PROPOSED ZIP WIRE - PARKING & TRAFFIC INFORMATION

Hi All,

In this post I’ll be talking about the parking and the Park and Ride system we will be putting in place. I’ll also talk about the volume of traffic (busses) we would generate.

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In the planning application you will see there is a plan to put a car park, a welcome cabin and turning area for the electric tram on the site of the old smelter.

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This car park covers a small percentage of the site, yet provides parking for 120 cars.

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From that I think it is fairly easy to draw the following conclusions:

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1. There is plenty of parking for the predicted number of visitors to the Zip Wires.
2. If there were any overflow from the planned parking area, the extra cars would just park on another bit of the old smelter site, NOT the streets of the village.
3. The reason we set up a park and ride was to ensure that all visitors parked where we want them too. It also ensures that there aren’t loads of lost drivers stopping and blocking the roads around the village.

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Why did we plan to put the car park at the old smelter site?
That’s really easy, we didn’t want to turn the area at the old pier into a car park. We know the setting there is beautiful and obviously don’t want to change that.

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Why not use the huge brownfield site already there rather than cut down trees and fill a waterside location with lots of cars?
There will still be public footpath access to the pier area. The Zip Wire being there just means the roads and paths down there will be maintained. We intend to make the area by the pier far more usable for people to enjoy the fantastic scenery down there.

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So a little about the vehicles we are planning to use. The first point to mention is the land train or electric tram as I have heard it described. As its name suggests it is electric, minimizing both noise and exhaust pollution. If you are going to have some sort of bus transporting people around the village this seems the best sort to us. We estimate that at peak times this bus would make 3 return journeys per hour between the car park and the pier.

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Unfortunately current electric vehicle technology hasn’t progressed far enough for us to use an electric bus to get visitors up to the launch site so we’ve had to go for diesel busses for that. However, unlike any other operation that we know of, we haven’t gone down the route of using smoky old ex MoD trucks. We’ve sourced state of the art 4X4 busses that conform to the highest current emissions

standards possible. That’s not all, these busses can be run on B100 bio-diesel a totally sustainable fuel source.

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Why 4X4 busses I hear some ask?
This again is to ensure the safety of our staff, passengers and other road users while we are climbing the road to Mamore Lodge. Whether it’s icy or if there is mud on the road we’ll be able to ensure that our vehicles are sure footed and in complete control going both up and down the road. At peak times we predict that there could be up to 4 return trips per hour through the village, again not too bad a traffic load for roads that used to carry every car that traveled the A82.