Portswood Road bus gate: Café resorts to breakfast discount

Kate Ledward, who owns Kate's Café, fears that many businesses might not survive further disruptions on the Broadway affected by the controversial trial.

The current Southampton City Council gate shuts Portswood Road to everything except buses, taxis and cyclists from 7am to 10am, and 4pm to 7pm, Monday to Saturday.

While local businesses feared that they may be hurt by the six-month trial, Kate, who has run her cafe for 14 years, has felt the impact first hand.

“Sometimes I opened the doors and it was full in half an hour, but not since this trial,” she said.

The bus gate came into force on January 27. (Image: Cristiano Magaglio) Kate explained that she is “probably about 30 per cent” down on breakfast revenue since the six-month bus gate test came into action on January 27.

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While the council opted not to impose fines for the first few days, the café owner said that cars were still pulling up and parking on double yellows to come in for breakfast.

But now that drivers who flout the rules more than once are being hit with £70 Penalty Notice Charges, Kate is seeing a big loss in business.

“I’m 14 and a half years in and the railway bridge collapse at St Denys nearly killed me,” the owner explained.

“My sales were 40 per cent down for five and a half weeks. As soon as we got back to sort of normal levels, this has happened, and of course we’ve got the chancellor’s budget to come next month.

“I don’t know if many cafes like us will survive.”

Full English breakfast is served at Kate's Cafe from 9am daily. (Image: Kate's Cafe)

“We either give this discount or open after 10, I’ve got two choices,” Kate explained.

“I serve breakfast, and opening after 10 would be a bit dumb really. Right now, breakfast in the week is just rubbish, pointless."

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Kate called for the bus gate trial to be “immediately looked at,” as she spoke to the Echo surrounded by “empty” chairs.

But Councillor Eamonn Keogh, cabinet member for environment and transport, said that early monitoring of the trial shows it having the desired impact.

Cllr Keogh said: "Overall traffic volumes have significantly reduced on Portswood Broadway. Bus punctuality in the morning period (07:00-10:00) has improved.

"Outside the bus gate hours, punctuality has decreased compared to the corresponding month the previous year.

"These are early indications, however the data sample is too small to draw any firm conclusions yet."