The Lendal Bridge Saga - How not to close a bridge.

York City Council decided that it wanted to close Lendal Bridge to cars:

The traffic restriction trial aims to reduce daytime traffic across Lendal Bridge as part of a wider long-term vision to address city centre congestion and improve the reliability of public transport.

During the trial, Lendal Bridge will be open between 10.30am - 5pm to pedestrians, cyclists, buses, taxis, and emergency vehicles only.

The trial will test how the transport network operates and new road signs will warn drivers of the changes as they approach the bridge. Automatic number plate recognition cameras will enforce the new traffic measures.

And this is fine - there's a pretty strong case for reducing traffic in city centres and especially centres with narrow streets and plenty of pedestrians such as York. However, the City Council has demonstrated throughout this trial and since just how you shouldn't go about closing a bridge to cars.  It wasn't just the Facebook page with over 3000 'likes' nor the slightly arrogant attitude of York's Labour leadership or even the extremes to which the Council sought to enforce the ban. It was that, despite all this effort the Council completely cocked up the closure:

At a Traffic Penalty Tribunal it was concluded that the scheme, which was put in place last year, to stop drivers crossing the bridge during the day, and another one on Coppergate are not valid as the road cannot be described as a 'bus lane'.

The council has made at least £1.3 million from fines on Lendal Bridge alone.

That's a lot of fines that the Council may well have to pay back. Not to mention court costs, administration charges and officer time diverted from things that actually matter to local residents. Sadly this sort of outcome is all to typical of local authority initiatives especially 'radical' transport and traffic schemes.

In reality the York scheme was timid - they closed one bridge just to see what would happen to traffic. And this resulted in confusion made worse by inadequate (and possibly illegal) signage. What should sadden us is that the officers and councillors responsible will not examine their decision-making approaches, project management or even stand on the bridge and say "we got this one wrong didn't we".

But all we get is an anonymous statement saying:

“City of York Council is seeking independent legal advice in relation to the adjudicator’s decision on this specific appeal.

“The restrictions remain in place on Lendal Bridge and Coppergate and we would advise drivers to continue to adhere to these.”

Will local government ever learn? I'm not picking on York here (although this is premier league in the cock-up stakes), every Council makes these sorts of mistake and every council prefers to obfuscate rather than admit error.

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The Peterborough Pravda. Is this what Louise Mensch wants from local media?

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Yesterday, Louise Mensch – the MP for Corby – argued that local newspapers are an essential cog in our democracy:

She called on the government to conduct a review into "local democracy and the local press" to see if there might be some sort of direct or indirect subsidy that could support the sector.

She attacked plans for local TV stations, which will compete against newspapers, because the proposed funding plans include using part of the licence fee as well as BBC content.

Now there are a few obvious things that might be said about Mrs Mensch’s suggestions not least that Tory MPs calling for business subsidies is a wholly new experience for this very long-standing Tory member.

However, at the heart of this isn’t the question of whether we have a local press – in my view we have as vibrant a local debate as we’ve had in a very long while. But here in Bradford very little of that debate is down to the local evening paper.

Local papers have declined, many have merged, closed or become mere shadows – more advertising sheets that newspapers. And that decline continues – think for a second or two where you go to look for a job, a car, a house or the cinema listings? In times past you bought the local rag on the appropriate day and looked in the class ads. Now you use your lap top or your iPhone – tomorrow you’ll be using the telly in your living room.

Local newspapers have become ever more reliant on the money that local councils spend – the statutory notices, job ads and theatre listings. Without this cash, many more local papers would go to the wall. Maybe this would be a loss but it is the market that is killing these papers not the choices or decisions of local councils. People no longer buy the evening paper – 30 years ago the penetration of the York Evening Press was up at around 80%. Hardly a house in the City didn’t receive the paper. Today that paper sells around 25,000 copies each day (as it happens about the same as Bradford’s Telegraph & Argus). The Doncaster Star sells fewer than 3,000 copies.

It seems to me that, for all her good intentions, Mrs Mensch is railing against the wind – for sure, stopping councils from producing their own free newspapers and not using the license fee to support local TV might slow the decline a little. But the decline will continue for the simple reason that people no longer buy the local paper and local businesses no longer advertise in the local paper. And while this is happening local papers reduce their editorial staff – I fear that many will simply be desk-bound churners of press releases (which isn’t why anyone went to journalism school) – to the point where they simply don’t have the resource to cover stories.

However, public subsidy – using taxpayers’ money to stop local papers closing – seems like a recipe for a supine, state-directed newspaper. Something of a Pravda of Peterborough or Isvestia of Ipswich – regurgitating the tractor stats produced by the local authorities and printing without question or challenge the words of the local MP. A ghastly shade of the challenging, offending and investigating local paper of legend.

Maybe that’s what Mrs Mensch wants but for me, I’ll take my changes with bloggers, Facebook and citizen journalism. That might just be the better future don’t you think?

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