Swiss stop stays
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• Complaints to Westminster City Council by the Swiss Centre concerning the use if Wardour Street as a sightseeing excursion terminal have led to the Metropolitan traffic commissioner Air Vice Marshal Ashford severely limiting the street's use.
London Pride Sightseeing Limited was seeking two new sightseeing licences with separate terminals in Coventry Street and Wardour Street to replace an existing licence in Coventry Street with a picking-up point in Wardour Street. The application for a new Wardour Street licence was opposed by the City of Westminster. Each of the new licences sought a maximum number of departures per day of 25 compared with the existing licence's total of 15 departures.
John Burch, operations controller of London Pride, said it only wanted Wardour Street as a back-up to use when it was not possible to use the Coventry Street point. In fact Wardour Street had only been used on six occasions since 1984.
Robert Nelson, a traffic engineer of the City of Westminster, said the Swiss Centre felt that the use of Wardour Street as a terminal would effect deliveries, and be a danger to the public making use of the centre. Irregular use of the point was part of the problem, as the Swiss Centre thought it was something new each time and that resulted in letters of complaint and threats of complaints being made at ambassadorial level. The council wanted clarification of when the point would be used and some guarantee that it would not be used as a feeder point.
Burch said London Pride would be quite happy to inform the Swiss Centre in advance when it needed to use Wardour Street.
The traffic commissioner said he was not satisfied that the use of Wardour Street would prejudice the conve nience or safety of the public. Some people would be prejudiced, but the wider public interest required stops to be located where demand was. There would need be massive prejudice to frontage owners before that balance was disturbed. However, he felt that the scale of the proposed increase in the maximum number of vehicle departures would have a detrimental effect on both the traffic situation and on public safety.
He therefore granted both applications, restricted to 15 vehicle departures per day, imposing the standard London sightseeing conditions. Those are: that no vehicle operate before 10.00 or between 16.30 and 18.00 except on Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays; that no vehicle will stand at the terminal longer than 15 minutes at a time; that there will be no more than one vehicle at the terminal at any one time and that no vehicle will be left at the terminal unattended by the driver.
In addition Ashford attached conditions to the Wardour Street licence that the service is to operate only when the company is unable to operate the Coventry Street service for some good reason, and that the traffic commissioner is to be informed within seven days of each and every occasion it proved necessary to run the service with an explanation of the circumstances.