The Test
Road “improvements” in Bristol are the test of whether this Government’s strategies are just words
1) A timeline
9 May 2020
Government issues new Statutory Guidance to local authorities under the Traffic Management Act 2004:
“Local authorities in areas with high levels of public transport use should take measures to reallocate road space to people walking and cycling”
27 July 2020
Government publishes Gear Change, its new walking and cycling strategy. It says:
To receive Government funding for local highways investment where the main element is not cycling or walking improvements, there will be a presumption that all new schemes will deliver or improve cycling infrastructure to the new standards laid down, unless it can be shown that there is little or no need for cycling in the particular road scheme.
15 March 2021
Government publishes Bus Back Better, its new national bus strategy. It says:
Statutory traffic management guidance will be updated to make promoting bus reliability an integral part of highway authorities’ Network Management Duty.
It also says:
In Bus Service Improvement Plans, we expect to see plans for bus lane on any roads where there is a frequent bus service, congestion, and physical space to install one.
So from all this, I think it’s pretty clear to see that:
1) The Government wants road space reallocated from cars to bikes and buses
2) The Government will not fund schemes that fail to do this
3) This is going to be a statutory requirement of local authorities
2) The South Gloucestershire Council proposals
Yesterday, the Conservative-controlled South Gloucestershire opened a consultation on proposals to upgrade the A4174 Bristol Ring Road.
The objectives of the scheme are listed as:
Buses and bikes don’t get a mention (other than as generic ‘non-car users’) under bullet point four.
Moreover, the first objective of the scheme is to ‘reduce carbon emissions’ through relieving congestion. This is despite the repeated proof that junction upgrades to benefit cars don’t reduce congestion as new traffic generation simply fills up the capacity generated.
Let’s look in a bit more detail.
The Deanery Road roundabout is where the A420 East-West route crosses the A4174 ring road. The A420 is a key bus corridor, with the 18,19 35 and 43 bus routes combining to produce 6-8 buses per hour.
Here’s the roundabout as exists today. The bus corridor goes left<<>>right along Deanery Road:
And here’s the South Gloucestershire proposal:
As you can see, the essence of the proposal is to widen the ring road and to provide a ‘throughway’ bisecting the roundabout.
The Deanery Road bus corridor gains no additional bus priority measures whatsoever. Despite Bus Back Better saying that statutory guidance will be modified to make bus reliability the key traffic management objective, the entire scheme is designed around north-south cars not east-west buses.
In addition, the north-south widening doesn’t include any cycle provision at all, despite the fact that this is a key suburban artery and in direct contravention of the statutory guidance that local authorities should ‘reallocate road space’. Instead, South Gloucestershire are expanding road space, and allocating 100% of it to cars.
This is even more remarkable given that in 2019, the West of England Combined Authority, of which South Gloucestershire is part, set out a 2019-36 Joint Transport Strategy, which included an Orbital Metrobus route between Whitchurch and Emerson’s Green - i.e. the exact route of the A4174. The north-south artery is a major suburban commuting corridor but a high-speed bus service is completely unviable without bus priority the full length of the dual carriageway, as the buses would simply get caught in the same traffic as the cars.
So as well as ignoring national Government rules and guidance, the proposals also fail to implement the agreed local strategy.
3) Words are easy
After all, look how many I manage to churn out each week.
The Government has been a superb strategy factory in the last 12 months and, as I’ve written on this blog, many of them are excellent.
But the South Gloucestershire plans are - literally - the polar opposite of both the letter and the spirit of both the guidance and the advice.
This scheme is from a council controlled by the governing party, and is seeking central Government funds.
Put bluntly, if this scheme goes through, we will have learnt that the strategies are worthless.
This is the test.
