City does not want canal

I READ with utter dismay that there are plans afoot to close off the bottom nine locks of the Rochdale Canal in Manchester at night, writes Geoff Smith.

As a boater who has used this stretch of canal, I have to report I am aghast at the proposals.  It is blindingly obvious that the problems here have not been caused by boaters or the canal or the Canal & River Trust or its predecessors!

Caused by development

It has been caused by Manchester City Council's ongoing ‘engineering' of the construction, use, investment and expectations of the area alongside (indeed, and on top of!) this stretch of canal over the years.

The canal was there by around 1800! It was fully operational throughout (with towpath!) not many years later!

But now, in 2014, two hundred years later, I might emphasise, because the council has ruined this area, as evidenced by these daft proposals, and policing that seems either invisible, unavailable, undesired or not being paid for (I couldn't easily find a general email address for them, either!), it is boaters and the canal that are to be compromised by the city's ongoing bungling of this area?

Talk about punishing the innocent! Close the area alongside the canal, instead, until you can fix that!

I'm more of the view that the city politicians and planners should be shut down, too!

Wave a magic wand

What beggars belief is the seeming assumption that ‘shutting' the canal at night might suddenly wave a magic wand and end all these offences!

When are these proposers going to realise that these problems are 24 hours issues of the city's own making?

Can you see the Broad Street Tunnel or Gas Street Basin or Brindley Place or Leeds' Granary Wharf or Bristol's Floating Harbour being shut down at night?

No, of course not!

Can't see the gem

Just like Rochdale itself, Manchester's got an absolute gem but Manchester just won't see it, either!

Waterways making their way smack through the city, part of the Cheshire Ring of canals round which many boaters, holiday hirer families (and children) amongst them, cruise.

Boaters that would love to stop off, explore, spend money and enjoy the city. But what greets them? What can they expect from the city?

 

So, no stopping on the ‘Rochdale 9', then!