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Car Parking - Improvements

Spark said:
Now would be a perfect time to crack on with the work. No one around the park and plenty of companies with no or little work, Could either force them to get a better price for the work or at least get it done before this years busy end of season
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A fair point. The risk for Towers / Merlin is it a CAPEX piece of work and there is no guarantee yet that they will even be able to open the park this season. That said, the meadow is a large open air site where construction work could take place with social distancing being observed.

With Mr Gove talking about pubs possibly staying closed until Autumn, a lot will depend on the daily infection rate / death figures. If things remain as they currently are, I am going nowhere near a park with >20k guests in it at Scarefest of Fireworks where social distancing is impossible.

You would hope that others had the same view about distancing, but they don't. This was the scene outside a just re-opened B&Q near me yesterday...
https://www.nottinghampost.com/news/local-news/bq-told-do-yourself-enforce-4059233
Give them all a Darwin Award!
 
delta79 said:
They should do click and collect only. Their partner company screwfix is doing that, along with delivery to home. with much success
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OT... but B&Q cocked up on Click & Collect at another Nottingham store the a week and a bit ago. The online system gave all the days orders the same collection timeslot. So you had about 400 cars all arriving within the same hour at the retail park. Police had to close the retail park to enforce distancing & tell people to return later / another day.

Only a retail variant of Fastrack after a ride breakdown when excessive tickets have been sold. Chaos ensues.
 
Another update on this admittedly not very exciting project, but one that is much needed to boost the car parking capacity.

Planning permission was granted for this some time back, but one of the conditions was that further detailed flood plans would need to be submitted and approved by the council before work started. Back in March the park submitted further documents to state they would need to be able to build the access road because without it they couldn't get the machinery needed to do those tests into the field - so a bit of a chicken and egg situation.

It has taken nearly 5 months, but they have now been given permission to do this. So we may well see construction work along the hotel entry road to build this new internal road soon. But the actual car parking is still probably a long way off yet.

Planning Applications - Staffordshire Moorlands District Council

How to make an application and what it will cost
publicaccess.staffsmoorlands.gov.uk publicaccess.staffsmoorlands.gov.uk
 
Don't worry pal, I find this stuff interesting!

What is this bit here though I wonder? Looks like another car park with an access road? Seems like a strange design though?
692c68ac2ed595a9996511823f2b53c1.jpg
 
That is car parking way beyond where I think people think it is. Take a look at the map, and you'll notice it's to the very far left when you drive in and not what was originally submitted IMO. It's actually two fields across by the shape of the existing roads and the river that is marked.

Does this mean the future planning of the current car park and proposed grass car park (which still had small signs in and what they originally did propose as temporary) now become future park expansion areas?

I've attached an image related to the above screenshot of the planning application. Compare the road, tree and river lines to the application in post #87Screenshot 2022-09-02 at 23.05.42.png
 
It's the current grass car parks M,N,O,P. MS paint isn't the best tool for this but it's all I have so I'm sticking with it:

1662161732896.png
 
Apologies if this isn't the right topic, but I was looking at express parking for Scarefest and all the SF Saturdays are unavailable. Does anyone know why?

Screenshot_20220923-092253.png
 
The car parking was a shambles yesterday they had no staff guiding you in so cars were parking anywhere and the end of the day the Barriers were all up and again no staff around. Now the car parks don’t look like they been chanced much in over 30 years so I do wonder where the profit goes towards.
 
Themeparksandy1981 said:
The car parking was a shambles yesterday they had no staff guiding you in so cars were parking anywhere and the end of the day the Barriers were all up and again no staff around. Now the car parks don’t look like they been chanced much in over 30 years so I do wonder where the profit goes towards.
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I noticed that there was no staff at the traffic lights going in, however when we walked passed 15 mins later, there was someone there. Probably down to lack of staff for the first few hours
 
It seems mad that the park doesn't have a proper park & ride near a major road & railway station. Uttoxeter seems the perfect location for this. You could get a good sized multi-storey car park & bus station on the site close to the railway station. A bus journey with an average speed of 30mph would take just 15mins to get to the resort (assuming a new eastern access road) The park could also capture a substantial market it currently misses out on, which is those who live in cities who aren't car-dependant. You could get a train from say Manchester direct to Uttoxeter and hop on a 15min bus to the park.

Also, JCB have their international headquarters en-route. I'm sure they, along with the owners of AT would be interested in helping fund the infrastructure and some of the operating costs. We are becoming less car-dependant as a nation, and with Alton Tower's current poor public transport connectivity it could stand to lose out if it doesn't adapt. Also from a purely environmental perspective, the huge volumes of traffic the park generates through small country lanes and through the village of Alton cannot go on. There's some really good potential to capture a wider market here, as well as helping the environment. Everyone wins!
 
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You do know the economic and climate cost of a multi storey car park?
No one place is ideal for a park and ride...would need two, one each east and west.
Just fit the cablecars from the motorway at each side...Keele services on the M6 would be fine for me.
...and JCB and the Towers don't get on.
 
rob666 said:
You do know the economic and climate cost of a multi storey car park?
No one place is ideal for a park and ride...would need two, one each east and west.
Just fit the cablecars from the motorway at each side...Keele services on the M6 would be fine for me.
...and JCB and the Towers don't get on.
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I’m all too aware building a multi-storey isn’t desirable environmentally. It is however a good substitute that takes up less space, and in the case of a park & ride, can fit on a constrained site.

In terms of JCB and Alton Towers not getting on, it’d be interesting to know why that is, and if it has anything to do with traffic to the resort (which seems a likely factor) such a P&R scheme would benefit both companies in this sense.
 
Like myself and many others who only go to Alton Towers once a year are happy to pay the parking charge and the 1’s who go multiple times have annual passes with free parking so I guess visitors who get a train and bus to the park is less than 5% so they not gonna spend millions on a parking garage and buses to bring them to the park.
 
GJMarshy said:
In terms of JCB and Alton Towers not getting on, it’d be interesting to know why that is, and if it has anything to do with traffic to the resort (which seems a likely factor) such a P&R scheme would benefit both companies in this sense.
Click to expand...
JCB & Alton Towers not getting on dates back to the John Broome days. When Broome started to develop Alton Towers as a theme park, I believe he held the "I'm the biggest & most successful businessman in the area & can do what I want" view. This annoyed the Bamford family (owners of JCB). JCB was founded in 1945, exports worldwide & has revenues in the £billions... makes Towers look rather poor.

Certainly Broome had little regard for the planning rules, as in the 80's it was quite common for a flat ride to be there one season & gone within 2 years. Broome knew he could put something in without appropriate planning permission. When enforcement action started, he applied for retrospective permission, then drgged his heels through the subsequent appeal to Secretary of State & enforcement process.

I would also guess the noise from the theme park may be an issue for at least one of the Bamfords who lives very close to the park. Admittedly in the opposite direction of the imfamous Ropers (the prevailing wind is normally in the Ropers direction). The way the then Alton Towers management dealt with the Ropers complaints, i.e. "we'll see you in Court"... we all know how that case went.

I can't see the Towers traffic being much of an issue for JCB. Their New Cab Factory & World Parts Centre have excellent access to the A50. Their World HQ in Rocester has good access to the B5030 - admittedly only a B road but it's normally a clear-run to the A50. The main Towers traffic from Uttoxeter only starts to clog up when it hits Denstone onwards on very busy days. As the JCB factory in Rocester probably works 24/7, it's not exactly difficult to work the logistics and dispatch deliveries outside of the times when Towers traffic may be an issue.
 
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