The Arena - Disconnected Thinking?

It seems that there is now a serious push on to site an Arena (circle below) at Ashton Vale near the site now allocated for a new football stadium (rectangle below), with the Bristol Evening Post once again acting as cheerleader. Bristol's current political leaders all seem to be in favour of an Ashton Vale Arena, partly on the grounds that there is a 'synergy' between the Football Stadium and an Arena in terms of their transport infrastructure requirements, which is true up to a point.


View Arenas and Stadiums in a larger map

But an Arena isn't quite the same as a football stadium, mainly because it is likely to be staging events far more frequently and so having a much more significant impact in transport terms. The inescapable reality is that an Ashton Vale Arena will be accessed overwhelmingly by car even if the Ashton Vale BRT is developed, whereas the site previously envisaged for an Arena near Temple Meads could really make good use of our rail infrastructure and would be much more accessible by walking, cycling and bus due to its central location.


Land at Ashton Vale as it is now, following wanton destruction of trees earlier this year.

George Ferguson has been quick to speak out against the Ashton Vale proposal for this reason. This blog has had its differences with George in the past but once again he is saying clearly and loudly what desperately needs to be said. If we are even half serious about becoming a Green Capital or even just a Sustainable City then we need to think seriously about the transport implications of such iconic new developments as the Arena. Quite apart from the number of trips generated the character of the accessibiltiy of the Arena will send out signals about the future character of Bristol as a whole.

One only has to visit Cardiff Millenium Stadium to see the extent to which its proximity to Cardiff Central Station and its generally central location in the city is the key to its accessibility. Think of the 'synergy' between an Arena at Temple Meads and our rail services, which would receive a big boost during otherwise off-peak periods. The infrastructure and the capacity is there already and has the potential to be increased. Admittedly there is the posibility of some limited rail access being developed near Ashton Vale but this would be out on a limb rather than at the heart of the region's rail network and simply wouldn't have the capacity to replace more than a token amount of car journeys.




So once again those of us who care about the future direction must add our voices to that of George Ferguson and try to point out the contradictions between an Arena at Ashton Vale and a sustainable future for Bristol. Having the Football Stadium at Ashton Vale, just 750 metres further out than the existing football stadium, is one thing but an Arena that will draw crowds from the whole of Greater Bristol and well beyond is something else.

Where the real money goes #1

Bristol City Council, who make so much of their aspirations for improving public transport, walking and cycling, are pressing ahead with plans to spend £40 million on a new road linking the A370 at Long Ashton with the A38 and the A4174 Hengrove Way. This will form another element of the Avon Ring Road and will increase the pressure for a further link between Hengrove Way and Hick's Gate on the A4 Bath Road where the Avon Ring Road currently terminates.


View Avon Ring Road in a larger map

To put the money in context £40 million is around 4 times the extra investment allocated to cycling for the whole of greater Bristol through the Cycling City project, which gives you a pretty good idea where their real priorities lie. This £40 million investment in new road infrastructure (£10 million per kilometre!) is just one of many planned and ongoing projects to increase the capacity to accommodate car traffic, which together add up to hundreds of millions of pounds of public investment. Such largesse in favour of the car allows major engineering works to be undertaken (e.g. the viaduct below), the kind of thing that is simply out of the question as far as cycling and walking are concerned.



Of course development of this scale never occurs in isolation and in this case it will be an integral part of the proposed Ashton Park 'urban extension' between Dundry and Long Ashton, which includes the proposed football stadium which is in turn dependent on a major new Tesco at Ashton Gate, or so we are told by the developer. Extra traffic generated by these developments, which include around 10,000 new homes, will probably more than offset the extra road capacity created so congestion is likely to continue to get worse.

Building road infrastructure just locks us even more rigidly into car dependence and makes a transition to a sustainable transport system even more difficult. Ring roads in particular encourage travel around the fringes of a city in patterns that are too dispersed to serve with public transport, walking and cycling. Public transport really only works on radial routes focussed on traditional city centres. Ring Roads undermine those patterns of movement so weakening the viability of existing public transport.

So what are Bristol City Council playing at? Do they have a coherent and sustainable transport policy or is it just a question of making gestures to cycling and walking while continuing with 'business-as-usual' aimed at perpetuating the unsustainable, car orientated growth of Bristol, even though few of us actually want that growth?

Later edit - Stockwood Pete has kindly supplied a link to the West of England Partnership report which the decision was based on . Also worth following up a Pete's earlier blog posts on this.

Laer still edit - The Bristol Blogger is back and has covered this issue too, in his inimitable style.

St George and the Dinosaur

It's been interesting to observe George Ferguson's manoeuvring on the Ashton Gate Tesco supermarket proposal. Back at the beginning of June George was giving the idea very conditional support, saying

"If we're just going to end up with a big shed and whopping car park, then the answer is 'No'. "But if Tesco are prepared to do something really special, an exemplar scheme which is carbon-zero rated, which has mixed use and which puts Tesco at the heart of a community, then I think you could end up with a much better, more profitable scheme."

If only they'd had the sense to hire George, he would surely have sorted them out with something suitably community friendly. But they didn't and in due course the entirely predictable plans for a big shed and whopping car park appeared. By June 24th George is evidently losing patience with the developers. It's reported that he supports the football club in getting high value for the site in order to make its new stadium work, but any supermarket should be part of a mixed-use community if it was to find favour with him.

"They have to grow up and recognise that that form of supermarket is a dinosaur."

Still BCFC and Tesco didn't take the hint and pressed on with their dinosaur plans. Meanwhile opposition to the Tesco plan was growing in George's manor and the inaugural meeting of BERATE (Bedminster Residents Against Tesco's Expansion into Ashton Gate) was coming up, so time for another subtle position shift. At the meeting on 3rd July George said

“There is nothing like a major threat to its future to galvanise a community. This is an appalling proposal – another giant shopping shed set in a massive sea of car parking. The potential economic and environmental damage to this area is immense."

"I fully recognise the importance of Bristol City’s success but it is quite wrong to imply that a new supermarket is something to do with the new stadium or the World Cup – the two issues have to be de-coupled. It is inappropriate and legally dubious to consider the applications for the new stadium and the new supermarket simultaneously”.

Now that last point, the importance of "de-coupling" the two planning issues (Tesco and the new stadium), is a very sound one and I'm entirely in agreement. As George says, it would be "inappropriate and legally dubious" to consider the two issues as if one was conditional on the other. But of course we know that that sort of thing happens all the time with Bristol City Council.

Indeed George may well be mindful of a very recent example concerning the redevelopment of the old Chocolate Factory in Greenbank, where the city council have decided to sell a plot of Railway Path land (the long hedgerow shown below) to the developer, Squarepeg, in contravention of its own Parks and Open Spaces policies and the results of extensive public consultation. The reason given by the council is that the planned redevelopment of the Chocolate Factory depends on the land sale (because that's what Squarepeg claimed, in exactly the same way as BCFC claim that their plans for a new stadium depend on the Tesco development proceeding).



Inexplicably there appears to be no record of George Ferguson speaking out against this earlier travesty of natural justice. Yet he must surely have known all about it, seeing as he is the architect of the Chocolate Factory project and the agent who originally arranged the land sale in a private meeting with the council's Strategic Director of City Development, David Bishop. Perhaps if George had spoken out about the Railway Path land sale being wrongly coupled with the Chocolate Factory development, his current concerns about the Tesco - New Stadium linkage might have a little more credibility.

Cycling City - Constructive Suggestion #5

Time once again to temper my criticisms with some constructive suggestions, despite the total lack of interest exhibited by our 'Better by Bike' brethren. The officers may be averse to anything imaginative or innovative, but I haven't yet given up on the hope that one or two councillors might recognise the potential to create something of enduring value as a result of the Cycling City funding.



Constructive Suggestion #5 might be called the Colliters Greenway, a largely off-road cycle/walkway following the Colliters Brook corridor through the Ashton Gate area of south Bristol. The key to such a route achieving a decent standard of segregation from motor traffic and environmental quality is the link proposed here around the perimeter of the existing Bristol City football stadium (above), due to be redeveloped in due course.
Bristol City - Tesco
As you are all doubtless aware, the current proposal (link above) is for a new Tesco supermarket. I don't want at this stage to get into the pros and cons of that but whatever the outcome the link through the site proposed here would be very valuable. The supermarket plans show the main building to the east of the site and the bulk of the land given over to car parking - some 530 spaces I believe.

This Greenway opportunity, which has inexplicably been overlooked by the planners so far, might result in the loss of a few of those precious car parking spaces, but on the other hand it might well encourage people to walk or cycle to the store instead of driving, particularly since the Colliters Greenway route as proposed here would be flat all the way from the city centre, harbourside, and Hotwells through to Ashton Vale.


View Colliters Greenway in a larger map

So once again it's over to our elected representatives and anyone else who fancies a crack at breaking through the bureaucratic inertia of Cycling City. Do we want to seize this once-in-a-lifetime chance to secure a vital link in what could develop into one of the City's most attractive Greenways, given the right sort of political backing, or do we let the chance slip away as has happened so often in the past?