Concerned Citizen: "it didn't get my support"

We've been encouraging people who attend the St. Albans Tesco exhibition to take along a list of questions and write down the responses you get from the Tesco representatives.

You can participate in our collective intelligence gathering and reporting process by emailing your own notes to tescocampaign@yahoo.co.uk

Framed 4
Photo Credit:Choconancy1.

A few minutes ago we had our first email from someone who did exactly that - and who got some really revealing information out of the Tesco representatives, including that delivery lorries will have to reverse along the (admittedly widened) access from London road; work could start in two years and last one year; Tesco seems to assume that Ridgemont Road will be unblocked at Station end to allow traffic flow through; and that Tesco.com deliveries will be made from the store.

Here are the notes as we received them:

• 55,000 selling space sq foot store (70k total store area) of which 30k sq foot (55%) will be for food and the rest non food items. There will be no petrol garage.

•  Justified the need (and they referred to this numerous times) for a supermarket based on the council survey identifying a need for another supermarket in St Albans and they do see it as a town centre supermarket development.

•  The site will also include 3 / 4 non food independent shops on the site

•  Not open 24 hours (though would not say never) but did not know opening times, but will include Tesco.com deliveries from the store

•  Parking for 546 customer car park spaces (in a 2 story car park) with 2 hour limit to allow people to shop in the town centre too (I challenged them to do a supermarket shop and then walk to the town, shop and then back in 2 hours!)

•  Customer and delivery entrances on London Road with new traffic lights

•  Cars:15,000 customers per week to the store with 500 cars in/out per hour at peak times (likely to be Friday evening)

•  Of the traffic (per the model of Herts Highways based on 2005 traffic flows): 20/30% of customers are “pass by trips” – would drive there anyway but now stop off on way past to shop (not new traffic); 20/30% would be driving in local vicinity and just transfer onto London Road with equal people being displaced out onto other local roads (not new traffic); 20% no alternative and have to drive up London Road anyway (local residents/shoppers to the area) (not new traffic); 40/20% new trips to the supermarket.

•  But with road widening (filter lane), changing the light phasing in the whole area and the wider plans of Herts Highways for the area there will be no change in the traffic flow from the current position(i.e. it will not apparently cause any more congestion). Interestingly it also looked like they assumed that Ridgemont Road would be unblocked at the station as the model had lots of traffic flowing in/out of this direction (the consultant said he didn’t know anything about this).

•  Delivery lorries anticipated at 8 to 10 per day (though at this stage not known as do not know what size of lorries Herts Highways will let them use on the local roads). Would not comment on the time of day for deliveries

•  All delivery lorries from the M25 up the A1081

•  Delivery area is such that lorries coming off London Road will have to reverse so the reversing beeping noise will be there for each delivery.

•  Would not comment on how many tesco.com delivery lorries there will be

• Locally listed building will be knocked down and replaced with 71 homes each with 1 car park space.

•  Pedestrian access will be from London Road at same place as car access

•  New cycle routes to be added to London and Alma Roads but using the same access to the stores as cars

•  Stressed it was about retaining resident spend in St Albans as survey shows lots of people travel out of St Albans to shop but no interest in where this spend then goes. I pointed out that for the average Tesco store only 7% of store sales goes to the staff (to spend locally) the rest going to suppliers (70%), running costs (15% to nationally agreed contractors) and profit (8% to Tesco shareholders) so little economic benefit to the local area. The reply was we have no interest where the spend goes the council have identified the need to keep more spend in St Albans and this store fulfils this need.

•  No idea on lighting of the area / car park as has not yet been decided

•  Seemed very confident that Herts Highways and council liked the scheme

•  They estimated 2 years before building starts and then over a year of building work

•  Catchment area is the whole of St Albans

•  There are no current plans to extend the store in a few years time but would no rule the possibility out

•  They also kept trying to stress how green Tesco is!

After getting answers to all these questions, how did this local resident turned Citizen Journalist feel?

"In my view sounds like a traffic nightmare and I really don't believe the claims - it didn't get my support"