Department says no - what do you say?
Thank you again for taking the time to get involved with almost 2,500 others to stand up for a better, safer, friendly, more attractive, greener, happier, busier, more vibrant Belfast city centre.
It's not often a government department tries to stamp out the hopes of thousands of petition signatories less than 48 hours after a petition opens, but remarkably the Department for Infrastructure has given it a good go:
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Department for Infrastructure - Position regarding Belfast City Centre
"The current arrangements in Castle Place and surrounding streets were put in place as a temporary measure in response to an emergency situation. As a result of the ongoing work to stabilise and restore Bank Buildings, those restrictions are no longer required and it is planned to re-open Castle Place on 23 May to allow access for buses, loading and blue badge holders.
While the plan is to restore access now, the re-opening of Castle Place has started a wider debate about how we use our City Centre and make it an attractive, safe and accessible environment as possible for everyone. This reflects the direction set out in the Department's Transport Strategy for Belfast (Belfast Metropolitan Transport Plan) and DfC's Belfast Street's Ahead project aims to enhance the walking and cycling environment from Castle Place, along Royal Avenue to York Street, through improvements to the streetscape but maintains the road layout.
The cordon provided opportunities to trial a number of projects including the pop-up park at Castle Place which have proven popular in attracting people into the City Centre and demonstrating the benefits of greater levels of pedestrianisation.
However, the rerouting of metro services away from Castle Place also created difficulties for some groups using public transport to access the city centre and created congestion in other parts of the city. In light of that the Department plans to open discussions with wider partners to explore how we should best proceed to ensure Belfast City Centre thrives through a greater focus on place and public transport accessibility.
We will provide further information on the process. Wider stakeholders will also have an opportunity to comment on any resultant proposals which will be subject to consultation."
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Having seen how DfI and DfC (Communities) work over the past few years, this is picking up your ball and kicking it into the long grass. It'll tie things up for years, likely decades, of (mostly internal) discussions, plans, area plans, master plans, strategies, consultations, experiments, etc.
The meat grinder of bureaucracy is ready to shred your hopes, make you forget, to carry on as normal.
When the petition opened, the play structures were still in place - as you can see from the photo taken today, they're already gone. Within two weeks, buses, cars and vans will be back. It's becoming a fait accompli.
Which means we all need to take more action, quickly. Right now, this weekend, we can contact our local Belfast councillors, MLAs and MPs to put our views across in large numbers and get them to advocate for swift action.
Several politicians have already publicly declared their support for our position, so the more pressure we can bring the better. Let's keep it up, and let's #KeepBelfastFun!