Economics for Dummies (and City Councillors)

As you may have heard the City Museum has somehow managed to put on a hugely popular exhibition of art by Banksy. Queues are reported to exist all day long and a two hour wait seems to be fairly typical. Entrance to the Banksy exhibition is 'free' - that is it is paid for by the tax payers of Bristol rather than the people actually 'enjoying' the show, many of whom are visitors from around the country. More than 350,000 people are expected to visit the Banksy exhibition by the time it closes at the end of August.



Cost Benefit Analysis (CBA) as applied to transport planning puts a value on people's time so that the cost of congestion (queueing) can be compared to the cost of investing in increased capacity. The value ascribed to your time is highly variable depending on whether or not it's working time and how you travel. As a mere cyclist my working time is valued at around £17 p.h. but a car driver's working time is valued at around £27 p.h. Why I don't know off hand, probably just a reflection of deep rooted prejudices.

Non-working time is more difficult to put a value on. How much would you expect to be paid to stand around for a couple of hours doing nothing much in Queen's Road - £5 p.h., £10 p.h., £20 p.h.? Let's say £10 p.h as a conservative figure for the sake of the argument, so that's £20 for the two hour wait. Multiply that by 350,000 and we get £7 million as the value of all the time spent queueing, or in CBA terms the cost to the economy of the congestion.



Now let's suppose that someone in Bristol City Council has a clue about economics (I know, it's just a wild hypothesis) and institutes an admission charge to the museum set at a level that will just eliminate queueing (perhaps incorporating a time slot booking system). Let's guess that an admission charge of £5 would have this effect. That would result in an income of £1.75 million to the City Museum (which in turn could mean Council Tax being reduced pro rata - one can dream).

Such an admission charge would save those otherwise queueing £7 million but cost them £1.75 million in admission charges so a net saving to them of £5.25 million. In addition we have a potential saving to Bristol's Council Tax payers of £1.75 million, so the total benefit to the economy will be around the £7 million worth of time saving. Some of the value saved might well be spent in other ways in Bristol. For example visitors who weren't standing in a queue for two hours might well visit shops or cafes instead, perhaps spending an average of say £5 per head in the process so putting another £1.75 million into the local economy.



That's a simplistic summary based on some fairly arbitrary figures (do suggest corrections or refinements to this model), but it gives a useful indication of the scale of waste (which we all ultimately have to fund) arising from the economic illiteracy of Bristol City Council. Headline - Council tax payers' subsidy of Banksy exhibition costs local economy over £7 million.

Shared Space - Coming Our Way

A post today by Martin Jones alerts us to the fact that the Shared Space concept may soon be introduced to some Bristol streets. Park Street and the Clifton Triangle are specifically mentioned. I've blogged about Shared Use before, expressing reservations about the willingness of British motorists to accept the concept.



So what exactly is Shared Space? The principle is quite simple and appealing. All road users share the same space on the street on equal terms and with no priority given to one direction of travel over another (although the drive-on-the-left convention would continue to apply) or to vehicles over pedestrians. So no pavement / road distinction, no traffic signals or give way markings at junctions and no specific pedestrian crossings (since pedestrians can freely cross anywhere, almost as if the whole street were a zebra crossing).

Of course such sharing is only possible at very low speeds, perhaps around 10 mph, and with limited vehicular traffic volumes, especially through traffic. We already have examples in the form of Home Zones, based on the Dutch Woonerf principle, but these have little if any through traffic so cannot be taken as models for how the concept might work on busy streets like Park Street. The forecourt of Temple Meads station is cited as an example of shared space, but it still has separate pavements and of course no through traffic since all vehicles using that space are accessing the station.


Ashford before....

There are some examples in the UK, notable Ashford in Kent where the former ring road has been downgraded to what is claimed to be Shared Space and the results certainly look attractive in still pictures compared to what went before, as described in this post by Tom Vandebilt and as shown above (before) and below (after) here. However it's clear that this isn't pure Shared Space but retains some segregation and priority, notably keeping separate pavement and road (technically footway and carriageway).


.....Ashford after.

I expect that what we might get in Bristol will also be some kind of hybrid, or bastard child perhaps. Neither one thing nor the other, rather like what was done in the Centre ten years ago. Therein lies a danger. We may end up with something which confuses the existing conventions without giving clear guidance as to what replaces them. The Centre has been a road safety disaster with 6 pedestrian deaths in a few years at just a couple of crossing points for precisely that reason.

There is very little practical experience of Shared Space in the UK and virtually none in Bristol, so it is easy to think that Shared Space will be some sort of panacea. But experience elsewhere suggests that results will be mixed at best. Recorded injury accidents may fall but what about low level harassment and intimidation which is not recorded or even acknowledged by the authorities? Such conflict could even become worse as measures that give some priority or protection to pedestrians and cyclists are removed.

I've no doubt that we need to change the conventions of how streets are used by traffic and to change the visual character of our streets so they look like sociable places. But I believe such change must be based on a deeper understanding of the nature of conflict between different road users which does not yet appear to exist amongst the highway engineers who will be entrusted with implementing Shared Space. So watch this, er, space.

Sunday's Ride - Eastern Approaches

The weather forecast for Sunday isn't looking too good but I'm obliged to lead a ride nonetheless. I wouldn't blame anyone for giving it a miss if it looks like solid rain on the day (in fact please do, then I can slope off too), but just in case things brighten up here's the plan, although it might get curtailed a bit if bad weather sets in. We'll be pottering around slowly so nothing very athletic involved. Warning - likely to be muddy in places, not for the fastidious.


Rodway Common.

The idea is to explore the eastern fringes of Bristol, which mostly comes under South Glos these days and were formerly under Kingswood. The route I've put together, with help from John Grimshaw (who intends to come along), is almost entirely off road and mostly along the Railway Path corridor but without actually using the Railway Path itself or even much of the Ring Road cycle path. It threads together miles of off-road paths that have for the most part existed for many years but which are now supplemented by a detailed network in the new development at Emerson's Green.


Former coal mine at Emerson's Green

Overall distance, if we stick with the full route, is a little over 20 mostly flattish miles but may involve a little hiking and lifting bikes over stiles. Bring some food and drink in case although there's a good chance we'll be sheltering in cafes from time to time. And waterproofs of course, and maybe a change of clothing in case you get soaked. To emphasise the watery theme we'll be following rivers or streams most of the way. First the Frome, then Siston / Warmley Brook, then back beside the River Avon.


River Avon at Netham.

Another warning - there's an educational element in that we'll be looking at existing and proposed cycling infrastructure in the context of Cycling City, which is where John Grimshaw comes in to defend the project from my cynicism, but we'll keep the duologues to a minimum. Because we'll always be near (but not on) the Railway Path it will be easy to break off and head home if you feel you've had enough before the official end. Who knows we might all do the same.


An englishman's home ...... Warmley

Ride starts at the Arnolfini at 10 am on Sunday. If you're in east Bristol and want to join us as we head out we should be passing along the Frome (through Eastville Park and Snuff mills) about 10.30 ish but call me on 0775 282 7755 to liaise.

Bristol - London Electrification

The planned electrification of the mainline railway between London and Bristol (and also on to Swansea and with spurs to Oxford and Newbury), announced today, may sound like good news from an environmental perspective. Electric trains operate more efficiently because they don't have to carry their own fuel and fuel-energy converter (diesel engine) which reduces their weight and hence their energy consumption for a given speed. So they can save energy, or go faster, or a bit of both.


Existing electrification near Paddington (Westbourne Grove)

That's my first quibble. It looks like some of the potential energy saving may be consumed by higher speeds and faster acceleration, so saving all of 19 minutes on the Swansea to London run - small beer for a journey that takes at least 3 hrs. If we are serious about reducing our energy consumption then we have to question the endless pursuit of higher speeds. Yes, there is an argument for making trains faster to compete more successfully with more environmentally malign modes of travel, but if we priced all (road, rail and air) according to the environmental damage caused then that wouldn't be an issue.

It is claimed that the energy consumed by electric trains can be generated by renewables like wind, wave and tidal energy. But can it? Energy consumed by electric trains will be above and beyond what would otherwise be consumed, which is already way beyond the generating capacity of renewables, even if we add in nuclear. For the foreseeable future renewables and nuclear will continue to supply only a minor part of our electricity generating capacity, so in effect any additional electrical demand means more generation from fossil fuelled capacity. Thus it follows that the additional electricity generated for rail will be mainly from carbon emitting sources.

Last but by no means least there is the question of the capital cost, some £1.1 billion over the next 8 years we are told, although we all know what happens to cost estimates and timescales. Labour do not expect to be in government for the next 5 years or so, so it's easy for them to 'commit' a future Conservative government to public expenditure. They must know that huge public expenditure cuts are on the horizon, whoever wins the next election. But Labour don't expect that to be their problem. I guess they expect that the Conservatives will have to cancel or postpone this project, which will of course give Labour an opportunity to attack the Tories. Is that is what is really behind this announcement?

Living Streets Launch in Bristol

My current obsession with matters bicyclical, prompted by the rich irony of Bristol being designated Cycling City, has resulted in my neglect of matters bipedal which I originally intended to be one of the main foci of this blog. Or in plain English, what about walking? So let's remind ourselves of some of the problems of pedestrianism in Bristol.



Here's the Bath Road, the main walking route from central Bristol and Temple Meads station towards the south east quadrant of Bristol, including Totterdown, Knowle, Arno's Vale and Brislington. What we find is a narrow footway sub-divided to be 'shared' with two-way flows of cyclists, hard up against a heavily trafficked road with no less than four wide lanes dedicated to motor traffic. To complement the traffic noise buffeting walkers from the right we have a brick wall and advertising hoardings to the left. The message is simple - in Bristol walkers (and cyclists) come a poor second to motor traffic.



Even where some effort is made to improve the lot of pedestrians we find motorists abusing those facilities, as with the driver of DU08 SXV above who regards the dropped kerb of the new pedestrian crossing on the centre as a convenient place to pull in to take a phone call. Such a callous disregard for the convenience and safety of those second-class citizens who walk is endemic in Bristol, as we see again below where the driver of VO51 CCD has parked at the junction of Westbourne Place with St Pauls Road, in Clifton, in such a way as to force pedestrians to walk out into the traffic on the main road. Needless to say no action has been taken or will be taken against these miscreants.



But there is hope. Tomorrow night a new Bristol branch of Living Streets will be launched with a meeting at Corn Street in in central Bristol at 7.30 pm. I have great hopes for this local group because it is being launched with the help of local Green activist Steve Meek (below), one of the leaders of last year's phenomenal Save the Railway Path campaign. I believe he is someone who is determined to focus on getting results and not just going through the motions as some so-called campaign groups do (you know who you are). Expect some fun events too.



What's more Living Streets nationally have engaged another Bristol based environmental activist Josh Hart to promote the cause. Some of you may have heard one of his compelling presentations on the need to curb traffic. He will naturally be taking a great interest in the Bristol group. So we can be confident that this group is really going to start making a difference, and the sooner the better. But of course we need your support.

Whether we are cyclists, motorists or public transport users, we are all pedestrians too. Walking is the most fundamental form of transport and the most sociable way of getting around. Chance meetings in the street are very much part of the walking experience and that helps to foster a sense of community and common interests, without which 'society' may well implode. Walking really should take first place in the transport hierarchy, even at the expense of my beloved cycling.

So please turn out tomorrow. All are invited to the Living Streets Bristol kickoff meeting, upstairs room, Pizza Express, Corn St Bristol. 7.30pm Thursday 23rd July. If you can't make the meeting then at least make contact - livingstreetsbristol@gmail.com or tel: 0789 999 2398