Opinion – Page 8 – Abbeylands Residents

Repair pavements and crossings

1-DSC_0106 — What happens to the street scene when you remove the cars?

One of the defining characteristics of the Dunbar streetscene are the relatively wide pavements along with the cobbled sets that accent the pavement edges, pattern the parking bays and, until recently, framed the pedestrian crossings. The street scheme is relatively new, and possibly, with the exception of the exaggerated lighting scheme which is unnecessarily bright at night, it has helped to enhance the streetscene, at least superficially. A good thing surely?

Well the parking scheme largely cancels out the aesthetic benefits and the quality of the views are much reduced, obscuring the positive characteristics and poor maintenance over the years is not helping. But using the natural / built characteristics of our high street can we start to re-imagine Dunbar, perhaps as a ‘market town’ and destination?

I can already visualise the brown signs saying something like “Dunbar – Historic Town and Harbour”. This seems to be what is happening up and down the country, but why not have some of this here?

Establish trees on Dunbar High Street

The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago.
The second best time is now.’
Anonymous

With heaps of published evidence that trees provide multiple benefits to people and the environment, especially in urban settings you’d think our streets would be choking with them. Street trees seem to me to be on the decline in many of our towns (blame cutbacks and poor cultural practices), with garden trees being removed to make space for cars at an alarming rate. And, in case some of you are thinking that trees simply will not grow on our High Street there are well established cultural practices and design principles to achieve excellent results. If you do it wrong of course the results will be disappointing, as are trees grown in tubs. In the long run trees could be cheaper than establishing and maintaining annually bedding plants and the hanging baskets which used to adorn our lamp posts, but which give only very transient pleasure.

Here’s an expert view:

Improve signposting and free up private car parking

Parking availability in Dunbar isn’t as bad as people make out. There are quite a few areas that are under-utilised and there are only a few problem areas. I’ve heard all the objections about the on street facilities, and frankly most of them don’t warrant a great deal of attention. You cannot park outside your favourite store at Ocean Terminal, so why would you expect to in Dunbar?

There should be policies to ensure that the car parks are the primary choices for visitors rather than the High Street itself. In fact currently it is just a bit too easy to park on the High Street, except in the middle of the day, but name me a single place on the planet where this would not be the case? Is this what people are afraid of losing – the ability to use their car as a shopping trolley/umbrella?

The problems. Some people prefer not to pay for parking at the railway station, which is understandable (but cheaper than parking in the city), so park in public spaces. Connected to this, there’s the conflict between public spaces and private spaces. And finally there’s a high concentration of people that live in town who are wholly reliant on public places. As I see it, anyone using the train is doing us all a favour, so lets not pick on them. If they park their car somewhere for 10-12 hours, that alone is a good thing. Parked cars don’t kill and they stop polluting. Lets progress the adoption of the Station Road and free car parking at the station, and double or treble the space available there and increase the number of people using the train, which in turn should encourage companies to lay on better services. Most journeys are multi model and always involve some walking, and may include the use of the car.

Enhance safety for pedestrians and cyclists

There is evidence that cyclists do not feel safe on our High Street and will cycle on the pavement. Despite very high numbers of young people cycling to school very few cycle on the High Street itself. There is also increasing evidence that pedestrians do not feel that it is safe to cross the street, even at the marked pedestrian crossings – let alone the informal passing places, which have had the distinctive cobbles removed. Yet the majority of drivers do observe low speeds. Only a minority do not and go faster than is really safe to (usually when the road is clear), even if they may be complying with the speed limit.

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