Yesterday, Janet Finch-Saunders, Member of the Senedd for Bangor, Conwy Môn, and Welsh Conservative Shadow Cabinet Minister for Enterprise, Connectivity and Energy, highlighted the vital role that well-maintained and accessible pavements play in encouraging active travel.
Janet said:
“We all want to see more people embracing active travel. However, it is essential that every necessary step is taken to ensure people can do so safely.
“For wheelchair users, parents pushing pushchairs and pedestrians more generally, access to well-maintained, unobstructed pavements is absolutely vital. It is difficult to overstate the importance of ensuring pavements remain safe and accessible for everyone.
“Too often, particularly on new housing estates, we are seeing motorists parking on pavements because there is insufficient space to park outside their homes. This can leave pavements completely impassable, putting pedestrians in danger and forcing them to step out into the road to get around parked vehicles.
“This practice must come to an end. I have called on the Deputy Minister for Transport to urgently implement a ban on pavement parking and ensure that it is properly enforced.
“We cannot allow the introduction of this ban to be delayed or, worse still, abandoned altogether, as happened under the previous Welsh Labour Government.”
Responding, Deputy Minister for Transport Mark Hooper MS said:
“There is beginning to be real cross-Siambr agreement on the need to address the issues surrounding pavement parking. A number of Members have written to me about this, and it is probably the issue I have received the most correspondence about.
“It is important that we get on with it, and I have my officials working on it now.”
ENDS
Photo: Janet Finch-Saunders MS/AS
