Vision for Dundee's waterfront urged

The vision was presented by Mike Galloway, the city's planning and transportation director, at a joint meeting with the Royal Town Planning Institute and Dundee Institute of Architects last week.

'Dundee sits by a wonderful river - one of the largest in Britain,' said Galloway. Its waterfront has been a major commercial resource to the City of Dundee for hundreds of years and, he added, as the Tay Wastewater Project comes on line 'fuller use can be made of it'.

Galloway described the results of a £45,000 study into Dundee's central waterfront, led by planning and design consultant EDAW and funded by the Council and Scottish Enterprise Tayside.

The consultant was told to produce not a masterplan but an outline of various options, ranging from doing the minimum to suggesting major changes, he said. This included extending the Tay Road Bridge several hundred metres to the west to meet the railway station.

The main object of the proposed changes is to turn the waterfront into an integral part of the city centre. This is felt impossible at the moment owing to a major dual carriageway ring road and sweeping ramps leading to the Tay Road Bridge.

'The task is not simple', said Galloway, 'and is complicated by the presence of the main railway line running in a cut and cover tunnel within the area. But the vision of a waterfront with its magnificent views connected to the city centre by open spaces and crossed by tree-lined boulevards is something worth striving for, even it takes 30 years.'