The Scaresbrooks' Cycling and Gardening and... blog » Congleton

2nd April deadline for comments on draft strategies for Cheshire East towns

Alec'n'Val — Sat, 31 Mar 2012 09:41:07 +0000

Phew, we’ve just both finished commenting on the draft strategy for Congleton from now to 2030. There’s a questionnaire online, but we ignored the yes/no answers (too black and white, and did not always address the items we felt were important) and just added comments. The draft is full of buzz words, such as sustainability and transition town, but has very little in it to support such concepts. The Congleton Sustainability Group has submitted a response as an organisation, and hopefully lots of individuals have also responded too.

If you haven’t yet commented, pick up a print copy of the draft from the library, or read it online and make your comments there – as the deadline is 2nd April, this is the best way to ensure your response arrives on time.

It’s really important that as many people comment as possible – if you don’t, you cannot complain that the council doesn’t listen to you!

Shoppers aren’t all motorists

Alec'n'Val — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 22:59:58 +0000

There’s a lot of fuss in Congleton about car park charges being introduced that will ‘kill the town centre’, but a study of some local shopping areas in Bristol showed that traders overestimated how many shoppers arrived by car. They thought 41%, but in fact it was only 22% - the rest walked, cycled or used the bus. And although the traders wanted better car parking facilities because they thought it would attract customers, in fact many shoppers wanted better pedestrian facilities and traffic calming.

Additionally, the non-car borne shoppers visited several shops on each trip, and went shopping more frequently, so it could be argued that they are more frequently exposed to impulse buys.

There’s more about how this and how cyclists make better shoppers on Copenhagenize.com – the Copenhagen Bike Culture Blog.

We do all our shopping by bike – it’s surprising what you can fit into panniers.

Congleton Sunday morning trains?

Alec'n'Val — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 15:24:26 +0000

As Congleton train travellers know, we are badly served on Sundays, with only three trains (Northern stoppers) each way and these not until the afternoon. So the only public transport serving Congleton on Sunday mornings is the bus (the 38 Crewe-Congleton-Macclesfield operated by D&G Buses) . Otherwise you need feet, bicycle, motorbike, car, or a taxi.

Frustratingly, Virgin and Cross Country trains whizz up and down the line all day, but even when these services did stop here regularly, it was never on Sundays, for some mysterious reason.

Northern refuse to improve the situation – stating their problem being reliable staffing, as Sunday working is voluntary. So I’ve just asked Cross Country if they could consider stopping in Congleton on Sundays. They replied that the request would be passed on to the timetable planners. Unfortunately, it’s the government and not the train operators that dictate timetables, and ‘timetable planners’ seem to be anonymous office workers, so it’s difficult to pinpoint who to pressurise. East Cheshire Line Rail Users’ Group (ECLRUG) is good at doing this, but it takes a long time to change things (10 years, in fact, to reinstate our hourly service on weekdays).

Northern always talks about no demand. But have you ever been asked what train service you’d like? No. And have you ever asked the train operators or the government for more trains?

If you want to help put on the pressure for a proper train service on Sundays, you could join ECLRUG and also email or write to Cross Country (find their email address here). If we don’t ask, we’ll never get. If we do ask, and keep asking, we just might get. One day. Preferably Sunday(s).