Bristol: Plans for new A4 to A3029 route (including bridge)

[Richard_Fairhurst]

Cumberland Basin is very unobtrusive even from ground level, as it is as low as possible

Well, yeah, it's a basin. If it was any higher you'd have to lock up from the river to the west and the Floating Harbour to the east, and that would mean you'd probably need backpumps, which are expensive and inefficient.

[SteveA30]

Good joke or, did you really not know what I was talking about........................

[Johnathan404]

I'm less worried about the effect on traffic and more concerned about whether the facility will be provided to operate an efficient public transport shuttle service when there's an event on at Ashton Court.

The outbound congestion there is not going to go but at least the opportunity to stop the thousands of complaints should be taken.

I recall there are problems with events at Ashton Gate too, but I think that's selfish parking rather than congestion.

[WHBM]

Stories like this "knock it all down and build another one", fuelled by all those who see a huge career-expanding project regardless of need, always remind me of the US President's helicopter.

Apparently it was determined that a new helicopter was needed. Huge plans were prepared, with an extraordinary fleet of them (maybe more than 15) and costs in the billions of dollars, way beyond initial expectations. A tremendous presentation of the need was prepared to give to the President to approve it. It was President Obama.

He simply said, rather scathingly, at the end, "I don't see what's wrong with the current helicopter".

A real "the Emperor has no clothes" moment. Swathes of career moves down the tubes.

https://www.wired.com/2009/02/arrivederci-vh/

[Herned]

I'm less worried about the effect on traffic and more concerned about whether the facility will be provided to operate an efficient public transport shuttle service when there's an event on at Ashton Court.

(Some) buses can use the guided bus bridge to get to Ashton Gate from the city centre/station

[aj444]

It's not designed for public transport either. It's long had the lowest bus passenger usage of any major urban area (uniquely, it never had a council-run bus operation)

For 2018 it was actually the fifth best local authority area (outside London) for number of bus journeys per head of the population, behind Brighton, Nottingham, Reading and Tyne & Wear.

[rhyds]

Both Caerdydd and Bristol seem to have fallen in the cracks between somewhere small/quiet enough to get away without major PT services (Chester, Abertawe) and somewhere large enough to warrant serious PT spending (London/Manchester/Edinburgh), hence folks will tend to drive because the alternatives aren't much better. Making it harder to drive through these places (Especially Bristol for airport access) without offering any tangible PT advances at the same time doesn't do anyone any good.

[Marzo]

Bristol's problems stem from the fact that between the M5 at Avonmouth and the A4074 ring road there are only seven river crossings (eight if you include the bus-only Ashton Avenue bridge) and one of those is the Clifton Suspension Bridge. Bristol's bus problems are because the vast majority of routes are radial - there are not many ways of getting around the city by bus without going into the centre and back out again.

[SteveA30]

One of the options isn't too bad really. D2 from the A4, running straight onto the southern part of the Basin route, which is retained, the A370 section. Only lights are at the A4, but there are fairly recently added lights on the Basin s/bnd anyway, which will disappear with the road. Midnight tonight is the deadline. 5 clicks in to see the first option.

https://www.smartsurvey.co.uk/s/WesternHarbour/

[AutomaticBeloved]

The intent is obvious. The existing road system takes up acres of space in a prime adjacent to city centre area that could be better served by commercial and residential premises. This generates money for the authority.

That's the approach that an economist's study (supposedly seriously) showed in the 1970s, that the land value of all the railway termini in London was wasted on them being stations, they should all be closed and the railway should build commercial developments there instead for a better return on investment …

Now this may be a joke, but when the public bus services were sold off in the 1980s it really happened; these only really just broke even, so were sold for not much. Whereupon they rapidly got into the hands of property developers whose only interest was the town centre bus station land value, which was considerable, and some fairly central garages as well. Bus station closed, buses put out on the street to everyone's inconvenience, but then the bus operation sold off, minus all the premises of course.

This should be something that planning permission deals with, but they were presented with a fait accompli they had no control over. Either accept bus stops on street, or no bus service. Old bus station just closed and fenced off. Do you want an eyesore there or a commercial/residential development ?

That seems to be what happened in Exeter, when the city sold their bus company to Western National in the 60s (privatised as Devon General, then 10 years later passing to Stagecoach) the city centre bus depot freehold remained with the council on a 50 year lease to the bus operator. Come 2016 and the lease is up, council sell the land to developers for Student flats and serve eviction on Stagecoach who have had to build a new depot from scratch on Marsh Barton.

[Owain]

Bristol city centre is not designed for motorised traffic, the attempts at a ring road did more damage than the Luftwaffe did, and now people want something else. In mainland Europe a city the size of Bristol would have a tram system and much better alternatives to driving.

Shows the lack of ambition we really have.

A rail link to the airport would be nice, too! You can buy train tickets to the airport, but from Temple Meads you have to endure half-an-hour on a bus to get to your flight. Leeds has a similar problem.

The intent is obvious. The existing road system takes up acres of space in a prime adjacent to city centre area that could be better served by commercial and residential premises. This generates money for the authority.

1960s viaducts are merely a cost and will become more expensive as repairs grow larger in scope as they age more.

That's presumably why they got rid of the bric-a-brac flyover at Temple Gate (I think it was)!

I never drove over it, but I remember it vividly from trips to Bristol as a little boy at the start of the '80s, when we would have approached from the A37. Even then it looked like it was going to fall down. I'm not sure whether or not I was surprised, some 20-odd years later, to drive that way and find that it had disappeared without trace.



I've always wondered why, when the A4 was removed from Queen Square (the A38 disappearing simultaneously), they did not re-route the A4 along Coronation Road. Perhaps, if they go ahead with that project in some form, they might do that.

This might allow the A38 to be extended beyond College Green too; it's odd how the two roads both continue beyond the city, but disappear after hitting each other head-on in the city centre.

[Initiation]

160 page Arup report showing various options. 2 and 8 are the favourites. Drawings are from page 100 onwards.

https://democracy.bristol.gov.uk/docume ... Report.pdf

[Marzo]

None of these options, bar possibly the reported hybrid Option 10 which they don't (dare?) include, address the conflict between road and river traffic. Admittedly the latter is not a huge amount overall, but at certain times (Harbour Festival) large numbers of vessels travel through the Cumberland Basin to and from the Floating Harbour. The majority of these movements require the bridges to be swung one at a time while the road traffic is diverted over the other one. Okay, this doesn't work smoothly as the Merchant Road bridge is so narrow - but it is possible - and 'time and tide wait for no man'. With all of these proposals at least one stream of road traffic will be brought to a halt. Option 2 has two bridges but they form part of a one-way system, while Option 8 has a single four-lane bridge which, when opened, would bring the whole system to a standstill. The hybrid, whatever form it takes, might overcome this problem, but we're not allowed to see it.

In addition to this there is the question of adding all of the extra traffic generated by the new housing (which it is all about) into a road system which is busy throughout the day. Yes, BCC could limit the amount of parking available and insist that everyone ride bikes, but there will still be the delivery vehicles for all of the on-line purchases that can't be carried on a bike.

Option 8 proposes a one-way system broadly similar to that that exists at the moment around the Oldfield Road/Sandford Road block, but using the at present truncated Oldfield Place to carry two lanes full of vehicles coming from the Long Ashton direction and city traffic heading for the Portway. It is relatively easy to get out of that block at the moment as Oldfield Place has its own traffic lights by the Rose of Denmark P.H. It's going to be far worse if you have to emerge into the main traffic stream. I worked for 12/13 years right next to this and I've seen it in all conditions. I really cannot think that those who drew up these plans were thinking any further ahead than what profit could be made from the new development areas.

[AutomaticBeloved]

This could be an interesting addition to the mix.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-50292596

Looking at the map Cumberland Basin falls within the diesel ban zone, it's also the signed route from the north for Bristol Airport. Wonder if the council are planning to grab fines of holidaymakers heading for the airport who just hit the zone at Cumberland Basin.

[Micro The Maniac]

I had just cause to be in Bristol yesterday... from College Green to the M4 took an hour

[roadtester]

That's the approach that an economist's study (supposedly seriously) showed in the 1970s, that the land value of all the railway termini in London was wasted on them being stations, they should all be closed and the railway should build commercial developments there instead for a better return on investment …

In the end, they did the obvious thing and built commercial developments over the top of the stations!

[jackal]

The only option that is not horrifically bad is the rejected option 4. That one is still quite bad.

Also loved this from the intro: "Transforming a place for cars to a place for people". Didn't realise Bristol had such a big problem with feral self-driving cars!

Of course, what "a place for people" really means is a place where people are stuck without the necessary infrastructure. The report is quite clear that "The options have been developed with the aim of maximising high-quality traffic free development frontage to historic waterfront, suitable for mixed residential development". And true to that objective they simply selected the two options (2 and 8) that released the most land (>100,000 sqm). This supposed transport report is more concerned with land prices than it is with highways, public transport or active travel. This is what happens when you make local authorities property developers.

[rhyds]

Not wanting to accuse any authority of a lack of joined-up thinking, but has this project been compared with the Clean-the-air-fleece-the-motorist plan?

[Jeni]

Of course, what "a place for people" really means is a place where people are stuck without the necessary infrastructure. The report is quite clear that "The options have been developed with the aim of maximising high-quality traffic free development frontage to historic waterfront, suitable for mixed residential development".

Too right.