pitlamp said:
It would be advisable for our regional body to have a say in this.
The British Mountaineering Council's response to the Snowdonia Green Key strategy is here:
http://www.thebmc.co.uk/outdoor/access/greenkresp0202.pdf
The main thrust of the Snowdonia Green Key scheme was the provision of park-and-ride facilities on the edge of the National Park and banning visitor cars from the park itself. The Peak Park may have considered this idea but chucked it out after the Snowdonia experience. The Green Key strategy failed for two reasons:
1. Snowdonia NP never convinced the local people that visitors would be able to get to where they wanted to go using the park-and-ride buses. The logical extension of this was that fewer people would visit and the local economy would suffer. The congestion charge system is an improvement on the Green Key scheme because people can still get to where they want to get to conveniently (in their cars) so this argument won't work.
2. Opposition by the local tourist industry who argued that the increased cost (£3-£5 for the park-and-ride scheme) would deter people from visiting and an already impoverished area would suffer further from reduced tourism. This argument won't work in the Peak for two reasons: 1. the Peak is more affluent 2. since the Lake District and eventually Wales are likely to introduce similar schemes at the same time, people are more likely to just swallow the charge rather than be displaced elsewhere.
I would like to see the BMC, BCA and Ramblers Assoc. working together to agree a common response to any proposals. In practice I would expect the BMC and Ramblers having vastly greater membership, to have more resources to devote to this. For example, the BMC have a full-time, paid Access and Conservation officer. Since climbing in the UK is becoming more and more peak-centric, I would expect the current post-holder to be very interested in this type of policy. I know that the BMC and Ramblers communicate alot. Not sure whether the national caving body has been involved much with them in the past. I know that when the mountaineering world was opposed to the Green Key strategy many individual climbing clubs also submitted their own responses to the authorities.
That said, I live in an area of Sheffield which is suffering from massive congestion and you cannot just do nothing. In the last year it has become just about impossible to get to and from my house at certain times of the day (i.e. at morning and evening rush hour it can take three quarters of an hour to travel half a mile). I would be against more road building in the Peak and congestion increases carbon emissions, makes it hard for residents to get around etc. In the absense of any better ideas I may support a congestion charge as long as other practical and viable methods of transport (park-and-ride, bike lanes) were put in first. Yes - it might deter a few less well off people but the country is an entirely different place to 20 years ago and we might have to accept this cost.
