Building work has at last begun on Basildon’s Sports Village. Scheduled to open in April 2011, it will provide sports facilites for gymnastics and swimmming. it will also include a sports hall and fitness gym with surrounding pitches for netball, football and rugby alongside the exisiting athletics track. It will be a great facility for residents of Basildon and nearby towns, but there is a problem.
Basildon council have decided to increase the existing parking area of 250 spaces to just 380. The additional 130 parking bays need to cope with the extra customers of the gyms and swimming pool. Anybody can see that it will be woefully inadequate. In fact it is not hard to add up how many space will be in demand as neighbouring sports facilities are closed to be rehoused in the Sports Village. The South Essex Gym has a parking area for 50 cars that is often full at week ends and evenings. Markhams Chase has about the same but the sports village has a fitness gym with 100 stations so lets expect 80 cars for them. The Gloustcer park swimming pool has 100 spaces, but many more people can be expected to use the bigger pool in the sports village, lets call it 150. The netball players say they need 100 spaces in the evenings, footballers will require the same. Add another 100 for rugby, athletics, the sports studio and sports hall and of course the staff theselves will need about 100 spaces. Oh dear it looks like we have exceeded the allocated spaces by about 300.
You may think that this is an overestimate because people will walk, go by bike, bus or car share. The fact is that most users of the existing facilities come from too far away. In many cases they are parents bringing children to sporting clubs after school. Cars are the only practical means of getting there for most people. The use of the parking spaces at the existing facilities peaks in the evenings and on Saturdays when they all fill up.
In fact the situation is a lot worse because the sporting vaillage has facilities to stage sporting events such as swiming galas or football tournaments. When this happens there will be a massive extra influx of spectators and competitors while the other usual club events still take place.
So what will happen? The only alternative parking in reach is in the shopping areas across the other side of Cranes Farm Road. People will be forced to park there and crossover to get to the village in huge numbers. Cranes Fram Road is a busy dual carriage way with a 50 mph speed limit and it has already been the scene of fatal accidents when people try to cross it.
So how many deaths on Cranes Farm Road will be needed before Basildon Council redo their maths and provide adequate parking spaces for the Sports Village? Let’s hope they come to their senses in time so that the answer is none.
