Going green is the theme for the future of Birmingham, and the Jewellery Quarter is no exception. Some of the main routes could become gardens, so if you thought it was bad enough getting around the Jewellery Quarter now, it could get a whole lot worse. Seems as if the plans are for younger, fitter generations, but that discriminates against the less mobile people such as disabled and the elderly – the cities will be almost no-go areas for them.
Even now the Birmingham Council does not help with the seemingly over-abundance of traffic wardens in the area, along with ‘Pay and Display’ meters not working (new ones very slow to appear). Says on some machines to use another machine, but most of the time you can’t as they are different for each street. Then you try to pay on the App and that’s not working, what are you supposed to do? Go home, and forget whatever you came to the JQ for?
A Jewellery shopkeeper pointed out to me how confusing to outsiders the public car park is, they had a client with a parking space on Vyse Street but accidentally brought a ticket to the Vyse Street Car Park, they presumed as parking on Vyse Street it meant the same thing – so they got a parking ticket. It did not say off-street public car park only.
In principle anything that improves the Jewellery Quarter is good, but emergency services still need access to all areas, as do delivery wagons – delivering groceries becoming more popular and even construction vehicles to do the ‘new buildings of the future’, with net zero heating systems of course! Keeping it green…
Mark
