I’m sure I’ve seen plans for a renovation of the “civic quarter”, just north of this, before but nothing seems to have come of them.

Landscape architects BDP are behind this latest spruce-up-your-town plan and have set up a blog WhatIfWatford as part of the consultation process.

Over recent years through reports in the local paper there seems to have been somewhat of an obsession with reducing the size of the pond and talk of urban beaches and outdoor icerinks so I expect whatever happens we will see the pond shrink.

The consultation comes amid accusations from the Police that nightlife has left the town centre is out of control – still it appears the actions of drunken revellers have a lot to compete with for the prize of worst behaviour in Watford town centre.

Perhaps one of the most obvious changes in recent years in this area has been the overhaul of the underpass in summer last year. It is now brighter, lighter and actually not too ugly in its latest incarnation as a white walled “art gallery” showcasing scenes and people from around Watford.

The consultation boards can be found here. Designs are due to be completed by the middle of the year for feedback with work commencing in 2013.

Photos: Underpass – staticgirl, Pond- Jamie Moore. Both CC BY-NC 2.0.

The area of the bid which would have the greatest impact on the park is the plan for a large new “hub” building, or visitor centre, north-east of the paddling pools and playground area approximately where a wooden toilet block currently stands. This would house a park ranger base, cafe, indoor events space and education facilities. No details were given on the scale of this building, the only real visualisation being a photo of a wood-cladded building in another park. In general I think this is a good idea as the current facilities are rather dated and inadequate, though I wonder what kind of events would take place in the events space.

The 5 angular buildings directly adjacent to the paddling pools would be demolished and replaced with another building of similar size servicing the paddling pools.

There are in addition plans for the Shepherds Road entrance to the park. The Cha Cha Cha cafe could be extended and the nearby council unit demolished. A suggestion is made possible new playground for older children in the area between Cha Cha Cha and the basketball and hard tennis courts.

The bandstand, currently located outside Watford Central Library, could also return to the park from where it was removed several decades ago.

Also proposed is “landmark” for the eastern entrance of the park. Watford residents of more than about 40 will of course remember that the Cassiobury Park Gates once stood here which were unceremoniously and unpopularly demolished for the widening of Rickmansworth Road. From the rough sketches on display the Harlequin we are looking at something far less substantial and impressive – seemed like some concrete-looking pillars engraved with “Cassiobury Park” and adding more flower beds.

The consultation seemed very vague with ideas for improvements scattered throught the park and woodland area with only outline details on each individual proposal. My opinion from is that the council/design agency behind the proposal appear to be seeing how they can use up £5 million of money rather than aiming for any specific much-needed improvement.

For instance there is a plan to entirely re-do the Paddling Pools area with two larger paddling pools and fountains taking up a slightly larger area that currently – these were refurbished just a few years ago.

Other ideas include the restoration of Lime Avenue (sounded like cutting back of trees and undergrowth) and work to better link up Whippendell Wood with the rest of the park as well as work near the canal and improvements to other park entrances.

More unusual suggestions included the possible reintroduction of cattle(!), apparently this popular in London now, and a hydro electric power generation near to the weir in the nature reserve.

I didn’t see it on any of the display boards but talking to one of people presenting the proposal to shoppers today revealed a possible plan to remove the car park extension from the end of the tarmac car park and replace it on the lower side. Whether or not this would be a permanent concreting over of parkland I don’t know.

Apparently some .pdfs of the proposal will be available on the council website however they don’t appear to be online yet.

All in all I was rather dissapointed with the vague nature of what was on display today. Hopefully they’ll take the ideas that are best received and flesh them out in more detail before showing them again to local people before February when the proposal will be submitted for funding.

Each year fireworks are the big attraction on the Saturday nearest November 5th at the Watford Council organised event in Cassiobury Park.

Relative areas from counts of “bon” and “work” in referring keywords  - cc(0) clker.com

Looking at the search terms queried which resulted in a visit to CassioburyPark.info on November 5th showed that traffic sent by fireworks related keywords outnumbered that from bonfire searches by 33-to-1.

It isn’t all Fireworks though.  The bonfire remains but gone is the Guy Fawkes judging contest, and effigies of him or “celebrities”.  Along with the main display there is also an earlier Fireworks display for small children and a stage featuring music from local musicians.

“Sounds like the worst ‘firework’ display ever” writes Mike Duce on Twitter. (yF).

Traffic

For the past three years there has been a noticeable rise up to the day of the Fireworks display which has been the busiest day of the year.

Guess when the Fireworks were!

There has been massive year on year growth in the number of event related searches.  This year saw more mobile visits to the site on the day of the event than visits from all platforms to the site a year ago.

Comparing November 5th 2011 with a year earlier (November 6th 2010):

• Desktop visits increased 125%
• Mobile visits increased 398%

On November 5th 2011:

• 38% of visits were from a mobile device
• Heavy use of Apple devices saw Safari as the most used browser

What mobile devices are people using?
Apple devices are the most popular by far with traffic from iPods exceeding the total mobile traffic served from the SymbianOS, Windows, Nokia and Samsung operating systems combined!  They other devices aren’t all phones either with iPads accounting for about 20% of all mobile traffic.

The proportion of mobile visits which were made from an Apple device fell from 81% in 2010 to 73% in 2011 but this was more than offset by a 342% increase in the absolute number of iOS visits.

Keywords and Google Suggest

Continued evolution of Google Suggest and its ability to impact search queries is apparent with 3 of the top 4 search terms ending with “2011″ compared to just 1 ending “2010″ the previous year.

The average length of each referring search query also increased, from 2.8 in 2010 to 3.2 in 2011.

How does this compare to the rest of the year?
In every year for which Analytics has available data, there was a higher proportion of mobile visits on the day of the event than over the year as an average. This is unsurprising given there are few other times a year when there are tens of thousands of people in the park at a time.

Both the proportion of and absolute number of mobile visits are increasing year on year.   The growth in mobile traffic from 2010 to 2011 was 300%, and the proportion of visits made from a mobile device has risen rapidly from 9% in 2010 to 22% this year.
 

The site

There isn’t a separate mobile version of the site and truth be told I haven’t ever seen the site on a mobile phone other than my own.  I will have to try accessing it on some of the most popular devices to ensure that the site looks okay on them.
 

The Event

In the old days an “anything goes” approach was taken to bonfire building.  Nowadays it’s much smaller and pretty much all pallets.

Me standing in front of the large bonfire in 1999.

In the 1990s there was the Computacenter hot air balloon, glow sticks, sparklers, hot-dogs barbecued at various places and the crowds were held back by rolls of orange mesh fencing.  They even used to let cars park on the grass.

Nowadays the park resembles a building site by the end of the preceding week with large steel fences rather earirly erected around nothing but empty parkland in the days before the event.  The barbecues have been replaced with a semi-circle of professional catering trucks, a truck load of portable toilets are dropped off, the bonfire has moved up the hill, the fences further back and cars aren’t allowed to park near the event.

Don’t get me started on the Rainbow Festival.

According to the running results of the Save Watford Met survey: “68% of Watford Met users say using Ascot Rd Stn will add 11-31 mins to their trip, 38% 21+ mins. Only 6% will save time”

The booklet handed out at the recent Croxley Rail Link public consultation states “the walk between Watford Met and the proposed station at Ascot Road is 1.2km. On average this would take about 15 minutes to walk… currently, work is being done to see if there are any improvements that could be made to the walking route”

One of the routes between the current and proposed station today (shown below) measures 0.9 miles according to Google Maps which it estimates takes 17 minutes to walk. That’s about right as it took me 16 minutes 32 seconds when I timed it earlier today. Not wanting to get up at a normal 7:30 (since I am on holiday!) I instead walked about three hours later in the day. There wasn’t much traffic about and at several points I could have easily crossed both Rickmansworth Road and the bottom of Whippendell Road without using a pedestrian crossing but as I am sure that there is significantly more traffic along these routes at about 8 in the morning I crossed using only traffic lighted pedestrian crossings to give a more realistic figure.

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Leaving Watford Met I headed down the steps at the left hand side of the station to Station Approach. In the nearest platform was one of the new air-conditioned walk-through Metropolitan line trains which I have yet to actually catch. The station car park was full. Not a single space left as I headed past the flats at Cassio Metro.

The vegetation along station approach was rather high but the route is fairly well-walked. One thing that struck me when walking along Rickmansworth Road was the number of crossings – plenty. There are traffic lights with pedestrian crossings either side of the junction where Station Approach reaches Rickmansworth Road, followed by 3 “Pedestrian refuge” crossings and a traffic lighted crossing just after Cassiobridge Road.

I walked past the former fire station site where new houses are under construction and around to Whippendell Road where I crossed using the puffin crossing near the Premier Inn. I headed past the dilapidated Sun clock and headed under the dis-used railway bridge over the old Ascot Road next to which the proposed station would be built and stopped my timer.

On to those “improvements that could be made to the walking route”. I found one dangerous road crossing on my walk. Not along the route between Watford Met and Ascot Road stations but between Ascot Road and the Watford and Croxley Business Parks as I continued my journey.

The picture below shows the view looking back towards the old Ascot Road from in-between the two carriageways of the new road.

On Google Street View (below) this doesn’t look so bad as the Street View Car is in the middle of the two lanes at the time, the vegetation has also since grown! As the road approaches the roundabout it bends to the left which further hinders a crossing pedestrian’s view of on-coming traffic.

If you were driving in the left hand lane I do not believe you would see someone waiting to cross the road just after the telegraph pole until you were pretty close. Perhaps more importantly it is impossible for pedestrians to see more than 20 metres or so of approaching traffic as they look right before crossing Ascot Road.

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I would imagine that this crossing is not often used as there is a route around the other side of the roundabout which does not involve crossing the dual carriageway itself and is on the correct side of Hatters Lane for accessing the Watford Business Park (mostly warehouses) and most of the Croxley Business Park (offices). Despite this lack of use I would say the current crossing is rather unsafe, thankfully traffic should be heading to a stop at the roundabout.

There is a secondary, presumably quicker route between the current and proposed Metropolitan line stations that I may try tomorrow (weather permitting!). This route uses Swiss Avenue and Gade Avenue, reducing to just a few hundred metres or so the distance that needs to be walked alongside the busy Rickmansworth Road. Crossing Rickmansworth Road when exiting from Gade Avenue can be done either at the roundabout (without traffic signals), or by turning the wrong direction down Rickmansworth Road and crossing at the lights next to Cassiobridge Road.

View Larger Map

There were 4 recent days in which Watford and Croxley residents could see the proposals, speak to some of those involved in the scheme and complete consultation feedback.  I wasn’t able to attend myself (due to exams and being a hundred miles away!) but a couple of attendees have blogged about what they saw at the exhibition in Charter Place.

Supporting the link is former Watford resident Diamond Geezer whilst Lester Wagman is campaigning to save the existing Watford Metropolitan line station which would close if the Croxley Rail Link goes ahead as currently planned.

The Exhibition Video

The video below shows the path trains will take if the Croxley Rail Link goes ahead.  Starting from the present Croxley station tube trains head towards the existing Watford station before travelling over a newly constructed viaduct branching off to the right.  The viaduct spans Rickmansworth Road between the Cinammond office and Harvester before passing on the Rickmansworth Road side of the Sea Cadets building and crossing the Grand Union canal on a new bridge before pulling into the proposed elevated Ascot Road tube station.

Do people understand the scheme?

It appears that many don’t, and not just in the sense that some current users of the Watford Metropolitan station don’t know that it would close if the link goes ahead.  Judging from some of the comments left on the petition against the closure of Watford Met some people don’t actually know what the benefits of the scheme are.

Take for instance this comment left by a “Save Watford Met” petition signer, extract as follows: “With extra homes being built in the area including a large apartment area on the sit[e] of the old fire station it is ridiculous that this closure is planned”. The old fire station site on Rickmansworth Road will be just a couple of minutes walk from the proposed Ascot Road station, considerably quicker than it would take to walk to the existing Watford Met line station on Cassiobury Park Avenue.

Hopefully the exhibitions will have informed more local people about what the scheme actually involves as it is a large scale development project with many aspects.

Park Ward Councillors
Previously I’d just heard a rather vague mention from the MP that he supports the proposal but would prefer an alternative in which the existing station remained open. In his latest blog post Lester says that the Mayor also expressed this view publicly but in a letter to an objector of the scheme said that “a solution that involves Watford Met being retained… has apparently failed”. [Quote is of Lester, not the Mayor].

Finally I have heard the views of the two Liberal Democrat councillors for the Park Ward in which Watford Metropolitan line station lies.

Cassiobury Focus June 2011 (Lib Dem)

I am not aware of the views of the third local councillor Malcolm Meerabux who was elected as a Conservative but fell out with the party and is now an independent.

Will be interesting to see how this develops.

New stations would be built at Ascot Road, which provides access to the Watford and Croxley business parks, and near the Hospital with trains continuing via Watford High Street to Watford Junction station. The plans would also result in the closure of the existing Watford Metropolitan line station located in a housing estate.

The project has been in the proposal stages for the last 20 years or so but only now is it being considered for the £80 million of central Government funding that will be required to help fund the remainder of the project (decision due December 2011). A recent Watford Observer article about Lester Wagman’s 850-signature petition to keep the existing station open, which I signed a couple of months back, ignited discussion of the project on the newspaper website and Twitter.

History

When the Metropolitan line railway was initially extended to Watford in 1925 it was intended to link the line up to the High Street, and indeed a ticket booking office was even constructed on the road which is currently a Wetherspoon’s pub. The construction of the link to the High Street would have required large sections of Cassiobury Park to have been dug up so that a cut-and-cover tunnel and ventilation shafts could be installed. The owner of the land at the time, The Earl of Essex, refused permission for this to be done. Therefore the Metropolitan line terminates at its existing station on Cassiobury Park Avenue.

Watford Junction already has trains to London Euston operated by London Midland and Virgin Trains as well as a London Overground service. Previously the Bakerloo Line of the London Underground was routed to Watford Junction via the Watford DC Line now used by the Overground services.

Proposed Route

Tube trains currently cross this bridge over the Grand Union Canal to access the Watford Metropolitan line station. Turn 180 degrees and you will see a disused bridge that used to carry the Croxley Green Branch line until it was closed in 1996.

A 400 metre viaduct is to link the two tracks at around this point. I haven’t seen a detailed plan with the exact viaduct location marked on but this diagram below, taken from the Business Case report for the project, shows the new viaduct as starting immediately after the Tube line crosses Baldwin’s Lane.

Before the dual-carriageway Ascot Road was built the track of the Croxley Branch Line used to cross approximately here (below) but the embankment was demolished so the road could be built.

The proposed Ascot Road station would be located between the two Ascot Roads. A plan of the station can be found here (pdf). The Old Ascot road is still crossed by a bridge but this section was singled tracked, the Croxley Rail Link would require it to be double tracked.

The next station on the line was originally intended to be a rebuilt Watford West station on its current site off Tolpits Lane (pdf), however this has now been scrapped in favour of a proposed Watford Hospital station which will be closer to the site of the Watford Health Campus.

Below: Closed and overgrown Watford West station (not much to see!)

Are there alternatives?

If it is so desired to have a Tube service to Watford Junction it would be significantly cheaper to reinstate the previously operated Bakerloo Line service which would not require new viaducts or stations to be built. However the rail link proposal additionally includes 2 new stations and these are obviously key parts of the plan. Both will be located in sensible areas – one alongside a business park and the other near to the major Health Campus redevelopment. In addition, the provision of an “alternative route” into London from Watford Junction (away from the DC line) is listed as one of the “key benefits” of the scheme in a report outlining the business proposals for the Rail Link and this would not be achieved by re-extending the Bakerloo Line.

The Croxley Rail Link Business Case document puts forward and then scraps a Croxley Busway alternative. Buses would travel by road from Watford Junction before entering the disused Croxley Branch Line at Wiggenhall Road. Stops would be made at the hospital and at Ascot Road before the bus returned to the public road linking up with the business parks and Croxley Station.

Lester Wagman’s petition is not against the whole idea of the Croxley Rail Link asks for the consideration of “other options for the scheme” which would not involve the closure of the existing station. An extension of the St Albans Abbey Line, which is to be converted into a tram, along the Croxley branch line with to a re-opened Croxley Green station is suggested as an alternative to the Rail Link by Lester. This would link North, Central and West Watford however would not fulfil the criteria of providing an alternative route in to London.

MP and supporter of the the Rail Link Richard Harrington apparently doesn’t see the closure of Watford Met as a done deal if the project is to go ahead, after unsurprisingly finding that there was “overwhelming support” from people living the near station to keep it open. The paper quotes him as saying “There’s a possibility it will continue as an extension of the Metropolitan line as it is now, particularly because the case for London Underground is they need somewhere to store trains at night anyway and that’s an ideal place for it, which would help to facilitate the station staying open.”

Other suggestions that have been made on the Watford Observer article include building the link but retaining the existing Watford station and alternating trains between the two branches. Whilst that may seem like a good idea I can envisage just a token service to the existing station and doubt that both Ascot Road and Watford Met stations would survive long-term.

Effects of Station Closure

The Business Case report states that “closure of Watford Met station will result in some worsening of access to rail for a small number of households in the Cassiobury Park area though this is significantly outweighed by improvements in access to those in south, west and central Watford, where significantly more residents (of poorer areas) gain benefit.” I can’t really criticise that though I imagine those who chose to live at the recent Cassio Metro development, which is directly alongside the current station, or in the houses built on the back of the school playing fields (because that was a good idea…) might not be too pleased!

New Housing Developments near existing Watford Met Station

As my local station I obviously wouldn’t ordinarily be in favour of it closing but this scheme provides an alternative in the Ascot Road station. I used the Watford Met station to travel to school in Rickmansworth (whilst hundreds travelled from further in the opposite direction to a school just up my road, but that is another story…), and to work London over the summer. My dad has used the tube to get to work for many years. According to Google Maps it currently takes 4 minutes to walk from my house to the current Watford Met Line Station, if the Rail Link goes ahead it will be 13 minutes to the Ascot Road station. Yes, not as convenient but not too much of a difference and the project also clearly benefits a greater area as one station will be replaced with two.

Those living on the Cassiobury Estate will in addition be able to chose between catching the tube at Watford Junction if it is quicker than adding what will probably be about 10-15 minutes to their existing crossing of the park.

In the Watford Observer article Lester cites his main concern as being for the “families of children who attend Watford Grammar School for Boys” as well as those heading from Cassiobury to Rickmasworth. “If the replacement station is in Ascot Road, they will have to walk along Rickmansworth Road and cross it at some point, which is going to take them 20 minutes. It’s going to be a road safety nightmare.” I find “road safety nightmare” a ridiculous reasoning, if children aged 12 and above cannot cross a road safely when there are pelican crossings at the junctions with Hagden Lane/Station Approach and also outside the Kia garage then something is wrong. Those travelling to Croxley Station to go to Rickmansworth School already have to cross this road.

No word is given as to what would happen when the existing station closes though I think chances are it would lay abandoned until it and the track are demolished and replaced with flats.

If price was not an issue the Croxley Rail Link would certainly improve the availability of public transport across West Watford, however I don’t think that it should be a priority especially when there is already access to the London transport system from Watford Met and Watford Junction stations. Given the massive costs involved with the scheme, the fact that the proposal has already been drawn out over such a long period of time and, the inevitable opposition from some of those living alongside the currently disused rail line and that there is already opposition to the closure of Watford Met station I don’t think the Croxley Rail Link will be built in its current proposed form anytime soon.

You might not be able to read the hand-written note he added to the side, it reads – “familiar wording?”.   The left side of the image below is a cutting from the property section of the Watford Free paper, the right hand consists of a merged screenshot of content from my website about Cassiobury Park.

The source of inspiration for the Watford Observer article is clear.

I imagine the process went something like this:

WO Office: “We need to make an area profile for a local neighbourhood to stick at the front of the property section in front of the 50ish pages of property ads – preferably somewhere local estate agents want to push  - I know we haven’t done Cassiobury recently”.  Google.  Copy + Paste.  Quick re-order, small additions.  5 minutes later – content done.

When I first saw the piece I wasn’t really sure how to feel. On the plus side it shows my website is used but the laziness of the paper also annoys me, with not much more effort they could have rewritten the content to make it unique.

My sources of information for the site consist of my own local knowledge and of course information I have found elsewhere such as council documents and books but it has all been rewritten and certainly wasn’t a 5 minute job.

That being the local newspaper website which insists on squeezing articles and relevant comments into a section less than a third the width of the webpage.  It really is hideous and bizarrely the homepage is little better as the site, like the many clones for other towns which have a newspaper produced by Newsquest, has a stupid marquee displaying jobs from one of their partners.  That said the coverage is much better than I have been able to get anywhere else although the sheer amount of scrolling required to use the site is immensely annoying thanks to all the surrounding adverts and links to totally unrelated material on the site.

One good feature of the Watford Observer website is its blog section which has 21 local residents writing about local issues or what they have been up to providing bloggers with an audience and extra content for the paper at zero cost.

Another local publication, the free monthly MyWatfordNews magazine has a very underutilised website. There were formerly separate websites for each local area covered by the company but now they all redirect to a single central website which has marquees and rotating and sliding banners galore. It’s like the 1990s on Geocities. But worse. And this is a professional publication that wants your advertising spend. On the site there are two large navigateable-to articles on the homepage with another give a link at the bottom. The physical magazines can be viewed via a built-in pdf style viewer but the articles are not given their own pages on the website.  The magazine is really good and I enjoy reading it but the website is absolutely shocking.

The BBC offers little and I don’t think anyone would realistically expect them to be competing with, or even allowed to compete against, these publications.

Next up are the OurSiteName<InsertNameOfOneTownFromAListOfAHundredHere> type directory sites that want to get local small businesses advertising on them.  Sometimes, but not always, these sites include a “Local information guide” or selection of news articles about the local area they are targeting.

On thebestofwatford this comes in the form of a blog. Although coverage is at the rate of less than one brief article a day which are mostly press releases this actually appears to be the best ‘blog’ of local news.  It is clearly written by someone local and is illustrated with photos.

Activ Watford has a ‘news‘ page however it is clearly not their priority as is the eighth tab across in the navigation menu after various classified ad categories. The news, all linked to on external sites, is imported via some kind of RSS search and at the moment at least 50% of the stories relate to a Watford many thousands of miles away in the USA.  Not good.  The site also has a hard to get to ‘information’ page which contains links to press release (council, police, charities etc) articles on the site.

It is very hard for these websites without a physical local presence to get an audience and the Watford Observer clearly have a huge advantage over the other offerings by being part of a large network.  This brings deals with national advertisers and of course local journalists already on the ground and the content posted online would be produced anyway for inclusion in the paper.

However I do think that there is an opportunity for a second local news website to add some variety and perhaps cover some different stories.  I think MyWatfordNews is the best placed to do this as they deliver their magazine to thousands of homes each month with the website address printed on the front and clearly have managed to monetize their website buy selling adverts to local businesses.  They also have to produce content each month for the magazine and this could easily be published online.

MyNews charge £50 a month for a front page advert on the homepage of their network of websites (which cover surrounding towns and villages).  I currently count 5 large adverts in rotation and one small advert on the homepage.  Potentially £250+ a month although I doubt the quoted price is what these companies are actually paying.

Knutsford, with a population about a quarter that of Watford, is a good example of a town with 2 online news sources. There is the Newsquest Knutsford Guardian (change the “knutsfordguardian” section of the URL to any other paper in the network to see the masthead change) and the independent Knutsford Times.  If they can have two credible online news websites why can’t we?