Minutes:
The Committee considered a report by the Interim Director of Corporate Governance dealing with objections received as a result of the statutory advertisement of a traffic order providing for the new streetscape project in The Green and the streets immediately surrounding it. The order did not provide for the streetscape plan in itself but for the associated traffic management measures. However, the plan did necessitate some of the measures. The report went into some detail on the background to the project before offering commentary on the objections. These were from Soprano Hotels and the Carmelite Hotel, Ruth Gibson and Steven Ormston (residents at 9 Carmelite Street), Aberdeen Civic Forum and Guide Dogs. These submissions had been circulated as an appendix to the report along with the observations of the roads officials.
The report concluded that there appeared to be nothing in the content of the objections to cast doubt on the content of the order, but expressed concern about the letter from Guide Dogs. The central theme here was that blind and partially sighted people – and their guide dogs – needed kerbs as key navigational cues. They didn’t need notional kerbs but real kerbs, kerbs that a trained dog could react to. A guide dog did not recognise a “kerblike treatment” that was actually all on one level.
At the moment, this was going to be a problem in Carmelite Street and Hadden Street. In Carmelite Street, the difficulty could only be averted by establishing sub-standard footways, leaving the carriageway undesirably narrow. It would then have to be one-way, meaning faster traffic – and, essentially, the whole point of the scheme would then be lost. The Department of Transport had commissioned research into this problematic area of “shared surfaces”, etc., and, also, the Mobility and Access Committee for Scotland (the Scottish Ministers’ own advisers on the needs of disabled people) had requested a moratorium on shared surfaces until this research had been completed.
The report drew attention to this negative aspect of what was otherwise a very attractive project. In particular, David Wemyss referred to a meeting of the Council’s Disability Advisory Group the day before at which it had been concluded that, with the difficulties of the visually impaired in mind, the current proposals for Carmelite Street and Hadden Street were extremely disappointing.
Before considering the report further however, the Committee, having agreed at the beginning of the meeting to accede to a deputation request from Mr. Jonathan Day of Soprano Hotels, now heard from Mr. Day on his concern that the project would cause serious problems as a result of its impact on night-time parking potential in the area.
After hearing from Mr. Day, and after questions to him and to the officials, Councillor Kevin Stewart suggested that there was potential for the Committee to settle on an adjustment to the scheme in which the footway on one side of Stirling Street would be widened to an acceptable standard, albeit that the footway on the other side would be narrower than ever. This could save some overnight parking potential at that location, and assuage some of Mr. Day’s concerns, but the Committee was not of a mind to adopt this course of action if it did anything to jeopardise the essential stability of the scheme and, in particular, its Heritage Lottery funding.
On the objection from Guide Dogs, however, and the disappointment of the Disability Advisory Group at the proposals for Hadden Street and Carmelite Street, the members were of a mind to keep the plans as they were, being mindful that this was indeed a very attractive and prestigious scheme which it would be disproportionate to destabilise to accommodate a very small category of objectors, even though there was no doubting the intellectual coherence of their concerns.
The Committee resolved:-
to overrule the objections and approve the making of the traffic order and the establishment of the traffic calming, except that, as long as the overall scheme and its funding were not jeopardised in any way, to adjust the order to recover as much parking space on Stirling Street as was possible (in conjunction with the widening of the footway on one side of that street as outlined in the course of earlier discussions), to report back on 27 October in the event of difficulties emerging, and to request the officials to approach local private car park operators on initiatives here.