Imagine All The People.

As businesses edge ever closer to the last quarter of the 2015 financial year many will start reviewing the year just past and start to scrutinise whether or not it has come up to the meticulous financial planning that took place some nine or even ten months or so ago. As each of Waterford’s many City Centre businesses give due consideration as to whether 2015 has been a good, bad or just an average year we must bear in mind that there as some circa 1500 people employed across our City Centre and as such our City Centre is one of our largest “employers” and the success or failure of our City Centre will impact on everyone who lives, works and plays in Waterford.

There can be no doubt that increasing footfall in the last quarter of the year will be welcome, but I fear that it will not be enough for a number of businesses who are once again literally hanging on by their fingertips – it seems that this is becoming a rather worrying annual trend!

We need to address a more constructive and creative way of increasing the footfall right across the entire City Centre and we need to ensure that our City Centre becomes a destination that attracts and encourages a higher spend from right across the wider South East region and further afield.

At present we can see continued pressure on our City Centre businesses and there is repeated increased pressure on these businesses in terms of paying the “day to day” associated business costs. In fact there are many business owners now having to resort to paying for business bills and expenses on their own personal credit cards just to survive from one month to the next. Yet this message of hardship does not seem to be being addressed and there are many people that quite wrongly assume that if you are in business today in Waterford you are making a fortune! How wrong can you be!

Let us not be in any doubt that Waterford is on the third or last tier of Ireland’s economic recovery and we lag so far behind the likes Dublin, Cork, Limerick and Galway that it will take significant investment and help to get us near to any sort of meaningful recovery, let alone on par with these other Cities that are now so far ahead of Waterford that we may never catch up. By the very nature of this lopsided, central belt, recovery the South East and North West will need considerable economic incentives that far exceed what we are currently receiving at the moment.

Our City Centre employers must have an opportunity to compete and this in turn will create employment and this in turn will generate greater spend and this in turn will increase footfall – it really is a case of ever increasing circles. But alas there are those who cannot see these opportunities and rather than use carrots to get our localised economy moving, once again we are being beaten with not one stick but several sticks all at once.

So just how do we increase the footfall through our City Centre and that is the €64,000,000 question?

Our festivals certainly bring additional footfall to the City but they do not necessarily bring increased spend for our hard hit commercial rate payers. The many festivals that we can now call annual events do continue to be reasonably successful but as with all events they have a lifespan and there are pluses and minuses to holding and staging such large annual events.

Unless these are staged as part of an overall “festival plan”, that avoids “clustering” of events, then there will be a diminishing return on our investment. In addition due to the fact that we continue to see falling or stagnant footfall to the City “clustering” our festival automatically equates to lessening the economic benefit for the commercial rate paying businesses in our City.

If we are to become a “festival capital” capable of rivalling the likes of Galway City then we must try harder to get it right, and perhaps more importantly we must work harder to get a greater “buy-in” from the very businesses that are paying their part through annual commercial rates contributions. At present many of these businesses see and perceive no or very little financial return and therefore we will continue to see issues around “buy-in”. Perhaps the messaging is all wrong and just maybe certain stakeholders are just expecting businesses to “buy-in” without examining the messaging they are delivering. Or at the very least they are wrongly “assuming” they have got the messaging right when in fact the only people on the same page are those closest to them and not the wider City stakeholders.

In a past life I organised trade exhibitions all around the UK and to keep these exhibitions fresh and relevant we had to introduce new exhibitors every year, we had to develop the exhibition every year and we had to be very creative with the messaging every year. If we got all that right we would continue to see annual increases in visitor numbers and increased visitor numbers meant more income for the exhibitors and this in turn gave the exhibition longevity. Get it wrong and an exhibition would very quickly become extinct. As I see it attracting people to our City Centre is much like attract people to those exhibitions I once relied on to make a living. In the exhibition industry we needed to have lots of carrots and there was not a stick to be seen anywhere.

One of the other recurrent issues with driving footfall up in the City Centre is of course the perceived cost of car parking. As a City we can now see mounting pressure attracting people from residential areas such as the Dunmore Road into the City Centre. The now huge variety of new shops and free car parking available in and around Ardkeen means there is less of an incentive for people to travel those extra few kilometres to the City Centre.

Drive past this area of the City and you will see many, many cars parked and many people shopping. And with the imminent proposed start to the excellent GIY project there will be literally many more attractive carrots in this area that will prevent even more people coming into the City Centre.

So it seems that unless we come up with a holistic approach to ensuring the renaissance of the City Centre we will continue to see it struggle and we will continue to see footfall remaining stagnant or falling. We really must come up with creative solutions that communicate the unique selling points of our City Centre and we need to give our City Centre businesses a much needed helping hand.

Let us stop looking for radical consultant lead answers when every man and his dog knows what is needed. We seem to be trying all manner of complicated solutions and yet the answers may well be right under our noses.

Road to ruin for your car or bike!

For those who have been reading this blog for some six months now will know that in the last year I have quite openly come out and I am now a MAMIL (Middle Aged Man In Lycra)!

Yes, I have taken up road cycling with the Waterford Biscuit Club and I have somehow now become one of those people on a bike that one way or another seem to infuriate some of our vehicular brethren.

I have read and heard about cyclist hating drivers’ texting, emailing and commenting on programmes such as Deise AM, in recent weeks, and also passing sentencing on cyclist in line with Minister Donohoe’s new fines for us MAMIL’s.

Readers who know me more intimately will know that I am a self-confessed petrol head and I have raced XR2’s around Knockhill and also owned all manner of interesting cars from a 1964 Mini Cooper S, Triumph Dolomite Sprint, MKII Escort Mexico, Escort Turbo, Astra GTE and so on right through to my current generation one Mini Cooper S – I really have had the whole gamut of boy racer cars and some say I am still driving one today (midlife crisis maybe)!

Whilst, I do agree that there are some poor cyclists on our roads I see proportionately far more very bad drivers who still insist on using their mobile phones, I see children not suitably restrained in the front and backs of cars, people who treat a roundabout as a “squareabout”, people who ignore the speed restriction signage and above all I see lots of very angry people in vehicles who are quite plainly one hoot of their horn away from a serious road rage incident!

The fact is that everyone who is entitled to use our roadways and laneways should do so with the utmost respect for other road users. And yes this might mean having to lift the occasional hand to say sorry rather than flicking one or two other digits at an offending road user. Life is far too short to be Mr Angry all the time and to be honest it does take far more effort and concentration to be the ubiquitous “I don’t believe it!” grumpy Mr Victor Meldrew rather than a Mr Happy.

All local road users share the same tarmac or in the case of the roads in Waterford City I would imagine we share some of the worst road surfaces in the whole of Ireland!

I travel in and out to the City Centre on most days of the week in my wee Mini Cooper S and due to the hard suspension and low profile tyres I feel every bump and hole in the patch work quilt that we now call the Dunmore Road. Yes, I understand that the roadwork’s are a necessity and that at some time in the very far, far future the surface will allegedly be remedied but we all know that the surface will NEVER be returned to resemble what is was prior to the road works starting. We will end up with a rubbish surface that needs and demands constant future attention and expensive Council resources.

However, I did not quite realise just how bad the Dunmore Road surface had become until I had the misfortune of cycling up it last Sunday with fellow Biscuit Ian. I would describe the experience similar to hiking in the Alps or Munro bagging in Scotland. To justify the surface as a “road surface” is to say the very least stretching the boundaries of the definition of both of these words. To make matters worse I have recently upgraded my “shite bike” and now ride a thoroughbred steed and naturally enough I wish to look after this bike and I believe that sometimes the road surfaces around the City must be damaging my bike, my car and me!

 

From the People’s Park to Ardkeen roundabout is patchwork quilt of varying surface materials, lots of very big lumps and some huge bumps, sharp edges that will tear at tyres and alloy wheels, gravel and loose material that has simply been swept into the cycle lane, drain and form edges that stand proud of the road and a whole myriad of other issues that should be of concern to every vehicular and cycle users alike.

I cannot for one minute accept that what we are currently being asked to navigate on is tolerable to any road users and you have to wonder if the people in charge of this engineering catastrophe actually use this road for their daily commute. And as for the radio adverts asking people to find alternative route well I am sorry but this is Waterford and not London and there are NO alternative routes especially when school term time is upon us and the airing of these advert seems to be a simple box ticking statutory exercise.

Also, remember that this road is THE gateway to our coastal villages and sandy beaches and in many respects our shop window to and from the City. This is one of the main arteries that feeds our City and brings commerce into and out of the City Centre. The Dunmore Road is also the main access route that cuts a swath right through the City Centre to access all parts north, northwest and east of Waterford City.

During these summer months and weeks just how many visitors, tourists or cruiser liner visitors will travel this route in and out of our City Centre and wonder if they are in fact travelling on some sort of third-world dirt track road when they should be one of the smoothest surfaces available to vehicular traffic?

This the wrong impression we will be giving the very people who we need to come to Waterford to spend their money directly into our local economy? As we are lagging so far behind other tourism destinations do we not have to be ahead of the game and constantly be better than our competitors.

If we are collectively promoting a positive message around our wonder coastline, our heritage, our culture and so on, the very least we can do is ensure that the roads that people need to travel on to access these attractions needs to be up to par and unfortunately they are not.

Is it acceptable that at the height of our tourist season we are willing to accept the “Boys from the Blackstuff” finish? Albeit a temporary finish, we are told, but as temporary finishes go this has to be atrocious, appalling, inexcusable and is it in fact an intolerable surface for any of us to use?

As our shop window to the City and the County the Dunmore Road is at the moment the worst window display you will ever see and we have to ask just what are we saying about our City if we find this surface appropriate?

I have a feeling that just as Minister Donohoe’s new cycling fines will see lots of Lance Armstrong’s now living in the City the Dunmore Road will remain a navigational nightmare until such times as the whole road is resurfaced perfectly.

We really have such a long way to go to get the simplest of things right.