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Car Parking - Improvements

AT86

AT86

TS Member
So it’s is not the most exciting of topics, but it is closed season right? At least it’s not toilets.

Alton Towers have submitted planning permission to make improvements to the overflow parking, specifically ‘car park P’ which is behind car park J on the grass near the Enchanted Village/Pods parking area.

They originally wanted to tarmac/gravel this area but the council weren’t keen, so instead the proposal is to create a hard standing that grass can grow through using ‘sudspave geogrid’ (whatever that is) as has apparently been done at Legoland Windsor.

They currently have permission to use this area for parking for 28 days per year, and want to extend that to 50 days. They will also be improving the walkways and planting some trees and hedges.

This will create an 880 parking spaces that should mean much better conditions for the Scarefest/Fireworks period. Access will be via a new mini roundabout here, just where the hotel access road splits between ATH/Splash and EV/pods.

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Here is the plan of the proposed site.

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The planning document states they have lost about 18% of parking capacity since 2010 so this will help improve that.

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It also shows this graph regarding the number of days per year when the park receives over 16k visitors. Seems there is still some way to go to get back to pre 2015 levels.

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Good to see some investment in the infrastructure side of things anyhow. Fully expecting that parking fee to go up next year to pay for it though ;)
 
John said:
The real reason for this of course is that they want to be able to direct traffic exiting from the fields through the existing barriers to increase parking revenue.
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Whilst probably true - this would be pure madness. Any cars from car park P will be funnelled onto the hotel access road, where there is a single exit barrier near the back of Duel. The main car park barriers (4 or 5 of them if my memory serves me right) cannot cope with traffic on peak days / exit times, so to throw up to 880 cars + hotel / EV traffic at a single barrier is pure insanity. (It is Alton Towers though!) They will have still have to open the gap in the fence onto Wootton Lane on very peak days, e.g. Scarefest / Fireworks otherwise they are going to have people stuck in car park P for hours.

As to the attendance graph - it's probably a good job there are so few days when guest numbers exceed 16k - the park can no longer cope with this number of guests.
 
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A shame that they are not going to be allowed to go for the tarmac option, however additional parking capacity is desperately needed.
 
Or an alternative could be... improving public transport

*Runs for cover*

To expand, tarmacing something that will only be used a few days a year feels like a waste and a lot of damaged to the environment and I'm glad the park weren't allowed to do this. They should explore other options for peak times, like park and rides or better public transport options.
 
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Rob said:
A shame that they are not going to be allowed to go for the tarmac option, however additional parking capacity is desperately needed.
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I actually disagree - I think to tarmac over the meadow (car park P) would look pretty ugly & be visible to the locals from Wootton Lane year-round, even though said car park will only get a maximum of 50 days use per year. There is also the issue of water run-off from tarmac - i.e. it'd all end up at the lower end of the site as tarmac is not porous.

I think the sudspave geogrid is a much more suitable option. Towers get the hard-standing surface they need in car park P but the grass can still grow so for the vast majority of the year when car park P is not in use, the visual impact of it from outside the park will be minimal.
 
speedy said:
Or an alternative could be... improving public transport

*Runs for cover*

To expand, tarmacing something that will only be used a few days a year feels like a waste and a lot of damaged to the environment and I'm glad the park weren't allowed to do this. They should explore other options for peak times, like park and rides or better public transport options.
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Why not both? the geogrid will solve the parking issue on the very busy days it is needed. Better public transport puts them in a good position to expand further.
 
The public transport issue is a serious bugbear of mine. It's a missed opportunity for revenue, both in terms of those who do not have access to a car, as well as a reasonable charge for the transport itself. The park could easily partner with a local transport company to work something out, surely? It's another one of those things that's worse than a decade ago, worse than the nineties and early noughts, even. If I were a local resident of Alton or Farley, I would be banging the drum all the way down to Poole about this.

Nonetheless, I do like a mixed surface car park*, so this looks fine. It's definitely not going to be applicable for the Monorail, mind. Perhaps another sign of the inevitable?


*100 Alan Partridge points.
 
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Kraken27 said:
I actually disagree - I think to tarmac over the meadow (car park P) would look pretty ugly & be visible to the locals from Wootton Lane year-round, even though said car park will only get a maximum of 50 days use per year. There is also the issue of water run-off from tarmac - i.e. it'd all end up at the lower end of the site as tarmac is not porous.

I think the sudspave geogrid is a much more suitable option. Towers get the hard-standing surface they need in car park P but the grass can still grow so for the vast majority of the year when car park P is not in use, the visual impact of it from outside the park will be minimal.
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That's a fair point. So long as the surface is suitable for cars and prevents the need for tractors to come to the rescue when the British weather takes a turn for the worst (like this year) then it will be a vast improvement on the current situation.
 
They should build a helicopter pad. Nightmare on the roads. Would be easier for me to fly in. Reduces congestion for the days I visit anyway
 
Jb85 said:
They should build a helicopter pad. Nightmare on the roads. Would be easier for me to fly in. Reduces congestion for the days I visit anyway
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I'm sure if you paid them enough they'll happily let you land your helicopter in the car park.:cool:
 
Jb85 said:
They should build a helicopter pad. Nightmare on the roads. Would be easier for me to fly in. Reduces congestion for the days I visit anyway
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They had one. Unfortunately it’s got a Stargazing shed on it these days.

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Burbs said:
That’s the one that Nick Varney would use, isn’t it?
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Any corporate helicopter visits, would use that.
Also any air ambulance calls to the hotel, water park or car parks.


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