UK city zoos: do they have a future?

cliffxdavis said:
If zoos are not going to get the public transport links they deserve they will need to rely on private motorists. Next expense will be installing all those charging points in the carparks for the Electric Vehicles.
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Some zoos with influential local political appreciation and support (like Yorkshire) do seem to get 'help' with these types of infrastructure problems. But, having seen Paradisio's car-park (for example) on a busy day with over 30,000 visitors providing charge points for all these cars will be a challenge for them and everyone below them. This could potentially be the end for all rural leisure, garden-centres, rural museums etc and especially one-off or more rarely held events like agricultural shows, fairs, rallies - and the nearest small town railway stations will not be able to cope with the extra traffic either, even if there were fleets of busses....
 
If one takes a look at the European situation, the closure of Bristol means basically nothing for other city zoos. Bristol really was the odd one out here as the vast majority of city zoos are >10 hectares (21 acres). These relatively small zoos (of 10-20 hectares in size), like Antwerp, Artis Amsterdam, Vienna, Basel and Copenhagen show that they can keep enough crowd pleasing animals, while maintaining a historic atmosphere. All these zoos have received very good visitor numbers in recent years. Bristol with it's tiny size is only really comparable to the Jardin des Plantes in Paris. But as the latter is managed as a living piece of zoo history within a much larger organization, it doesn't have same goal as Bristol.

The imminent closure of Bristol Zoo was probably inevitable, but it needs not be a bad thing, as it is not particularly uncommon for zoos to relocate to a larger area and from a historical perspective both Burgers' Zoo and Diergaarde Blijdorp in the Netherlands show how good such a choice can be in the long run.

If ZSL London would relocate using similar arguments as Bristol it is at least as much a sign of incompetent management, as other zoos in the same size category with similar numbers of listed buildings have re-invented themselves and are still playing in the Champions League...
 
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Andrew Swales said:
Some zoos with influential local political appreciation and support (like Yorkshire) do seem to get 'help' with these types of infrastructure problems. But, having seen Paradisio's car-park (for example) on a busy day with over 30,000 visitors providing charge points for all these cars will be a challenge for them and everyone below them. This could potentially be the end for all rural leisure, garden-centres, rural museums etc and especially one-off or more rarely held events like agricultural shows, fairs, rallies - and the nearest small town railway stations will not be able to cope with the extra traffic either, even if there were fleets of busses....
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Worth noting that the average 'real range' of the current crop of electric cars appears to be well over 100 miles...

What Car? Real Range: which electric car can go farthest in the real world? | What Car?

…which will only improve as battery technology improves. I don't know what the average distance Joe Public will travel to visit a zoo or any other public attraction is, but I imagine it is far less than 50 miles.

I think the future will see every household have their own charge point at home. Then car parks will maybe have a small percentage of parking spaces with charging points, which you will have to pre-book to use via an app of some sort, if you think, or if your readout tells you, that you won't make it there and back on one charge.
 
I don't often agree with Jeremy Clarkson but I do think he was correct when he likened electronic cars to floppy disks, obsolete almost as soon as they appeared in the shops.
 
From European perspective, some opinions here seem very strange.

Urban zoos is Europe tend to have more secure future than ones away from cities, because they guaranteed large audience of city families. Cities tend to support their zoos, as educational/leisure venues and, for more remarkable zoos, as tourist attractions. Public transport is also tuned to easily and frequently bring people to zoos.
 
I agree, Jurek. I haven't got a good sense of direction and some zoos are hard to find by car, never mind by foot. I walked from Farnham Station to Birdworld. The path goes through some nice woodland, but it would have been easy to get lost.
 
cliffxdavis said:
If zoos are not going to get the public transport links they deserve they will need to rely on private motorists. Next expense will be installing all those charging points in the carparks for the Electric Vehicles.
Click to expand...
Do electric cars need recharging for every journey? I thought they were aiming to have a 250-400 mile range? Which would easily cover most zoo visits.
 
Benosaurus said:
Worth noting that the average 'real range' of the current crop of electric cars appears to be well over 100 miles...
What Car? Real Range: which electric car can go farthest in the real world? | What Car?
…which will only improve as battery technology improves. I don't know what the average distance Joe Public will travel to visit a zoo or any other public attraction is, but I imagine it is far less than 50 miles.
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You have to accept that their physical range is different to the 'psychological' range. If you are constantly watching the dashboard as the range drops, you are hardly likely to risking running it to empty. Running out is tad more tedious with a car full of tired, irritable children on board, than just a walk with a can to a petrol station.

If this practically reduces all car journeys to a radius of say 30 miles from your house then clearly trips to Longleat, or Alton Towers, Burgers or Paradisio (where from the look of their car parks many, many people come from further away) will not be possible. Quite difficult to do a foreign channel-holiday to France on the tunnel, too... Small country zoos such as us might rely on people from within a 30 mile radius, but most of the wider tourism industry does not.

This is a personal interest of mine (and will feature in one of the static displays we have planned for Hamerton, when and if, funding allows), and research will show you that despite the huge advance in technology the range of these vehicles has improved minimally since the early days of motoring. Remember that early American motoring post horse and carriage, although initially steam powered, was then pretty much wholly electric and the internal combustion engine being a late-comer which did not really take hold until Henry Ford bought out all the upcoming patents for opposing technologies in order to promote his own vehicles.

During German occupation of France in WWII petrol supplies were cut off by the Nazis. As a result the clever and resourceful French produced a series of passenger cars powered by lead-acid batteries, with performance quite comparable to some of todays vehicles. Google - Breguet, Pierre-Faure or Peugeot... When the Germans realised what was going on they stopped the supply of the batteries, and the cars became human powered pedal-cars for the street, made by companies such as Mochet. These in turn post war had small two-stroke engines fitted and gave rise to the French microcars, les voitures-sans-permis.

Residual values are a potential issue too, and to repeat, as mentioned here before, what I was told by our local Nissan dealer about the Nissan Leaf (the first 'modern' practical wholly electric car) which cost £40,000 new, less a £10,000 subsidy from the UK tax-payer. At 5 years old or more, these are un-saleable, largely due to the fear of the cost of potential replacement batteries, and the dealers buy them back in at £2000 each to be scrapped. Making the car a short-lived disposable product, instead of a long-lived repairable one is environmentally very questionable.

I have to agree with Ned and Jeremy Clarkson, the powering of cars by remotely re-chargeable batteries does have the makings of another evolutionary dead-end...
 
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We may be straying rather off-topic but many of the same issues affect the use of electricity for buses. They tell me hydrogen is "the next big thing" though creating the stuff in large volumes seems challenging. To move back on-topic, is this a threat to the long-term viability of rural zoos? I suspect not simply because people won't tolerate having their mobility constrained in such a way (not primarily because of zoo visits, of course, but think family visits, holidays, shopping, sports events etc etc).
 
SHAVINGTONZOO said:
We may be straying rather off-topic but many of the same issues affect the use of electricity for buses. They tell me hydrogen is "the next big thing" though creating the stuff in large volumes seems challenging. To move back on-topic, is this a threat to the long-term viability of rural zoos? I suspect not simply because people won't tolerate having their mobility constrained in such a way (not primarily because of zoo visits, of course, but think family visits, holidays, shopping, sports events etc etc).
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Quite - I am always a bit nervous now about furthering what might be considered an off-topic diversion, but would guess that private/public transport does have a direct connection to the viability of zoos inside and outside cities.
 
SHAVINGTONZOO said:
We may be straying rather off-topic but many of the same issues affect the use of electricity for buses. They tell me hydrogen is "the next big thing" though creating the stuff in large volumes seems challenging. To move back on-topic, is this a threat to the long-term viability of rural zoos? I suspect not simply because people won't tolerate having their mobility constrained in such a way (not primarily because of zoo visits, of course, but think family visits, holidays, shopping, sports events etc etc).
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It's storing it that is causing the issue with hydrogen. Whoever creates and patents a practicable solution to it will become a very rich person.
 
Andrew Swales said:
Quite - I am always a bit nervous now about furthering what might be considered an off-topic diversion, but would guess that private/public transport does have a direct connection to the viability of zoos inside and outside cities.
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I have a theory - which I'm always happy to share - that the development of the display of exotic animals has largely been shaped by developments in transport. (I'm something of a zoo historian)

The travelling menageries of the 18th/19th centuries were only practical because of the turnpikes.
The late Victorian city collections were closely linked to the tram networks (e.g. Northampton, Preston, Liverpool).
Around 1928-30 there was a huge advance in the design of buses and coaches, which suddenly made the likes of Whipsnade, Chessington and Chester practical.
And then, in the early 1960s, mass motoring created the likes of Twycross and Longleat.

And their future will be shaped in the same way.
 
Jurek7 said:
From European perspective, some opinions here seem very strange.

Urban zoos is Europe tend to have more secure future than ones away from cities, because they guaranteed large audience of city families. Cities tend to support their zoos, as educational/leisure venues and, for more remarkable zoos, as tourist attractions. Public transport is also tuned to easily and frequently bring people to zoos.
Click to expand...

Bristol wouldn't be affected in that way, the new site is literally just off the northern fringe of the city and is actually more accessible for a lot of people living in the greater Bristol urban area. Moving out to the WPP won't change the zoos visitors or reduce them. The one downside is that it's in an area less accesible by public transport but I'm sure they'll work with Bristol City Council and South Gloucestershire on that. There's meant to be a new train station getting built for much the rumoured (never delivered on) Arena which is being built very close by, so they could run a shuttle bus from there in addition to any more standard routes.
 
Gulls86 said:
Bristol wouldn't be affected in that way, the new site is literally just off the northern fringe of the city and is actually more accessible for a lot of people living in the greater Bristol urban area. Moving out to the WPP won't change the zoos visitors or reduce them. The one downside is that it's in an area less accesible by public transport but I'm sure they'll work with Bristol City Council and South Gloucestershire on that. There's meant to be a new train station getting built for much the rumoured (never delivered on) Arena which is being built very close by, so they could run a shuttle bus from there in addition to any more standard routes.
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For a bigger collection to survive it needs visitors from further a field than the immediate city. If Bristol develop what they planned to do they would need to draw in visitors from a much wider area than Bristol itself. Which is where the problems then arise.

Chester zoo for example has a very large catchment area, while Liverpool maybe an easier to get to Chester zoo on public transport, Manchester certainly not and also expensive. Cost of public transport needs to be taken into account on top of what many would see as an expensive day out.
 
taun said:
For a bigger collection to survive it needs visitors from further a field than the immediate city. If Bristol develop what they planned to do they would need to draw in visitors from a much wider area than Bristol itself. Which is where the problems then arise.

Chester zoo for example has a very large catchment area, while Liverpool maybe an easier to get to Chester zoo on public transport, Manchester certainly not and also expensive. Cost of public transport needs to be taken into account on top of what many would see as an expensive day out.
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A good reputation and high quality PR also help, which Chester has both. People are prepared to travel from farther afield to visit Chester based on its reputation. The recent Covid campaign was also handled cleverly by the PR team, and I imagine “Secret Life of the Zoo” pays for itself in terms of gate receipts!
 
taun said:
If Bristol develop what they planned to do they would need to draw in visitors from a much wider area than Bristol itself. Which is where the problems then arise.
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In the 1960's era Bristol Zoo was a very popular destination for people from Newport, Cardiff etc in South Wales as well, though mainly in the form of coach parties.. I don't know if things have changed but there are no comparable 'large' zoos in South Wales so Bristol remains the nearest and with the faster motorway links and location just off the M5 I imagine that's guaranteed to continue.
 
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