The Gower way – people, business, environment, and transportation.

1. Preface: A health warning

Not COVID this time, although, for sure, the pandemic encourages us, nay forces us, to look at people and place in new ways. Health, air quality, environment and business.

What follows is a proposal to value and sustain the hugely popular Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) that is the Gower, South Wales, part of the City and County of Swansea.

The priorities are based on the Gower environment itself, the activities and businesses that arise from that, and the maintenance of its qualities as a visitor attraction. The lives of residents and businesses, and the accessibility for visitors, is not to be undermined; the challenge is to find a way of limiting the factors that damage or threaten to damage the very basis of Gower’s popularity.

There is no illusion that caravan and camping sites, restaurants, parking sites, other attractions, let alone the long established agricultural lands, will not be affected. Nonetheless, the foundations of that viability are in danger. If we protect them, then value can be sustained and improved. That will entail detailed discussion and consultation with all parties, not least with the big sites out at eg Llanrhidian, Three Cliffs, or Broughton, and the parking areas of the National Trust, the Penrhys (Penrice) Estate and others.

Here, is offered a sustainable alternative, not least in an effort to promote that dialogue, before piecemeal initiatives prejudice or even continue the destruction of this most valuable natural resource.

2. Introduction

The AONB area of Gower

Gower is one of Britain’s most beautiful and popular visitor locations with a diverse range of attractions and activities. From surfers to ramblers, with holiday-makers and local day-out trippers in between, hundreds of thousands of visitors enjoy Gower each year. And then there are the local businesses, the farms, the producers, the activities, the quiet enjoyments.

Those of us that live with this gem witness, year on year, increasing encroachments on the precious landscape – the wearing down of dunes and pathways, traffic demands, queues and parking, pollutions in their various forms, the pressures for development.

On the European mainland, haven for tourists galore, an anecdote of the pandemic is the renewed pleasure local people experience of the beauty and freshness of their lakes, rivers, countryside and coast, free from hoards of tourists and their vehicles. There is something there to treasure.    

Although population data gives us a figure of around 75k in ‘Gower constituency’, the number of residents in AONB Gower itself is probably not much more than 10k, in under 3k or 4k households.

A recent report [i] claims that there are only 150k visitors each year but that Gower could accommodate well over 2 million, even with social distancing! No we couldn’t! For starters, the visitor count it is likely to be several hundreds of thousands, possibly over a million, or more. Recent data indicates as many as 4 million visitors to the area and one can assume that many will visit Gower[ii].

Residents enjoy or dislike the overwhelming number of summer visitations in equal measure. How much can be accommodated – residential, spatial, and vehicular? Mostly vehicular: for starters, over 90% of residents have a motor vehicle and most use it to go to work.  

Even at quiet times, Gower roads and junctions into the city can be too busy with vehicular traffic. During the high season, traffic jams and long queues are the norm.

The pressure on the natural environment, the conflict between the very desire to visit and the effect that has on the means to get there, is already a danger to those invaluable attractive qualities.   

If the qualities, character and pleasures of Gower are to be sustained and preserved, the first target has to be motor vehicle access. The use of cycles on Gower is currently under consideration, with new ‘off-road’ cycle tracks and road improvements high on the agenda of engineers. Both entail encroachment on land, whether it be common, private or roadside verges.

This paper advocates zero or minimal such encroachment, and is concerned to protect existing bridleways, the domain of horse-riders and walkers, perhaps the odd cyclist (but not a major alternative cycle route). Instead, we look to measures to reduce vehicular access, improve public transport and give extensive road-safety status to cyclists.

3. A ‘Gower Environment Vehicle Levy’

Call it what you like, a substantial charge for non-resident/ business vehicular access to Gower will reduce traffic. The balancing payback, in addition to established homes and business, would be a much developed public transport system and cycle provision, e-bike stations, how about specialist taxi systems for surf-boards, loads of holiday kit for the kids? Let’s talk about all that.

The charge will provide resources to sustain both the environment and alternative provisions.

A committed investment in regular inter-connected bus circuits, along with painted road surfaces for cyclists will be considerably cheaper than new tarmac roads, tracks, drainage, signage, and markings. Only five or six camera-controlled entry points, at a relatively modest counter-cost, and modelled on the likes of ‘smart’ London congestion charge, or the road bridges into Manhattan, can do the job. It may be that this is best applied only over the summer months.

Ongoing discussion will resolve feasible bus-routes, parking provisions and their location outside of the controlled area.

4. For Locals..

Residents and businesses will have free-pass car stickers. A much improved bus network will certainly benefit locals. [iii]

5.   For Visitors..

Visitors that choose to take their car will have to pay a whack, perhaps reimbursed by restaurants, caravan sites and the like. A good bus network provision will make eating and drinking on Gower ok for a couple more pints or glasses of wine. It might even encourage more overnight stays.

Bus links from the city to the Gower entry points will make or break some of these options, but we are entering the sort of detail that can be resolved with constructive application and consultation.

Control points at the Gower side of Gowerton (probably 2), Dunvant, and Bishopston, plus maybe another 2 at Upper Killay will do it. (No sneaking in from Thistleboon!) Clearly, there is much to discuss.

From these points, circuits or arterial routes will spread over Gower.

The road system on Gower. (From Google Maps)

There are some obvious local, half-hourly(?) bus circuits – Reynoldston, Burry Green, Oldwalls, Llanrhidian; Oxwich, Slade, Port Eynon, Scurlage, Rhossili. I don’t know; that’s just me having a first dab at it.

6. Safety by bike.

Stabilising traffic volume and speed of motor vehicles is also to be further considered. The current 40mph regime is a good start. Enforcing it may be a bit more of a challenge but progress is being made.

Cycle lanes defined (along with further ‘give way’ measures. (This from Utrecht, thanks to Graham Smith)

An exercise defining on-road cycle provision with coloured surfacing will also help reduce speed. A coloured lane, both sides, with a broken white line will, at least formally, require drivers to slow and give precedence to cyclists on Gower roads.

In reality, it is only on very rare occasions, with volume traffic coming from the opposite direction, that there is a significant vehicular slow-down issue. This is the virtual reality at present, albeit with little safety provision for cyclists.

Both-side cycle lane marking would apply on all main ‘arterial’ roads – Gowerton Road (etc), Tirmynydd Road, North and South Gower roads, maybe more.

7. Conclusion.

This is an outline proposal; much further detailed consideration is required.

At this stage, despite some awkward commercial matters, there do not appear to be any major obstacles other than the ‘philosophical’ ones that we are currently beginning to grapple with (I am delighted to say). We are not alone in this endeavour, yet Gower does give us reason to get on to the ‘cutting edge’. The New Forest has been trying for a while and others will soon surface [iv]. 

The aim here is to promote wide discussion, challenging the need for new road and trail works and, inevitably, more cars; prioritising a ‘high value’ Gower to sustain that wonderful natural asset on our doorstep.

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[i] https://www.prima.co.uk/travel/a33345537/uk-socially-distanced-holiday/#:~:text=With%20only%20149%2C089%20visitors%20per%20year%20to%20Gower%2C,whopping%202%2C230%2C410%20visitors%20while%20maintaining%20a%20one-metre%20distance.

[ii] Thanks to officers from the City and County of Swansea for assistance in clarifying these figures. The boundaries and relevant population areas are tricky. For this purpose I exclude the major populated (now) suburbs of the city – Mumbles, and some of north Gower.

https://senedd.wales/NAfW%20Documents/10-032.pdf%20-%2014052010/10-032-English.pdf  The constituency data virtually doubles the AONB area of Gower as it embraces north Swansea, up the Swansea Valley, taking in significantly higher density settlements. The heaviest density in the south Gower is in Mumbles, which is also outside the current discussion.

[iii] I have begun to identify feasible bus-routes, parking areas, and checkpoints but this is a matter for further study and is above my (zero) paygrade for this work. There are also large areas available at the airport, but my first impression is that this is already too far into the protected landscape.

[iv] Reeves, Chris (undated): Traffic Calming in National Parks https://www.hants.gov.uk/get-decision-document?documentId=6623&file=ITEM%207%202.pdf&type=pdf

GLG, September 2020

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