Thursday, January 31, 2008

Climate Change Bill shunned by Cardiff MPs.

Although these MPs have all had hundreds of letters from constituents NONE of the Cardiff MPs have signed this EDM, nor have John Smith MP for the Vale of Glamorgan, or Julie Morgan MP for Cardiff North, or Kim Howells MP for Pontypridd. Plaid Cymru Williams, Hywel has signed.

You can check if your MP has signed using the link below.
http://edmi.parliament.uk/EDMi/EDMDetails.aspx?EDMID=34898&SESSION=891

Please contact your MP today using the link below asking him/her to sign the EDM to give us a bigger safety margin.
http://www.foe.co.uk/campaigns/climate/press_for_change/email_mp/index.html

Early Day Motion

EDM 736
CLIMATE CHANGE BILL
21.01.2008


Griffiths, Nigel

That this House welcomes the introduction of the Climate Change Bill to Parliament and the United Nations Development Programme's (UNDP's) recent Human Development Report which described the Bill as a bold and innovative proposal to create a national carbon budget; notes however that the UNDP also warned that the Bill needed improving as its targets were not ambitious enough, and international aviation emissions were excluded, meaning that even if the Bill were applied to every developed country, global temperature would rise well beyond the two degrees Celsius limit and perhaps as high as four or five degrees; congratulates the Prime Minister on his speech on 19th November 2007, when he acknowledged the evidence now suggests that as part of an international agreement developed countries may have to reduce their emissions by up to 80 per cent.; and urges the Government to support amendments to the Bill during its passage through Parliament to address the UNDP concerns, making it an unequivocally world-leading response to climate change.

Saturday, January 12, 2008

Save the St Mary Street road system

Call is made to shelve St Mary Street road system
A TORY councillor has called for the controversial traffic shake-up in Cardiff’s St Mary Street to be shelved until after the St David’s 2 development is complete.more

Lets control the petrol heads and give a voice to others like pedestrians, envoironmentalists, the elderly and disabled people.

Thursday, January 03, 2008

Save our parks

This application involves a 2 lane access road into the arboretum area from North Road to allow articulated lorries to enter the park to service events in Coopers Field (the Council’s aim is to maximally commercially exploit this area of the park) and the nursery (which is to be expanded). Needless to say this will radically affect the character of this area of the park (see Max letter below). The modified proposal I doubt will differ much in substance, since the site for the access road had already been cleared.
Both the Bridge and the roadways are quite out-of-scale and will significantly damage the Park this quite and sensitive part of Bute Park. Vehicles/traffic through it will be intrusive. The loop by the Nursery will ruin that corner and will become used for parking.

The arboretum has many special trees, including memorial trees and plaques; some may be damaged directly, but their setting moreso.

The uses as access to Coopers Field and to the Nursery study centre can be provided in alternative ways that avoid impact on this sensitive area of the historic park.

Alternatives

Access to Coopers Field is only occasional and hardly a problem. 'Do minimum' and access via the south side of the Music College (by the tennis courts) should be considered. The latter would be direct onto Coopers Field, with a new bridge, still intrusive but at a less sensitive and less frequented point.

Access to the Nursery study centre should have been considered under that planning application. We are told the Ambulance station route cannot be used, but access for occasional vehicles could be achieved with benefits for access to the playing fields (for events like Race-for-Life) round the north of the changing room building. School buses/minibuses would park outside (in public car park or take over the haphazard uncontrolled parking area to the north of the carpark entrance); construct a separate new footbridge for children to walk through.

Bridge - the Bridge design should be minimal, taking vehicles one-way with a waiting area in the woodland for the very infrequent occasions when vehicles meet.

Roadway - 4 metre roadway is over-wide. It will encourage two-way traffic, and vehicles will go over the edge onto the grassland in practice. This is especially true of wider vehicles (HGVs etc.). As rising bollards controlled from the Nursery are proposed at the North Rd entrance, similar bollards could be placed at the exit from Coopers Field and controlled to ensure vehicles do not meet.

The black tarmac used two years ago to surface the old park track is unnecessarily intrusive; the brown surface of the other roadways was and is preferable.

In summary, I argue for rejecting the whole scheme for its severe impacts on the Park. The present application says too little of impact on trees and nothing on alternatives or balancing impacts against 'benefits'. A scaled down project, with minimal bridge and roadway, excluding the whole loop to the Nursery, would have much less impact but should be compared with alternative options as above, and these put out for public consideration.