Newcastle United put forward green travel plan

Dec 19 2008 by Tony Henderson, The Journal

A TRAVEL plan is in the pipeline to move more Newcastle United fans on match days – but not by car. The green plan is being proposed to reduce the number of Newcastle United fans using their own vehicles to go to home matches.

The club wants to encourage alternative and more sustainable ways of travel to games and with gates of around 50,000 United would score some significant environmental points.

The travel plan would be funded by annual contributions of £233,000 from the club.

Today, United will ask city councillors to agree to a revision of an agreement reached eight years ago when planning permission was granted for an extended St James’s Park. This required the club to contribute to various highway improvements and also to provide agreed levels of car parking.

Separately, the club provides subsidised public transport in the shape of the Magpie Mover scheme, via an annually negotiated deal with Network Ticketing, which is jointly owned by the transport operators of Tyne and Wear including Nexus and the bus companies.

This allows match day travel by public transport for supporters within Tyne and Wear at just £13 for the whole season.

The Magpie Mover scheme started with a take-up of around 3,500 and that has now doubled but it is considered that the scheme has much greater potential.

One of the main aims of the new plan is to boost Magpie Mover, which would be overseen and promoted by the city council, but would continue to be run by Network.

Under the original agreement, where the club cannot provide the required number of car parking spaces it must make additional payments towards public transport provision.

As part of the revision to the agreement these payments up to the end of the 2007/08 season will be used as funding for the new Supporter Travel Plan to promote sustainable travel to home games.

United wants to replace the current system based on two separate agreements with the council and Network Ticketing with one agreement with the council, and planners are recommending approval.

The new agreement will be centred on a sustainable travel plan for supporters, which would include the investigation and provision of travel by additional public transport options, promotion of walking and cycling and stricter enforcement of match day parking to reduce indiscriminate parking problems.

The travel plan would be managed by the council, advised by a board consisting of council representatives, Newcastle United, Network Ticketing and Nexus.

Planners say: “The club is keen to improve sustainable travel options and to move to this new way of working as soon as possible. Subsidised travel passes are only one part of a sustainable travel solution. The club understands that more needs to be done with respect to match day travel.

“NUFC are committed to ensuring supporters’ travel to matches is managed as sustainably as possible. To this end they are keen to ensure alternative modes of travel are promoted and also any match day parking problems are managed to minimise problems of road safety and impact on residential amenity.

“The revision to the legal agreement secures the future of already successful initiatives such as the Magpie Mover.

“Additionally it introduces much more flexibility as to how any other match day travel issues are dealt with.”

A Nexus spokesman said: “Network Ticketing already provides the Magpie Mover, a really cheap way of getting to games at St James’s Park. However, we would be delighted to sit down with the club and the city council to look at how we can encourage more people to use public transport to get to games.

“Metro and buses are undoubtedly the best way to get into Newcastle on a match day. It removes all the hassle of finding and paying for somewhere to park the car.”