The Alton Bypass

[DiogoJ42]

Out of interest, how much did the new access road at Europa cost? Obviously that is not as long a route, and is on pretty much flat land, but it would be interesting to see how much they spent.

 

[delta79]

Back in 2008/2009 the cost of the Alton bypass was banded around at the £12m to £15m mark in the news papers.

 

[AstroDan]

Out of interest, how much did the new access road at Europa cost? Obviously that is not as long a route, and is on pretty much flat land, but it would be interesting to see how much they spent.

You should note that the junction of the A5 at Ringsheim and the road from there to the Europa-Park Car Park was built for the park.

Before this, access to EP was through small villages.

Attendance at EP at the time was less than what Alton achieve now.

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[Wilsy]

It's not just Alton's responsibility, the council are the ones that should step-up and contribute.

If the council contributed and JCB didn't get in the way it probably would have happened years ago.

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[Poisson]

If they won't do it, how about improvements and a park and ride system? Make most of the traffic bar local, Hotel and Priority/Disabled go into a car park then bus or mahoosive monorail them in.

 

[TheMan]

Out of interest, how much did the new access road at Europa cost? Obviously that is not as long a route, and is on pretty much flat land, but it would be interesting to see how much they spent.

You should note that the junction of the A5 at Ringsheim and the road from there to the Europa-Park Car Park was built for the park.

Before this, access to EP was through small villages.

Attendance at EP at the time was less than what Alton achieve now.

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Who fronted the cash Dan? Did they invest themselves or did officialdom contribute/build it?

I suppose the issue with that however, is I can't imagine EP have anything like the restrictions Towers do on building new attractions so creating wider infrastructure made sense?

 

[AstroDan]

All infrastructure projects are funded by a mixture of EP and the council.

EP have restrictions, not as bad, but they exist. They can only operate rides beyond 9.30pm once per year and rides such as Silver Star have a sound barrier.

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[TheMan]

All infrastructure projects are funded by a mixture of EP and the council.

EP have restrictions, not as bad, but they exist. They can only operate rides beyond 9.30pm once per year and rides such as Silver Star have a sound barrier.

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Right! That makes sense anyway because all benefit from infrastructure, the park can develop which obviously helps the local economy, a bypass would make Alton an altogether more pleasant/peaceful place to live and stay.

I don't know enough about the details, but I am sure the money would make itself back in the long term.

 

[Sam]

Chris is right, both the park and the local council have a responsibility to make this happen, if both parties want it to happen.

One of the duties of government is to provide the infrastructure for businesses to operate smoothly. Tesco have to pay nothing directly for all the roads that their lorries use. It's silly to expect the park for pay for this in its entirety.

 

[John]

I don't think the bypass is really needed anyway, they just need to upgrade some of the junctions and re-balance the traffic flows a bit to send more cars in from the west - this route seems to have more spare capacity than the roads through Alton village which is a major bottleneck.

 

[Alastair]

I think any potential bypass would be a major plus point, and a very worthwhile investment. One of the first things you hear people complain about when they get to/return from the park is how awkward it was to get there - how it seems to be "in the middle of nowhere" with inadequate roads. If there were a bypass, I reckon that people would go back more frequently as it would seem easier to get there (even if it wasn't actually a major reduction in travel time). Also, it would be good in respect to the local residents as a lot of the traffic would be diverted from going right past their houses.

 

[Scott]

I'm not entirely sure a bypass is worth all the hassle. However I can see the positives of such a project and the growth it could bring to Towers. I get the feeling that they played down its importance in the LDTP because they didn't want to commit themselves to needing one.

There are a lot of factors that make it nigh on impossible to do though. The split of the cost is one as nobody seems to know who should foot what bill and also the route for it cuts through land owned by JCB which they don't want to sell.

I do feel that local government should foot the vast majority of the bill though. They've passed planning applications for 30 years now which have helped Alton Towers grow into the major theme park it is today, it's their responsibility to show some investment in infrastructure in return for all the economic benefits Towers has given to the local economy.


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[Dave]

The issue with entering through Farley is if two large vehicles meet at the same time in opposite directions. Easily causes a clog, it's the busses that are the major issue on all routes.

 

[delta79]

There is problems getting a medium size car and a bus passed each other in some part of Farley lane. Trust me I use that route to get in from North Shropshire.

 

[GaryH]

Ok - ideal world scenario here.

2 large car parks. One on the side of the M1, one on the side of the M6. Car parks are secure, and coaches can use them too. Then, have a high speed frequent high speed monorail service direct into the theme park. Charge the current car parking charge which includes monorail transport.

At the theme park, the hotel car park remains but guests have to prove they are staying at the hotel.

Keep the smallish car park by the theme park entrance, but charge a stupid amount to park there, say £30 per car.

Remove the old monorail and scrap it.

Remove the old car parks and expand the park into them, so more rides can be built and Splash Landings waterpark can be expanded.

This will bring:

(a) less traffic through the village
(b) encourage people not to drive to the theme park unless staying overnight (give people a choice over the car parking charges)
(c) allow for more expansion of the theme park and hotels
(d) keep the locals happy
(e) be more environmentally friendly
(f) easier for people to get to the theme park than finding their way off the motorways to it

Of course, this would be extremely expensive to do, but entirely possible if AT put ALL the money over the years received from the car parking charges into the project.

 

[LiamC]

Ok - ideal world scenario here.

2 large car parks. One on the side of the M1, one on the side of the M6. Car parks are secure, and coaches can use them too. Then, have a high speed frequent high speed monorail service direct into the theme park. Charge the current car parking charge which includes monorail transport.

At the theme park, the hotel car park remains but guests have to prove they are staying at the hotel.

Keep the smallish car park by the theme park entrance, but charge a stupid amount to park there, say £30 per car.

Remove the old monorail and scrap it.

Remove the old car parks and expand the park into them, so more rides can be built and Splash Landings waterpark can be expanded.

This will bring:

(a) less traffic through the village
(b) encourage people not to drive to the theme park unless staying overnight (give people a choice over the car parking charges)
(c) allow for more expansion of the theme park and hotels
(d) keep the locals happy
(e) be more environmentally friendly
(f) easier for people to get to the theme park than finding their way off the motorways to it

Of course, this would be extremely expensive to do, but entirely possible if AT put ALL the money over the years received from the car parking charges into the project.

Even if they had the money this wouldn't be a viable option. I don't think the park would be able to do it without the full backing of local councils and governments, let alone getting around local groups that would absolutely reject this notion on both M1 and M6 sides of the park.

The distance from the M1 to Alton alone is roughly 45 miles via road. If you were to build a monorail as the crow flies you could perhaps cut this down by around 15 miles? That's a 30 mile long, high speed, modern monorail that the park would need to build. This would cut through miles and miles of countryside and farm land that is uneven and quite wide ranging in its topography. You would easily be looking at upwards of £100million I'd hazard a guess at and that's before we even had a look at doing it from the M6.

I know you've said in an ideal world but, unfortunately, even in an ideal world I don't think this would be viable full stop I'm afraid

 

[Alastair]

Ok - ideal world scenario here.

2 large car parks. One on the side of the M1, one on the side of the M6. Car parks are secure, and coaches can use them too. Then, have a high speed frequent high speed monorail service direct into the theme park. Charge the current car parking charge which includes monorail transport.

At the theme park, the hotel car park remains but guests have to prove they are staying at the hotel.

Keep the smallish car park by the theme park entrance, but charge a stupid amount to park there, say £30 per car.

Remove the old monorail and scrap it.

Remove the old car parks and expand the park into them, so more rides can be built and Splash Landings waterpark can be expanded.

This will bring:

(a) less traffic through the village
(b) encourage people not to drive to the theme park unless staying overnight (give people a choice over the car parking charges)
(c) allow for more expansion of the theme park and hotels
(d) keep the locals happy
(e) be more environmentally friendly
(f) easier for people to get to the theme park than finding their way off the motorways to it

Of course, this would be extremely expensive to do, but entirely possible if AT put ALL the money over the years received from the car parking charges into the project.

Even if they had the money this wouldn't be a viable option. I don't think the park would be able to do it without the full backing of local councils and governments, let alone getting around local groups that would absolutely reject this notion on both M1 and M6 sides of the park.

The distance from the M1 to Alton alone is roughly 45 miles via road. If you were to build a monorail as the crow flies you could perhaps cut this down by around 15 miles? That's a 30 mile long, high speed, modern monorail that the park would need to build. This would cut through miles and miles of countryside and farm land that is uneven and quite wide ranging in its topography. You would easily be looking at upwards of £100million I'd hazard a guess at and that's before we even had a look at doing it from the M6.

I know you've said in an ideal world but, unfortunately, even in an ideal world I don't think this would be viable full stop I'm afraid

I don't think he meant the car parks would be literally next to the motorways. I read it as though there would be car parks on either side corresponding to the two motorways (not too far away from the park itself though), so that traffic was routed into the park through two entrances rather than one.

 

[John]

The most logical place for off-site parking would surely be in Uttoxeter, as it's well located for both M1 and M6 traffic. The only way I could see anything like that happening though would be if they used buses to get people from the car park to the park itself, which is hardly a magical start to the day. Unlike the monorail, you'd also have to ensure the service ran well into the evening as there's no option of walking if you miss the last one. Capacity would also have to be much higher than the existing monorail for the same reason.

The problem with increased use of bus transport is that the roads simply can't cope with more large vehicles, as anyone who's caught a bus to Towers that has met another bus or lorry on those narrow roads will testify.

 

[Rob]

A park and ride system would never work. The idea of building a monorail from the park to a car park somewhere near the A50 is incredibly unrealistic; they would never get planning permission and rightly so. Then imagine if buses were used. They would need so many of them to cope with the amount of people arriving and leaving at peak times. Can you imagine having to wait for a bus back to a car park after a concert for example? Well over 20,000 people all leaving at the same time. It just would not work.

 

[Dave]

The issue with park and ride is it's the busses that can't cope on those roads, the cars are inconvenient for locals but the roads can manage them. The busses are a nightmare and if two meet on farley lane or in Alton village its stupid.