line (a steam train runs only to Alton - pleasant for tourists but of little practical use). As a small market town with nice pubs, cafes and shops it should be a pleasant place for pedestrians to wander. And it is, mostly, but the cars parked along Broad Street, the tree-lined avenue where the social scene is centred, make life just a little bit more difficult than it needs to be.

The really annoying thing is that there’s absolutely no need for it. A few modest changes to the top of Broad Street, as shown in the diagram below, would make all the difference. Sacrificing a few parking spaces and a little of the service road (shown in red) outside Tesco, the Chinese takeaway and the pub more room would be made for pedestrians.

How might this space be used? My suggestion would be to plant a few more trees, allow the cafes and pubs to site tables outside their premises on the newly widened pavements and generally encourage more pedestrian visitors to the town. Losing parking spaces is never popular with retailers but in this case it might actually bring more people to the town for longer visits.

It would also be nice it if were easier to cross the road; some sort of pedestrian crossing would be useful. And by “pedestrian crossing”, let’s be clear that I mean a crossing at which pedestrians have priority. A light-controlled crossing would be better than no crossing at all but if we’re trying to help pedestrians move easily around the town then a crossing that prevents them crossing the road most of the time isn’t really the answer.

How about somewhere to park bicycles? Alresford attracts large numbers of cyclists during the summer weekends and a vibrant street cafe culture would encourage more of them to stop rather than pass on through. They’d also stay longer if it were easier to secure a bike in the town. At the moment there are very few places to chain your bike and the addition of a few bike rails would make all the difference.

Finally, what about the poor old motorist, who’s lost parking and driving space just to make everyone else’s lives a bit more pleasant? Some of them will probably leave their cars at home, others will stay away. The remainder will find that there are still plenty of parking spaces and that their visit is now just a bit more pleasant. It’s a plan with no obvious flaws.