250 car parking spaces on each of the second and third floors

Proposals Ground floor to comprise: an enlarged bus station a comfortable waiting room with taxi desks and toilets. a set-down point for lorries and coaches new store for bulky goods Benefits: to improve environment for shoppers and motorists. to allow streets to be returned to people release old car parks for better use, e.g. town garden.

The proposal in this report is that a new and attractive multi-purpose building is erected on the site of the existing bus station/car park which would accommodate the capacity of Lortemore, Newton Lane and Broadwater Road car parks together with street parking from the Hundred and the Market Place. Only Orange badge holders would be allowed to park in these streets.

The ground floor of the new building, perhaps to be called Romsey Travel Centre, would have no car parking spaces and would comprise:

• a larger bus terminus than at present
• a taxi pick-up point
• a waiting-room for bus and taxi passengers and a taxi desk
• new toilets off the waiting-room
• space for a new shop retailing goods such as those sold by Currys or Dixons
• a drop-off point for goods (transport to shops by trolley)
• a tourist coach set-down point

Two floors built above this area would be used for parking cars.

The bus and taxi waiting room would be a pleasant and airy place with a part-glazed roof and background heating, seating, telephones, drinks machine and taxi desk. Possibly the nearby bakery would like to extend its cafe facility into part of this area. A call system, as fitted to Winchester bus stops, will be provided to let passengers know when the buses arrive.

Since the closure of the Southern Electricity Board's shop in the Market Place some years ago, the town has been without a sizeable shop selling a good range of electrical equipment such as washing machines, dishwashers, computers, hi-fi equipment etc. The proposed new shop would meet this need and would be of comparable size to the Co-op. Its shop window and main entrance could be on the access road opposite the Forbuoys newsagent where it would be well sited for passing trade. Possibly one of the larger companies would be interested in forming a partnership with TVBC to establish this shop. The whole complex could be supervised by a car park Superintendent by means of video cameras. Ticketing will be of the type where payment is made to a machine on exit thus relieving the pressure on shoppers to get back before the ticket time runs out.

Above all, the complex must be an attractive addition to the town – interesting in its own right. Such buildings need not be ugly – see how the New Street car park in Salisbury (picture on page 1) blends in with its neighbours.

4.1 A simple multi-storey car park – a cheap but unattractive solution

Before considering the parking capacity of the Travel Centre proposed above, it is instructive to look at the cost, in rough terms, of building a plain concrete multi-storey car park over the existing 88 spaces on the Broadwater Road site. The intention here would be to sell off the Lortemore site in order to fund improved and increased overall town centre parking.

The number of parking spaces in Lortemore is 112 which added to the existing Broadwater Road site (88) comes to 200.

If we choose to build a 4 floor building with 88 spaces per floor the capacity would be roughly 4 times 88 = 352. Overall town centre parking capacity has now increased by 352-200 = 152 spaces.

The minimum cost of this structure allowing £3500 per space (ref 23) would be £1.23m. Selling the existing Lortemore car park site would raise £1.25m (refs 24, 25).

This calculation puts a perspective on the proposed Travel Centre: it shows that the sale of the Lortemore car park would make a substantial contribution to any new scheme. However, a basic concrete multi-storey building would be ugly and is not proposed as a solution to the parking problem.

4.2 Parking capacity of the proposed Travel Centre

The proposal is for a three floor construction in which the ground floor, covering the whole bus station/car park site is as described in section 4 above. The two floors above it are dedicated to parking and cover most of the area of the ground floor. The area of the Broadwater Road site is about 6200sq m and at a nominal 25sq m/car space (ref 23) the two floors would hold about 500 cars in total. This is enough to allow closure of the Lortemore and Newton Lane car parks whilst still providing some 200 spaces more than the town has at present.

An alternative arrangement would be possible if agreement could be reached with Waitrose (or its successor) to build over their site as well as the bus station. This would increase the available floor area from 6200sq m to 9500sq m although two floors would still be required for parking if there is to be a substantial increase in total town parking capacity. Two floors on this site would allow parking spaces for about 750 cars – increasing the overall town centre capacity by 400.

There are clearly a number of combinations of levels and areas that could be considered. The purpose in this report is no more than to point to some of the possibilities.