The bus stand issue is not going to go away
Thursday, 8th October 2020
‘Our lives have been worst affected by the plan to move the 168 bus stand’
• IT was interesting to read the new chair of Hampstead Neighbourhood Forum, Stephen Taylor, clarify the role of the HNF in moving the 168 bus stand (Letters, September 11) and the timeline involved – years of public consultations and drafting a plan which was put to referendum and accepted by Camden in 2018.
As residents of Fleet Road, where the 168 bus stand was relocated without warning on August 13, we find on inspecting the forum plan that the top end of Fleet Road and top of Constantine Road have been included in the HNF area map even though these streets are in Gospel Oak ward and not Hampstead Town.
We haven’t been included in any of the consultations or the referendum over the past four or five years, however, even though our lives have been worst affected by the plan to move the 168 bus stand. So, are we in the HNF area or outside it? Further clarification needed please.
The problem about switching use of the green from a bus stand to a recreational area has always been what to do with the buses which serve tens of thousands of passengers every day. You can’t propose one without a solution to the other.
Relocating the bus stand to Fleet or Cressy roads was debated democratically and at great length with Camden Council and Transport for London in 2004/5 and categorically rejected. Nothing has changed since then to justify an expensive consultation into the same proposal again.
South End Green Association are well aware of this and also the bitter division and disharmony these ill-considered attempts to move the buses create. Not the desired outcome of the Localism Act, I’m sure.
Fleet Road should never have been a proposed site for the relocation of the 168 bus stand, let alone the only one.
Camden’s wish to hold a consultation about making it permanent – presumably as a result of the HNF plan – affects the whole of the one-way system, Fleet, Constantine, Agincourt and Cressy roads, as empty 168 buses are now having to loop round it every six to 10 minutes; something the council has already rejected.
HNF should either have extended their consultation and referendum to include all of these roads, so that they know what is going on and have a say, or Camden should not allow it. This move is mired in obfuscation.
Our 168 bus stand petition on change.org has already gathered nearly 200 signatures. This is an issue which is not going to go away.
TAHIR NAWAZ
Fleet Road, NW3
