Oh, good. Another masterplan

This one must be pretty good because it comes from global masterplanners extraordinaire EDAW (whatever that stands for), who have offices in 25 countries worldwide. While solving the urban dilemmas faced by communities in America, Australia, Europe, the Middle East and Asia, they also produced the masterplan for London’s Olympic bid.

But it’s not just the big projects to which EDAW devote their time. They have also come up with a variety of masterplans for UK cities and towns as diverse as Manchester and Aylesbury, Blackpool and Bracknell, and Dunstable and Chatham.

With an impressive reputation dating back to 1930s America, will EDAW’s proposals, no doubt drawn from their wealth of experience, be the long-awaited salvation of our congested little town?

Casting aside my inherent cynicism, the £250,000, 20-year masterplan produced in return for a wad of our cash is worth serious consideration, even if it does make recommendations which have been floating in the ether for years.

Replacing Minden Place car park with an open space, a car park on the site of Ann Street flats, relocating Norman’s and converting Commercial Buildings to other uses and closing Broad and York Streets, Colomberie and Snow Hill to through traffic are all old hat. The parish of St Helier, Centre Ville (remember that?), Planning and Environment, Transport and Technical Services (in the days when they were known as Public Services and before that Public Works), town traders and uncle Tom Ecobichon and all have been discussing the regeneration of St Helier for far more years than I can remember.

Did you know that urban planning, with traffic flows in mind, goes back to the days of General Don and his road-build programme when the motive was to ensure the fast deployment of his troops just in case Napoleon ever decided to invade the Island?

Now fast forward two centuries, and getting anywhere quickly by road in rush-hour is pretty nigh impossible, especially if your destination is St Helier and your route takes you past a school.

Driving within the St Helier ring road, let alone just trying to get there, can be a pain at any time during the working day.

All it takes is an inconsiderately parked delivery van or a base camp of roadworks, and gridlock quickly develops. Brief respite come when the schools break up, but once the next term begins, so does the congestion.

Unless something is done before the population leaps to 100,000, it isn’t going to get any better. Up the number of people and car salesmen be-gin rubbing their hands in glee at the prospect of an associated boom in sales.

The congestion of the town centre at peak traffic times is not helped by motorists seeking to park as close as they can to where they want they go, driving round and round until an elusive on-street space becomes available.

Does it never occur to such persistent souls — disabled drivers excluded — that parking is available in spaces a brisk walk away or in a multi-storey? Using Shanks’s pony is infinitely quicker and does not burn fossil fuel, pollute the environment or add to the Island’s carbon footprint.

And the more heavily laden you are with shopping, the more calories your burn off.

Before we mere mortals have had a chance to pass our considered judgment on the EDAW proposals, there is dissension in the ranks of the Chuckle Brothers (aka the Council of Ministers). Environment Minister Freddie Cohen, who commissioned the services of EDAW, and Transport Minister Mike Jackson are already at loggerheads — which is not a good sign.

Without the whole-hearted support of the Constable of St Brelade and his traffic engineers, anything that remotely relates to highways, byways and parking is likely to stall before it gets a chance to leave the grid.

The two departments may sit side by side at South Hill, but the ample car park their civil servants enjoy free of charge could become a setting for a shootout at the not-so-OK corral.

Just when Senator Cohen, the champion of iconic architecture, thought he could hit a six by doing the same for traffic, in comes Mr Jackson’s googly. EDAW has fallen headlong into the same pitfalls that scuppered the earnest efforts of many before them by concentrating a little too much on the dreaded P-word: pedestrianisation.

The attempt to push cars out of the town centre will never win their support, as Planning and Environment found when similar ideas were mooted in the draft of the 2002 Island Plan and previously by the parish of St Helier. It led to a revolt by the formidable markets traders.

Mr Jackson is clearly not a happy bunny. He says that rather than solving congestion, the consultants’ traffic proposals will exacerbate the current situation by 40 per cent in the morning rush and by 28 per cent in the even-ings. Does this mean that 12 per cent of commuters will be lost each day? If so, EDAW will have solved our traffic problems within a week!

Mr Jackson has come out in public against more than half of EDAW’s proposals, but in the absence of the long-awaited publication of his own department’s Integrated Travel and Transport Policy, there is no alternative to contrast and compare. Notwithstanding the 12 per cent daily loss, if cars can’t get into town, then what other forms of transport are we all supposed to use?

From my reading of the matter, the two most important players, States departments separated by a party wall, are not passing the ball. How can anyone with an interest in this matter — town residents and traders, politicians, businesses et al — fully appreciate, understand and comment on recommendations for the future development and regeneration of St Helier without a long-overdue transport policy?

If Planning and Environment, Transport and Technical Services and their respective ministers can’t reach agreement before their departmental solutions for the future of St Helier are put out to public consultation, we might as well give up and accept traffic congestion as an unsolvable evil of modern Island life.