Current issues - Coventry

Hi all, Just chat. I'm hoping for a discussion response regards our city centre access. So much of the development was in line of the motor car and car parking being king and essential. Not the congestion charge pollution evil that they are portrayed as currently. So many comments demonstrate how much the Broadgate grassy island, centred with the Coventry icon on her horse, is missed. I certainly miss the green interlude. It's the closure of High Street and Hertford Street, to at least public transport, that I believe is an error. Buses that formerly used High Street now leave Gosford Street travelling nearly half a mile to the city centre, but serve little or nothing. Hertford St is a direct route to Greyfriars Green, Warwick Row & the railway station. It once served high quality shops in Hertford St, what's there now? Yes, I'm a bus user, so biased, but my main issue in posting this is business & trading. So much trade is being missed because I believe poor access. So, my question..... Is it connected up?

Hi Philip Not being much of a town goer, so I never really notice the points that you raise. I think that I have been into town 3 times since IKEA closed and Argos opening in my local Sainsburys. Certainly not been in Broadgate or the High Street for many years, so not paid much attention to missing grass etc. The one big thing for me was the closing of the underground toilets. Are there any public conveniences anywhere?

You’re spot on. Public toilets, usually mean going into a pub. I used to love shopping in our market. I went for the first time in ages last week. It's hardly surprising that a market cafe closed up last weekend. For trade to succeed, it needs good communication & customer access. There's a huge bias towards the town shop requirement by the non-internet shoppers, the very folk who need public transport and are often subject to mobility issues. Have the planners stuck their pencil in their ear, instead of behind it?

This is a wider issue than Broadgate and reflects how planning has failed to understand people. They encouraged out of town warehouse businesses - first supermarkets and now Amazon etc but failed to tax them enough per m² and per job, leaving town shops paying disproportionate amounts of tax for a rapidly declining audience. They made living in town centres uncomfortable - small flats, higher crime, noisy locations or very little domestic property at all. They made travelling in and out annoying and expensive. Yes, they even removed many of the conveniences of city living, including, err... conveniences. Then they wonder why people drift away. The internet and Covid have accelerated the trend but reversing the situation is particularly difficult, especially as new obsessions have arisen to make towns uninviting, eg clean air taxation or more and more peripheral parking. The lure of towns was that you could get what you wanted in a small area. Now it's a long trek, especially compared to an out of town shop and the zero effort but infinite choice of internet shopping. They still don't grasp the reality that towns and cities aren't very desirable anymore. With remote working, the need for centralised workplaces were even more sharply impacted and less likely to be situated in urban centres. Councils, planners and governments need to realise that they need to make towns more attractive, not less and as yet I see little evidence that they've worked this out. I sometimes read the output of official and unofficial thinktanks and one group were extolling the concept of car sharing. What struck me was that none of the contributors seemed to have asked themselves if they'd do the things they were coming up with. They didn't seem to have thought about the pitfalls and certainly hadn't come up with solutions to them.

My mum used to love going into town on a Saturday and it was probably a 4 hour or more trip. Apart from our local Co-op in Prior Deram Walk, most things were bought in town. School shoes from Agers, uniforms from the Co, bits from Hogarths, pay the gas bill, have a look in Lynes, moan at the prices in Ashers curtain shop. Then move up to Woolies, have a cuppa upstairs, into the market for the week’s veg, and a go on the roundabout outside as a treat. Quick look in BHS & Owen Owen. As Helen says, you could get everything on one visit and then struggle home on the 18a to Canley. As a teenager, I used it for the Locarno, pictures and clothes, and that was about it. Funny, but I don't miss going there at all.

Mick, I loved your description of a day in the city - it mirrored my mum’s. We used to call the roundabout the ding-a-long. Two other things I remember are that she could leave her shopping in the basement of Owen’s to pick up later and that in the underground ladies’ toilets they had two toilets in some cubicles, one toddler sized. Brilliant. The only fairly recent thing that matched this was the snuggy type of hanging seat they used to have on the inside of the ladies’ loo door in IKEA. I wonder if they had these useful items in the gents?

"I wonder if they had these useful items in the gents?" Hi Lindatee, glad I was not the only child dragged around town on a Saturday. I think I remember the gents had a couple of showers and a weighing machine that cost you 1d to get your weight. I guess the most useful item was the paper in the cubicles!!!

My previous visit to Cov. was back in 1991 after sorting out my mum's affairs and finally breaking all connections with the city. My memories start with gaping holes of open basements, half filled with rain water and rubbish, the skeleton glassless roof of the old city arcade and temporary Woolworths, their replacement by the precincts having M&S, C&A's, BHS, and department stores such as Owen Owen, the Co-op and Kingstones. The crown being the restful green space that was Broadgate. I arrived last November accompanying my wife on a visit to sing in the cathedral. (Hence "Choirboy".) After a 360 degree navigation of the inner ring road. I spotted the sign to Barracks car park with relief because we were now in a state of extremis by calls of nature. No problem I said to Diana, the loos are just past where BHS used to be, on the right and down the steps. On finding no trace of the lavatories I wished my underwear bore the inscription "Depends" and not "Calvin Klein" What on earth has happened to my city in the last 31 years? I suppose Hitler's wrath and the planners' glee at being give a clean slate meant that a deciduous cycle was inevitable. No chance of steady evolution to meet people’s changing needs. But the need to service the calls of nature are unchanging.

Every town could do with a loo guide and one for visitor parking too. I used to park at the Belgrade Plaza (good loos) but it's now full during weekday office hours. I switched to the Salt Lane multistorey but getting in from the ring road was slightly stressful and I don't know if it has facilities. The theory now is that we should use restaurant toilets but a) they're not always open and b) I'd feel obliged to buy a drink, which would be expensive. It really is a deterrent for people visiting. I know that looking after public loos was expensive for councils and subject to vandalism and antisocial behaviour but I'd rather they charge for entry and dealt with the bad behaviour than did away with the service. Punishment for vandalism or other minor crime - cleaning the loos for a suitable length of time.

When we used to get out and about more, wherever I went I used to spot the loo, when there were any. My kids used to reckon I had a bog log. As I have got older, if Roy suggested going anywhere, my thought was always, is there a toilet?

Did anyone else hear the Council representative for all the current road works on CWR this morning? Yes, the one to blame! I was staggered to hear him say the road widening alternative would've been the congestion charge which tbh I previously favoured as you can barely drive into the city centre these days anyway. He reckoned the stipulation for that charge would have been an area as far west as Four Pounds Avenue and as far east as the A444!! How can all that area be classed as the city centre?

I often wonder what planet some of the councillors and city planners inhabit. I do occasionally drive into the city centre and more often pass through the outskirts on my way from one side of the city to the other. If I have to pay to use say Four Pounds Avenue will I bother to use any of the businesses in the Alvis Retail Park, will I take a more circuitous route to visit Go Outdoors, and will it be worth the added miles of driving all around the A444 and A46 to visit Kenilworth? I would probably take the easier options of travelling from Bedworth to Nuneaton, Hinckley, or Tamworth where there are no congestion charges. I could always travel into the city centre on the bus but that only works if you have plenty of time and nothing bulky to carry - suppose that rules out a bag of sand from Wickes in Radford Rd! Multiply my simple needs with thousands of other people and suddenly businesses within the congestion zone will be closing down through lack of business but out of town shopping parks will be raking in the money.

New traffic restrictions in town from 24 April

Crazy - so can you not travel along any of LPS now? With the restriction on access on and off the Ring Road I usually travel into town (no that I go in often!) from Warwick Road, along New Union Street, then LPS to park around Much Park Street. It's laughable when the council refers to these measures being to improve air quality. With all the simultaneous construction it's madness at rush hour - it's taken me 45 mins to do a few miles on some occasions. The worst section now travelling in is from Warwick Road to the Ring Road - that's only about 550 yards but in that short distance there are 3 pedestrian crossings, 2 sets of sleeping policemen, that crazy 'every man for himself' 'island' outside Central 6 with the new exit from the station fooling everyone - multiple crashes there, currently a bus stop and one lane is always blocked past Spencer Ave due to the backlog of traffic turning in to King Henry's. It's madness - no wonder air quality suffers. It must be the road rage spot of the Midlands. People also never realise traffic coming out of town is liable to turn across traffic going left onto the ring road - I've see numerous bumps there as well - which again suffers as traffic on the slip road backs right up due to the roadworks under the Croft Road junction (and I've still no idea what they are actually doing there!). As you can tell it's all an absolute nightmare journey I suffer from daily! Thanks CCC

But it's worth it, Neil - we've just had notification of our state pension increases, which you're working so very hard to provide for us oldies! Thank you so much