Residents and businesses in East Cowes, unhappy about the new Floating Bridge, say it’s not just the bumpers of vehicles hitting the concrete slipway that’s the problem.
They’ve been highlighting what they believe are health and safety dangers for some time and plan to carry out another protest on Friday afternoon (details).
Lorries mounting pavement
One such example is the very tight corner that articulated lorries travelling from Ferry Road round to Castle Street have to negotiate.
The corner itself is the same as it always was, but now the pedestrian shelter is positioned on the opposite side of the floating bridge entrance and the pavement extended, lorries have been getting stuck, knocking down bollards and having to mount the pavement at the exact point where foot passengers are queuing.
The photo below was taken this morning as school children waited for the floating bridge.
To get an idea of the problem, watch the video below, shot yesterday by Angie Booth, which clearly shows the lorry having mount the pavement (and even then having problems getting round) at the exact point where foot passengers queue (she apologises for the bumpiness of the video).
This is just one of many issues that are being highlighted.
Renewed protest on Friday
Unhappy with the response from the Isle of Wight council to the issues raised, campaigners will be once again protesting about the problems they and floating bridge passengers, be it foot passengers or vehicles, have had to put up with.
They plan to gather on Friday 9 June at 3pm on the East Cowes side of the floating bridge.
Local businesswoman, Angie Booth, explains her concerns,
“The floating bridge and queuing area still has major problems, and the Council is trying to normalise’ this. The question is – whose faults are these problems, especially those that have caused delay, unsafe scenarios, and/or are unfixable or, if fixed, will cause other knock-on effect problems?
“There are major design flaws, health and safety concerns and an incorrectly reported ‘profit’. This, and as well as hurting the businesses (the local economy also being a responsibility of the Council where they are supposed to help, not hinder, businesses.)”
She went on to add,
“Most ‘fixes’ they are doing are actually creating a different problem, such as making the current prows even longer because the bridge was already much bigger to start with, potentially affecting the ability for some yachts to go by at lowest tides (compared with Bridge number 5).
“We were told by the Solent LEP that this bridge would be better, and it’s not (scroll down to point 3.20 for specifics).”
Explaining that many things were promised, Angie draws readers’ attention to a few:
– Reduced queuing times;
– Increased crossings per day;
– Improved passenger (pedestrian) accommodation;
– Less congestion in and around Newport;
– Increased financial and operational security;
– Supporting the economic well-being of the towns
Flaws in the design
Some of the design flaws of the new bridge and the surrounding area have also been highlighted by Angie (her words) as:
- The bridge has approximately 50% less sheltered pedestrian space, which is more than unpleasant on a cold and/or windy day. There are issues potentially with overcrowding in inclement weather and/or with prams and wheelchairs. There also were reports that scooters and some wheelchairs were being made to park outside.
- The bridge will have fewer crossings because it will take longer to unload pedestrians out of the ‘open-top double decker’ with one main exit, just like it takes much longer on a double decker bus for people to exit the front door
- The north East Cowes pavement is unfit for purpose with the mandatory queuing there full stop. Additionally, you can’t fit everyone walking off the bridge and everyone queuing to come onto the bridge on that pavement, without risking people stepping off the kerb into the road frequently. That road is used regularly by cars and lorries exiting GKN, lorries that are turned away from Red Funnel, and townspeople dropping off and picking up people at the floating bridge. Lorries, particularly those less familiar with the area, have to mount the northwest pavement right where people are supposed to queue. The pedestrian shelter actually has removed some room for people to move quickly out of the way.
- They dropped the ‘upstairs’ design on the 1976 bridge because children had been climbing over the railing and jumping off the bridge (and throwing things off the bridge too), so why did they reintroduce that?
- The pedestrian charging does NOT raise the profit that the Council is pretending it does as they do not include the loads of money that they pay Southern Vectis for the pensioners who are going around by bus.
The IWC officers put in a hugely wrong figure into the official 2014 enacted IW budget – a £400,000 a year NEW profit from just the pedestrian fares at 50p single, children free – that calculation was completely wrong with no expenditure on ticket collectors, 0% attrition of pedestrians and no cost for the pensioner bus passes!
That budget should not have been declared legal if the numbers were that wrong, and yet they were used to lobby other Councillors to convince them to vote for the pedestrian charges. Pensioners going around by bus in 2014 were costing the Council (that pays Southern Vectis for pensioner bus passes) over £12 per trip! In 1992 they ceased charging pedestrians because it was unprofitable – many people stopped using the bridge and it was costing them money. There’s also a question about whether the vehicle profit etc is being ringfenced as pedestrians had been very much led to believe was one of the conditions required to acquire grant for the floating bridge. - The shelter on the East Cowes side is inadequate (very cold even in June, because the north pavement is exposed to the southwesterlies to northwesterlies), is made of glass (cold) and has openings at the top and bottom where the wind whips the air around
- The flood defences apparently have been removed, and we have had horrible flooding of the town from the River Medina at the floating bridge
- The drop kerb is crossing ‘death corner’ (Ferry Road and Castle Street) where we have had numerous misses
- The businesses have lost loads of money with the introduction of pedestrian charges, lost more with the bridge being off and now will lose more with the increase in charges and will have immense trouble attracting back customers who have ‘changed behaviour’ and now shop elsewhere after such a long time. They deserve compensation.
Angie finished by saying,
“As was mentioned before, quite a few members of the public and councillors (town and IOW) have said most of these things (minus the most recent discovery that the prows really aren’t long enough) at different times over the last seven-plus years.
“Now the Council is trying to ‘normalise’ this. Absolutely unacceptable. Also unacceptable is that the bridge was put into service in alleged violation of several of the points already stated. They gave us no proper consultation about the bridge either.
“This is not a beautiful new better bridge. Yes, it’s new. Hopefully it will become more reliable. But it is not better, and misses most of the criteria that we were told it would be.”
