New Infrastructure or Old Rope?

Old habits die hard in Bristol City Council. Despite pledges from the new Cabinet Member for Transport and Sustainability, Jon Rogers, for a more open and honest regime, we find the stream of misleading press releases remains unabated. Take this simple report in today's Evening Post (which we must presume to be based on a Council Press release although nothing is shown at the time of posting on their site) under the headline "Plans for new Bristol cycle route"-

Views are being sought on plans to create a cycle link between Muller Road and Constable Road in Horfield. Bristol City Council is building a cycle route from the city centre to the north of the city as part of its £22.8-million Cycling City project. Work to build a path between St Werburgh’s and Muller Road has begun and the council has drawn up proposals for the route from Muller Road, through Petherbridge Way, along Dovercourt Road and into Constable Road.

Innocent sounding enough, but totally misleading. The cycle route "being built" by the City Council to the north of the city is not "new" at all but has existed and been in use by cyclists for decades. For the most part the work consists of improvements such as path widening and surface upgrades. Generally welcome stuff but hardly justification for claiming a "new cycle route". Even the "link" being "created" is not "between Muller Road and Constable Road" as claimed but is just 100 metres from Petherbridge Way (B&Q access) to Dovercourt Road. All the rest of the 1.2 km from Muller Road to Constable Road already exists.



Granted this short link at the bottom of Dovercourt Road could be useful if well designed (a big 'if'). It will save about 100 metres (about 30 seconds of travel time) compared to the nearest available existing route and may link more easily into the upgraded path from St Werburghs. The Council's own background paper gives a perfectly reasonable outline of the proposal so why not just announce it as a useful link rather than pretend it constitutes some major new route?

Sadly most of the proposed Cycling City infrastructure is of the same nature. A sprinkling of more or less useful links, new or upgraded, along existing cycle routes but talked up into being completely new cycle routes. How does this wilful misrepresentation fit with Jon Rogers' call for openness and honesty? Someone somewhere just isn't getting the message.

Prince Street Bridge - More Lies Confirmed

Way back in October of last year I suggested that the traffic restrictions on Prince Street Bridge were really being driven by the need to pave the way for its use by bendy-buses using the proposed BRT route from Ashton Vale To Temple Meads, saying that the BRT promoters, the West of England Partnership (alias Bristol City Council for practical purposes), had "let slip that they intend to remove one of the two footways in order to allow buses to cross".



In November Bristol Cycle Campaign, annoyed at cyclists being set up to take the flak for the bridge traffic restrictions when cyclists were not in fact benefiting, issued a Press Release which duly appeared in the Evening Post saying "The council have sneakily presented this bridge plan as something for cyclists, so that motorists will blame people on bikes for their loss of road space rather than the planned 'bendy-bus' route".

As reported on this blog at the time, The West of England Partnership retaliated with its own Press Release prompting an Evening Post headline "New harbour bridge for Bristol's rapid transit bus route" and a story suggesting that the buses would use a new bridge alongside the existing one. They seemed most anxious to scotch our suggestion that the BRT buses would use Prince Street Bridge. Even as recently as February this year the Evening Post were still reporting, at the behest of WoEP, that a new bridge would be provided for BRT or at least the existing bridge would be widened.



But WoEP have now quietly published their BRT plans. And guess what - they're going to use the eastern half of Prince Street Bridge for two-way bus traffic, inevitably removing the footway and diverting pedestrians onto the exclusively pedestrian west side, just as we said they would all those months ago (and contrary to their claims that a new bridge would be built). The detailed plan is here. Now the whole thing makes sense - the shuttle signals, the closure of one side to traffic, the bizarre arrangements for cyclists - all to accommodate BRT but paid for out of the Cycling City budget.



As for cyclists it looks as if we may lose out big time. According to the plan we will be confined to sharing the eastern half with the buses and therefore controlled by the traffic signals in both directions. Bus movements are expected to occur on average every 6 minutes in each direction so interruptions to cycle flows could be frequent. There is also the question of the safety of cyclists forced to share with long bendy-buses in the narrow confines of the bridge approaches and the likelihood of cyclists using the pedestrian side to avoid delays and conflict with the bendy-buses.

Thanks to Forest Pines for tipping me off to the published info and whose own comments are worth a read.

Also try here to envisage a bendy-bus on the bridge!

My Council .... tells Porkies

"My Council" (that's that lot at the Council House) have been really generous in paying for free bus travel for our senior citizens. At least that's what you would might have thought if you saw this poster displayed prominently in our streets a couple of months ago.

But doesn't the Government pay for the bulk of the cost of the bus passes? In which case wasn't it a bit disingenuous of "Our city" to refer to "Our free bus pass" when the funding comes via central government? This was put out under Labour so perhaps they thought that the Labour controlled City Council could legitimately claim credit for the actions of the Labour government.

The poster seems to have disappeared from circulation now that the Lib-Dems are in charge so perhaps somebody thought that the spurious justification no longer applied. I wonder if the Advertising Standards Authority would be interested in adjudicating on whether the Council was guilty of transgressing the CAP code (honesty) - " Marketeers should not exploit the credulity, lack of knowledge or inexperience of consumers."

As an aside, on March 10th I asked the Council's Public Transport Team what contribution the Council made towards the overall cost of free bus passes. A simple enough question with a simple answer, one might think. But my request was referred to an accountant, who failed to supply any information (or even to reply despite reminders). It seems that Councillor Jon Rogers' new policy of openness and honesty has not permeated down to the Public Transport Team, who appear still to be living in the "we know best - mind your own business" era of NuLabour.

Salami Tactics Triumph

With yesterday's decision to grant Planning Permission to the redevelopment of the Chocolate Factory in Greenbank the long-running "Red Trousergate" saga appears to be drawing to a close, much to the relief of George Ferguson. All that remains is the decision by the Council to sell the "completely pointless" strip of Railway Path land to the developer, Squarepeg. Despite the expensive public consultation exercise which demonstrated popular opposition to the sale that decision to sell must now be a mere formality.


Geoge Ferguson - red trousered egotist?

So it is perhaps timely to recap and ask what lessons are to be learnt from this saga. The Railway Path through East Bristol occupies some prime development land, not only because the land is a linear strip suitable for transport uses. Even relatively small slices can be added to other adjacent land holdings to make sufficient space for a terrace of houses, as George Ferguson has so ably demonstrated.

Being George, he likes to make out that these narrow terraces are some new concept, but all he's done is copied what was done a few years earlier just up the road on the narrow strip between the Path and Greenbank Road. Only he took it a stage further by dispensing with the need to provide land for even the modest gardens of the Greenbank Road houses, using the Railway Path itself as a kind of communal garden instead.



So what was conceived by the desire to squeeze as much housing and car parking as possible into the margins of the site was subsequently born as "cycle houses", narrow and tall terraces with integral garages but without gardens, space for cars taking priority over space for people as ever. Even the the supposedly innovative idea of the houses facing two ways (a natural for George?) was borrowed from the 1960s Radburn housing of nearby Yate.

Insensitive development has already been allowed at other locations including Clay Bottom and Fishponds. More will be in the pipeline as pressure to urbanise every scrap of green space in our city increases. But the "cycle houses" up the ante since they give developers the pretext to encroach on the Railway Path in way that wouldn't otherwise have been feasible. Anywhere with road access on one side and the Path on the other is now vulnerable, even if the land in between is an embankment slope. There are many such locations in east Bristol.


Green space or development potential?

The lesson seems to be that the ever present threat to the integrity of the Railway Path can manifest itself as lots of small cuts, salami tactics, gradually urbanising the Path, subtly changing it from the linear country park that it is today. These threats need to be challenged just as energetically as the more obvious threats from grandiose rapid transit schemes. The present saga has shown very clearly that we cannot rely on the City Council or even quangos like Sustrans to protect the Path from such threats.

Airport Expansion under the Spotlight

At last night's full Council meeting of Bristol City Council the following motion, tabled by Bristol's only Green Councillor Charlie Bolton, was debated.

This Council does not believe that expansion of Bristol International Airport is necessary for the economic success of Bristol, nor does it believe it is compatible with the target of 80% cuts in greenhouse gas emissions introduced by the Climate Change Act 2008.....

As expected the motion was supported by the Lib-Dems but then defeated by a Labour 'wrecking amendment' which was voted through with Conservative support. A familiar pattern, mirroring the events of exactly one year ago when Charlie's motion to 'save the Railway Path' was supported by the Lib-Dems and then defeated by a Labour wrecking amendment supported by the Tories.

However these debates are by no means a waste of time. On each occasion the overall agenda moves forward a few more inches. The Green Party position gains credibility, the Lib-Dems move towards a greener agenda, the Labour Party are exposed as fundamentally anti-environmental (clumsy word that) and the Conservatives are shown to be largely bereft of environmental awareness despite Cameron's efforts.



Whether such inching forward will lead us to a sustainable model of social and economic organisation in time to avert the worst effects of Climate Change is doubtful, but change for the most part consists of such modest adjustments. We either support it, ignore it or oppose it. So let's give credit to those who have supported change in this case, to Charlie Bolton for tabling the motion and to the Lib-Dems for supporting it.

I was planning to continue this post with an exploration of the issues, but they are too complex to be touched on lightly. Don't underestimate the difficulty of this issue for politicians, especially those appealing for support from a broader constituency than the Green Party. Few of us have not taken advantage of the opportunities for cheap and fast travel afforded by Bristol Airport and many of us regard it as our gateway to the wider world. The contradictions with sustainability cannot any longer be brushed aside.