FOOT STREETS

Readers old enough to remember the city of Norwich when the cattle market plied its trade within sight of the battlements of the castle, will also recall London Street. This narrow little thoroughfare still helps to connect the cathedral precinct to the Norman open air market - one of the oldest markets in the country, by the way - and is one of the nicest streets the city has to offer. Busy, yet relaxing. Except that way back when, it wasn't relaxing, if you see what I mean.
In the 1950s it was also busy, and narrow, and this was the problem. Continuous two-way traffic meant that if a pair of vehicles met half-way they had to mount the pavements in order to pass. As for pedestrians, they had to get out of the way as quickly as possible, and most often cower in shop doorways. Something needed to be done, not only about London Street, but about the city as a whole.
First came 'foot streets,' a Continental invention eventually adopted by the City Fathers to cover not only London Street but also Gentleman's Walk and the market. There was great opposition, of course. Ban vehicles and it will kill trade. How will shops get their stock delivered? What about elderly folk who won't be able to get the shops if they can't park outside?
The debate raged until, finally, the London Street 'foot street' - as it was called at the time - was finally introduced. It was a stunning success, of course, and plans for an expansion of pedestrian-only areas were put on the agenda.
But this was only part of a bigger problem, that of rapidly increasing volumes of motor traffic which were slowly bringing the city to a standstill. What to do, though? Should the city welcome vehicles into its inner core, knock down dozens of buildings (and so destroy a chunk of the heritage of Norwich), and build flyovers and bridges and two-lane thoroughfares? Or should it try to keep the combustion engine at bay?
One of the first attempted solutions was ring-and-loop, a scheme which prevented vehicles from driving through the city but allowed them to gain access from the ring road, park at a multi-storey car park, and leave the city by the same route. It seemed to offer partial relief, and the plan was begun. Then it came to a standstill.
Next came the one-way system (also bitterly opposed, of course), when new one-way routes were - brilliantly, I think, recalling the scale of the problem - somehow fitted into an essentially Saxon and Victorian maze of streets without too much demolition.
Thus Norwich thankfully avoided the worst excesses of some of the motoring schemes, many of which devastated other cities. The age of concrete, to an extent, passed Norwich by. Of course, there were other setbacks. A Light Railway scheme was debated and then allowed to fade away, a hurdle only the much later development of park-and-ride schemes has managed to overcome.
I have two regrets. Having recently been in Manchester and looked with envy at their Metro (the locals call them trams) system, I thought it something Norwich might want to debate again one of these fine days. And it still saddens me to see Tombland, perhaps the finest open space aside from the market in the central city area, divided by vehicles. Tombland cries out to be a pedestrian-only area, if only it could be fitted into the general plan of things.