City of Stoke-on-Trent Local Transport Plan 3 Focus Groups

AECOM <strong>City</strong> <strong>of</strong> <strong>Stoke</strong>-on-Trent Local Transport Plan 3 37Capabilities on project:Transportation“I mean it’s all well and nice to look good but at the end<strong>of</strong> the day if you’ve only got a fixed budget, why waste iton planting a tree.”“I don’t think it’s wasting, it makes you feel happier, youcome in and the blossom’s out on the trees.”“But if you’ve got big holes in the road, for god’s sakerepair the road, don’t plant a tree.”Overall, the group felt that the LTP3 process could beimproved and were unconvinced as to whether it wouldproduce any benefits.“It would be a start.”“Well, that’s the budget gone, a lot <strong>of</strong> these schemesare, I’ll call them dreamt up by consultants in an idealworld and then when it gets down to reality it’s thankyou and good night.”“Not practical.”“I mean really shouldn’t they be surveying thepopulation, the people that vote them in or don’t votethem in, doing that as well.”3.5.3 WomenThe top three areas in terms <strong>of</strong> spend amongst the womengroup were as follows; the percentage <strong>of</strong> the total womengroup spend is shown in brackets:- Works to Highways & Streets (26%)- Public transport & public transport information (20%)- Walking & Cycling (17%)Participants in the women group felt that improvements topublic transport and walking and cycling facilities were centralto encouraging people to use more sustainable modes <strong>of</strong>transport. It was felt that publicity alone would not be enough.“I thought if public transport was better it wouldinfluence travel behaviour.”“I also put that walking and cycling and improving thewalking and cycling facilities.”“But the main investment has got to be improving publictransport, because you can have a big campaign forcingeveryone on the buses.”Parking was also seen as important. Specifically, the groupthought that more parking was needed in the towns.“I think from my point <strong>of</strong> view the parking arrangementsas well, like in the areas, the works to highways and thestreets is important for me.”“I know someone, I keep going on about my work but itannoys me, because I haven’t got parking, so it’s easyfor everyone to say, well, you can start going on a busand whatnot, but there’s people who literally live acrossthe road and have got parking passes on our car parkwho won’t walk across the road and they’ve got no kidsor anything. I think it should be more, especially frombusinesses point <strong>of</strong> view, more prioritised.”“When they built Newcastle [-under-Lyme] College aswell they only had a limited number <strong>of</strong> car parkingspaces there and like two years on they had to buildmore parking spaces, because it was affecting the livingenvironment <strong>of</strong> everybody else, just the cars on the side<strong>of</strong> the road, so it’s all well and good putting a limit butunless you’re going to support people getting to work ina different way then it just doesn’t work.”The group did not spend much on planning integration as theyfelt that this should be the responsibility <strong>of</strong> developers ratherthan the council. It was therefore felt that public money shouldnot be used.“The bottom one, because I think you shouldn’t usepublic money for that, builders should be doing more.”“Yes, but you’re choosing to spend public moneyworking with developers, you tell the developers yes,you can have planning permission to build 500 houses,including more for public transport, that is what they do,but they should do it a lot more and it should be a lotmore forceful.”Overall, the group felt that the LTP3 could achieve more andplanners had opted for the ‘easy options’.“I think they’ve gone for easy options, that’s perhaps mebeing cynical, but …”“Keep existing, improve existing.”“You haven’t got to make any big changes.”“Yes but I do think that they do need to make somechanges, though as well and then obviously they’ve gota limited amount <strong>of</strong> money to spend and it’s good thatthey are wanting to spend some on it, but doing thingslike improving knowledge and awareness and things like