Blackpool Council have revealed plans for the annual illuminations switch-on event, which will once again be held at the Tower Festival Headland venue. Unlike last year, the main switch-on event will be totally free; however, to compensate, two further shows are scheduled to take place over the same weekend. This is almost certain to cause mayhem on the promenade, and particularly for the tramway which always suffers when such events are held at this controversial venue.
Last year, two concerts were held to celebrate the illuminations being switched-on, with tickets for both being sold, and neither was hugely successful. With this in mind it was hoped that the powers would be would have put the many people who have no interest in such events first and keep disruption to a minimum for the 2014 ceremony, but in fact the opposite has happened and this year there will be three evenings of musical entertainment. The actual switch-on event on Friday 29th August will be free, but further shows on Saturday 30th and Sunday 31st August will not. The former is being billed as a ‘West End Musicals Night’, whilst Sunday’s concert is being headlined by X Factor star Rebecca Ferguson, with a supporting cast of pop acts from ITV2’s ‘The Big Reunion’, including Liberty X and Atomic Kitten.
Due to the close proximity of this site to the tram tracks, to accommodate extra seating the normal procedure is to close off the tramway along the adjacent section of promenade, leaving the trams to operate a split service. Trams from Starr Gate terminate somewhere between Manchester Square and Tower, with passengers travelling further north then having to walk to North Pier to continue their journey. Unless Blackpool Council have some tricks up their sleeves for 2014, this unpopular practice looks set to return for the first three evenings of this year’s illuminations, which once again shows complete and utter contempt for regular tram passengers who have no interest in watching pop stars. The heritage service will also face disruption, with no illumination tours likely to run for the first weekend of the lights, which was once a lucrative time for these tours.
It seems that lessons have not been learned from last year’s heavily criticised attempt at cashing in on the illuminations switch-on weekend, and although the free event on the Friday night is a positive step (albeit one that is going back to what happened before 2013!), the expansion of the weekend from two days to three is very disappointing. It remains to be seen whether these events will be better supported than they were in 2013, although as last year’s headline artists were much more well known and still failed to shift tickets, it is difficult to understand the thinking behind creating so much potential misery for local residents and tourists alike.
Details of the tram service that will operate on the weekend of 29th – 31st August will be posted here on British Trams Online once confirmed by Blackpool Transport, so anyone planning to visit at this time is advised to keep checking back for further information.
Stanley Park or the Winter Gardens should be used for this sort of thing, especially during the illuminations. The inability of the council to learn that this sort of disruption is not acceptable to the travelling public is unbelievable.
Ken. Whilst I do understand what you mean, those two venues sadly would be impractical as the whole point of holding the switch on ceremony on the prom, is so that when the handle is put down, the result can be seen. It was moved from the former Central station site for just that reason. So to then move it 3 miles inland or indoors would be even more pointless. Although I admit to move the whole display into the park, just like they did in Morecambe or Walsall would perhaps be more sensible as then they could charge and get some, or all, of the £2 million a year it costs, grabbed back.
Why can’t they move the concerts back to where they used to have the switch on? I’m sure this was the original plan for this year. A large number of visitors and locals turn out for the first night and to expect them to trail up the prom and battle concert goers is ludicrous. Not to mention the fact that BTS is council owned so all the lost revenue from first night tours does hurt the council!
We might see a change of heart, but bearing in mind all the hype around the Tower Headland site I can’t really see them not using it as that would seem like admitting defeat! Fingers crossed that common sense eventually wins, but somehow I can’t see that happening this year.
Blackpool is lucky that the so-called Tour de France is not being held on the promenade or they would have closed the trams for days. The arbitrary closure of main streets in central Cambridge for this event will cause massive disruption to the buses in Cambridge in July. I have heard the cyclists will be in Sheffield so I fear the same will happen there to the trams. Why the closure of the trams for concerts etc. is not classified as “wilful obstruction of the highway” I do not know. Who pays for the disruption? The people who are disrupted.
The whole promenade redevelopment (note I don not use the word ‘improvements’) has been nothing but a shambles. From the pointless newsprint artwork thing outside the tower to the ridiculous grassy field that never seems to get cut and encourages pedestrians to walk on the tram tracks, the whole thing is ridiculous!
There may be a hidden motive to disrupting the tramway on switch on weekend though, in the fact that after the downgrade they haven’t got enough trams or crews to cope with the numbers of potential passengers on the prom.
Nobody can criticise the nasty plastic catterpillars if the service doesn’t run.
Of course with all these multi-millions of pounds worth of re-development in Blackpool over recent years, what SHOULD have happened is the designs should have taken account of illumination events and been able to cope with them. After all, it’s not like it’s a new phenomenon!
Have to say that the “pointless Newsprint artwork” is perhaps a little unfair and factually inaccurate. It is now the single most popular artwork in the area by far. You may not agree with it and you are entitled to that view, but it certainly can’t be called “pointless”, simply for the sheer number of extra visitors it attracts. The “downgrade” is again, perhaps a tad inaccurate, as without it, by 2017 the tramway would effectively be closed under DDA regulations. Again, I’m not saying you can’t disagree with the logic, but like it or not, when the funding was made available, transforming the tramway from an effective living museum to a fully working and expandable LRV system, was a bit of a “no brainer”.
And finally, to be fair, the redevelopments very much DID take account of the Illuminations. they were part of the plan. One of the main points of the headlands was so that the ceremony could be held in an area where the act of pulling the switch, showed the illuminations actually coming on, to their best effect. Central station site simply didn’t do that. Whether the council took enough account of how large the new headland should be to swallow the crowds without cutting the tramway in two, is perhaps another matter, but I am led to believe that this was enforced by the ergonomics of tidal shift and the headland is designed to be of the optimum size and shape to do this. Therefore the decision was made that the day to day effects and demands of the tide and erosion had, quite rightly, to take precedence over the odd day or two of disruption to the tramway, admittedly however annoying they may be.
I have to point out there was (and still is) no requirement for wheelchair accessibility on a British tramcar and this will not change any time soon. What it does say is public transport services have to be accessible, but not necesarily every vehicle on that service. Provided a basic access ible service is provided then a less accessible service can also continue. So 12 rigid low floor or lift equipped cars could have been constructed or converted (at least one of the Boat cars now in San Francisco can carry wheelchairs) for the basic Fleetwood service and everything else could (and should) have remained intact as something of special historical importance.
As for DDA regulations, why should they exist at all? Public transport in many parts of the world exists quite happily without them? When our history has been thouroughly trashed to provide flat access to everything everywhere I do hope the disabled users who benefit from being able to use public transport like everyone else also start to cough up the full fare like everyone else too!
Actually you are incorrect: Tramways are covered by the ‘Rail Vehicle Access Regulations’ (RVAR) and in simplest terms any vehicle which does not offer level boarding and two wheelchair spaces per vehicle may not be used on a timetabled public service after 2020. Non-accessible vehicles are (other than private hires, and limited stop tours) limited to a maximum 20 days use per year.
Without the Upgrade, there would be no tramway on which to run your precious Balloons and Railcoaches.
As for your last paragraph – thankfully you are in a small minority and 99.9% of readers take a much more enlightened view.
Whilst I freely admit that the cutting in two of the tramway is perhaps very unfortunate, my other comments elsewhere in this thread, perhaps put in some context some of the alleged reasons. They admittedly don’t fully excuse them, but just perhaps better explain them.
However, my own personal gripe regarding the severing of the tramway is perhaps more about ethics than just the inconvenience.
When the tramway is severed for such events, it appears that you cannot, (or certainly couldn’t last year and I can’t see it changing), purchase a through ticket. Say you wanted to go from Pleasure Beach to Cleveleys, you could only book from Pleasure Beach to Central Pier, or if lucky, maybe the Tower and then you had to get another ticket from North Pier to Cleveleys. The new cost of the required two separate tickets, disproportionately exceeded the temporarily unavailable original single one and to then add insult to injury, you had to walk between the two terminus points of the enforced two separate journeys, despite the same company that owns the trams also owning the buses that then could have been organised to bridge that gap. This then perhaps could at least be so easily and ethically remedied as it simply smacks of BTS making extra maximum revenue from an inconvenient situation, whilst also annoying the innocent travelling public in a situation over which they have no control or fault.
Without the so called ‘downgrade’ and the ‘nasty plastic caterpillars’ there would ultimately have been no Blackpool tramway in a few years time. There was no viable alternative to the upgrade that would have made any financial sense.
It is quite probable that 80 years ago Walter Luff had to put up with similar comments from died-in the-wool traditionalists of that time who objected to his introduction of Railcoaches and the phasing out of Dreadnoughts and other trams.
I am jumping in here, playing a little bit of a “Devils Avocate”. I can understand many of the comments on this site are in favour of the tramway, after all this is an enthusiasts site.
But the world unfortunatly turns around other requirments other than a living museum. Yes, it is a shame that Blackpool modernised and the vintage trams came off regular service. I will not touch that subject, it has already been debated very much.
The Illuminations is also very much an institution, and we are lucky that it has not suffered too much for the moment. Look at “official” vistor numbers, and all is great. But I remember 10 or 20 years ago when the queue to get to the prom started almost back at the M55, and not just on weekends. Last year when I visited, hardly any trafiic jams, and this is becoming normal. So visitor numbers must be dropping.
So it is a logical step for the Council to try and put a little “umph” back into the Illuminations. And I for one actually think the work on the Prom is an improvement, and is a very pleasant place to be.
As for the concert, yes this is an inconvieniance to the trams. Go to Nice in France, a much larger city, many more tourists, and certainly more regular tram users. But every time there is an event in the centre of Nice, they use Massena square through which runs the trams. At these events, the trams are turned back at either side, in fact crossovers were installed for this reason from the start. Another plus for the City is that this section is where the trams are running on battery (Nice has hybrid trams), so no overhead. And guess what, even with no bus replacement service, the residents of Nice live with it just fine.
One of the disadvantages of trams back in the 50 and 60’s was their inability to be diverted when problems arose. It is no different in 2014.
In addition, talk with the business who have to pay through their commerical taxes some of the cost of the Illuminations and I am sure that they are hapy with the idea of trying to bring in more people for these events.
So yes, for the enthusiasts it is an inconvienance. But we the enthusiasts need to also look at the larger picture. If this does not please you, then go an see the Illuminations on another day.
To finish, please treat these comments as they are meant, a look at the subject from a different point of view. Maybe not to everyone’s taste, but hey, we live in a democracy so good to see different points of view.
I think the main issue here is the inconvenience to the travelling public rather than the desires of tram enthusiasts. If the event does give Blackpool a boost then it may just turn out to be worth the disruption, but I honestly can’t see that happening. Last year’s concerts featured Gary Barlow (a late replacement for The Script) and Madness – all three of these acts sell out big venues very easily, yet people voted with their feet and gave the events a miss. Bearing this in mind, I fail to see how Rebecca Ferguson is going to shift more tickets than they did! I’d like to bet a lot of peoples’ reaction to her name being announced was probably “who?”