In case you missed it – which is highly likely as the only place it’s advertised is buried in a PDF document in an obscure corner of the city council’s website – there’s currently an “ongoing” public consultation for the West of England Partnership’s TiF (Transportation Innovation Fund) bid.
This is the council’s idea of letting you have your say on their BRT (Bus Rapid Transit) proposals, including the Bristol and Bath Railway Path plans (Blogger Passim), and on congestion charging.
If you have an opinion call 0800 0193235 between 9.00am and 5.30pm Monday – Friday.
Wonder why they’re not promoting this to the public at all themselves? No doubt there’s a simple explanation …
The West of England Partnership’s travel plans can be found here: http://www.westofengland.org/downloads/Our_Future_Transport_October_2007.pdf
with a March 2008 update here: http://www.westofengland.org/downloads/Our_Future_Transport_Update_1_March_2008.pdf
I like the way they refer to congestion charging as “demand management”, typical council-speak. It’s still congestion charging, and it’s still deeply unpopular, given the fact that it seems half the congestion in Bristol is artificially generated by roadworks and re-phased traffic lights (as a driver and a cyclist the latter is particuarly obvious) in order to raise public and media support for road charging. A perfect example is the run of traffic lights around the new Broadmead development at the end of the M32, or the collection of traffic lights around the fountains outside the Hippodrome. All in aid of slowing things down – it might seem strange to want to do this, but road charging is a BIG potential cash cow for the council. TfL did exactly the same “traffic light timing” trick in London before introducing the Congestion Charge. Having said this, it doesn’t seem that persuading the public is too high up the WoEP’s priorities, given that they look pretty set to introduce it regardless of public opinion. Also, haven’t they or the SWRDA been awarded a grant based on the fact they WILL introduce congestion charging, rendering the idea of public “consultation” rather farcical? (I can’t find the BBC link that reported this now)
I agree with the traffic light timings. The set of lights between Redcliffe Church and Temple Way Gyratory is a good example of where they have done this causing long tailbacks in the evening. The lights seem to be taking longer and longer to change, and yet the amount of traffic isnt really increasing as much as the council claims. It must be done on purpose to justify the charge.
At UWE we are also going to have to pay an increased charge to park at work. This has been forced on UWE by South Gloucestershire Council. If you drive to UWE from or through central Bristol and they implement a congestion charge you will be hit twice.
I’m not aware that they have had a grant committing them to ‘demand management’ yet, that is a condition of a successful TIF bid though. They have had 670k to develop the bid but that doesnt have strings.
The political tide is turning against congestion charging. Not just thanks to Boris. A prominent labour councillor in manchester stood specifically on promoting it and was kicked out after 20 years in the job which was a clear warning for any local politician with a zeal for taking this on. As i see it, central gov want to encourage it but want local gov to introduce it and take the flak. Although at the mo our council are prepared to bid for TIF money when it comes to the crunch and they have to tell the people of bristol the details of what they propose to charge, where and when they will back off.
Quite right too. As a city centre resident and cyclist i could selfishly welcome it but it is regressive and cheap efficient alternative transport options other than bikes are not even on the horizon.
Here’s the news story revealing TfL’s “traffic light fiddling” technique to increase congestion: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/revealed-how-livingstone-has-brought-congestion-to-capital-644850.html
I also agree with Pete’s comment about the traffic lights between Redcliffe Church and Temple Way Gyratory – these are possibly the worst in Bristol, and it’s clear to me that it’s deliberate. Firstly, there are two sets of lights within close proximity to eachother. The first set of lights “switches” the flow between the traffic and a bus lane, BUT it switches the normal traffic lane to red and the bus lane to green even when there are no buses waiting, it’s on a fixed timing cycle. Furthermore, the second set of lights just along from it seem to be on green when the first set of lights (for normal traffic) are on red, and vice versa, meaning that traffic is deliberately held up. Then you also have the traffic lights on the roundabout of the gyratory itself, creating a mini-queue on the roundabout which stops you carrying on through to the temple way underpass.
These problems aren’t all part and parcel of having traffic lights & a lot of traffic, they can be avoided with good traffic lights management and timing design. It just seems the opposite has deliberately been implemented.
Watch the timings magically change when congestion charging is introduced!
It’s perfectly legitimate for traffic light timings to be biased to favour certain movements over others and certain road users over others. It’s called traffic management. Without it we would have chaos, or not, depending on whether you subscribe to the idea of shared use.
Shared use theory suggests that removing most controls (traffic signals, priority markings, even the footway/roadway distinction) but instead creating shared space (which is engineered to feel like something different to a normal road) will lead to changes in road user behaviour, more give and take, more eye contact and “negotiation” over who should take precedence (as happens in car-free areas).
I’m not convinced, as I discuss here – http://greenbristolblog.blogspot.com/2008/05/shared-space.html
i think bristol uses the ‘traffic mismanagement’ method.
i agree it is a ploy to convince road users that a congestion charge is necessary & for our benefit.
in reality, the congestion charge is just another reason to fleece the citizens of bristol.
it will not improve matters in the slightest, just fill the councils coffers so they can waste it on all their other pet projects, that seem to benefit only the minority groups of bristol!!!
Chris Hutt:
“It’s perfectly legitimate for traffic light timings to be biased to favour certain movements over others and certain road users over others. It’s called traffic management.”
Agreed – for instance, giving priority to buses (which again is supposed to happen with the GPS buses in Bristol). However, adjusting traffic lights to give priority to public transport (which even as an ardent petrol-head I mostly agree with) and adjusting traffic lights to falsely generate congestion in order to garner public and media support for a congestion charge (as Transport for London did, see above) are two completely different things.
As redzone said, the congestion charge will NOT improve things. Car ownership is not high because people are selfish, it’s because the alternatives are absolutely woeful. I for one am completely sick to death of both central and local government always using the stick and never the carrot. What, do they think people sit in queues in their cars for FUN? Buses in Bristol are nothing short of diabolical, and as a city we should be thoroughly ashamed of them. Go to London and use the tube, or go to Manchester and use the trams, and then tell me our public transport in Bristol is adaquate. It’s not, it’s pathetic.
I have started cycling to work for two reasons, one is I’m desperate to get fit(!) and also to save money due to rocketing fuel prices (the main reason for that again is TAX) but I refuse to use the buses here. Every time I have the service has been dreadful and incredibly expensive.
Whilst you can own a cheap, small engined car and be in profit with the cost of commuting compared to using the bus, people will not use public transport. But we should NOT be making it more expensive to drive to offset this balance, we should be making it cheaper to use public transport. As I said, a bit of carrot rather than the stick!! Other cities are not so expensive, I went to Sheffield recently and the buses there were quick, clean and more importantly, cheap. Everyone was using them and it’s hard to see why you’d bother going to the centre in a car, so the woeful public transport we have here in Bristol is not a UK thing, it’s a Bristol thing.
Woe betide if Bristol City Council introduce congestion charging without SEVERELY improving public transport first.
I’m no fan of the City Council (see previous postings) but to accuse them of creating Bristol’s traffic congestion is absurd. For a start congestion has been a growing problem for decades, from long before Bristol took over responsibility from Avon County Council.
The Council can (and probably do) use traffic controls to shift congestion around a bit, for example to keep bus routes clear, to reduce traffic in environmentally sensitive areas or to reduce delays to pedestrians waiting to cross roads. But surely these are legitimate traffic management objectives.
Even traffic control measures that appear to have no purpose other than to increase delays may be justified for similar reasons. Delays will deter drivers from using a particular route or from entering a particular area, so shifting traffic on to other more appropriate routes.
Congestion occurs when demand for road space exceeds the supply. In theory it could be resolved by introducing a pricing mechanism to balance supply and demand, but I can’t see any politicians being willing to force that through against public opposition.
That leaves us with congestion, which is itself a means of balancing supply and demand. People pay a price in time and frustration instead of cash, or change their travel patterns to avoid the congestion (this is known as suppressed demand).
So you pays your money (or not) and takes your choice – congestion charging or congestion, or a bit of both (as in London). As far as I know there is no alternative, unless fuel prices really rocket up to a level (£5 or more a litre?) that will deter serious numbers of driving, which is one way of achieving road pricing.
Out of interest, what do you think will happen? There’s overwhelming (although strategically silent) political support for congestion charging from the tax ‘n’ spend Lib Dems, Greens and Labour. I think we can also assume the Tories are in favour because if they weren’t they would be out campaigning against it now. In fact they should have started at least a year ago. The fact is, in Bristol, there’s no organised campaign or group against it to do anything serious.
On the issue of traffic management: while it’s probably unfair to blame it for creating congestion you have to wonder about some of it. Fourteen sets of traffic lights between the bottom of the M32 and Temple Meads? Is this the only way?
Shared space: Chris, I’m not aware that shared space type systems are meant to replace gyratories and major through road systems. They’re more appropriate to city centre-type arrangements. I did a post some time ago saying that the Centre might be a good place to try an experiment with it. Why not?
i think the the traffic light management at the m32/muller road junction was a good example of bad management.
for a long time it was totally out of sequence & caused severe delays tailing back every way & for no apparent reason, bar the lights!!
the pathetic attempt at traffic control at the royate hill/ clay bottom viaduct is another bad example at traffic mismanagement! who’s dopey idea was that? why was it not light controlled??
again, planners have caused tailbacks by bad planning!!
the latest plan of traffic lights at the m32/st pauls roundabout??? are they necessary???
swindon is famous for being the uk roundabout capital, bristol will soon become the traffic light capital of the uk!!!!!
BB said “I think we can also assume the Tories are in favour because if they weren’t they would be out campaigning against it now.”
They are! The Tories on Bristol Council have appointed Cllr Abraham to concentrate on fighting the congestion charge in the run up to next May’s elections!
http://tinyurl.com/55ugwc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFMfs6prVyw
BB/Chris Hutt,
The reason why there is no concerted, organised campaign against potential congestion charging in Bristol is that its imposition is not imminent.
All of the output of the WoEP (Our Future Transport – see Dave’s link at the top) and the various local councils on the subject emphasise that “demand management” will not be imposed until “2013 at the earliest” and certainly not until ” viable public transport alternatives” are in place.
Given the WoEPs and local council’s track record on improving our public transport, 2013 seems to me to be wildly optimistic.
We have the worst performing, most expensive and least well regarded urban public transport infrastructure in Britain, so it’s going to take far more than five years to turn the situation around.
Even the dunderheads constituting our local Labour and Lib Dem parties know that the imminent imposition of congestion charging without a reliable and affordable alternative would spell political suicide.
The Tories are jumping on the populist bandwagon by coming out against congestion charging because it suits them at the moment. Should Cameron get into No. 10 in the next two years and decide that congestion charging is actually a really good revenue-generating wheeze, then the Tories’ local mandarins will soon fall into line behind their leader.
I’ve two further points to make about the Tories opposition:
1, Do you really think that they could run an effective anti-charging campaign? Let’s be honest, these buffoons would struggle to run a bath.
2, Is a local Tory administration too high a price to pay to rid our city of the threat of congestion charging?
The reason why the pro-charging Labour councillor lost his seat in Manchester is that plans for a Greater Manchester are at a very advanced stage. People are already calculating how much out of pocket they’ll be and they’re rightly mobilising to defeat it.
The same thing will happen in Bristol should the plans reach an advanced stage and it will be ordinary people, not discredited political parties, who will carry the fight.
Ordinary people from all walks of life successfully saw off the madcap Railway Path plan and I sincerely hope that the same thing happens to congestion charging in Bristol.
Perhaps we may yet get a fully-integrated, affordable, accessible, reliable and accountable mass-transit system in this city. But as we all know there’s more chance of First charging reasonable fares on their bus and train services – ie, No Chance.
Until we do, Bristolians should continue to scrutinise and oppose these ridiculous plans and make it clear to our local politicians that they’ll be out of a job if the try to impose CONgestion charging in our city.
BB/Chris Hutt,
The reason why there is no concerted, organised campaign against potential congestion charging in Bristol is that its imposition is not imminent.
All of the output of the WoEP (Our Future Transport – see Dave’s link at the top) and the various local councils on the subject emphasise that “demand management” will not be imposed until “2013 at the earliest” and certainly not until ” viable public transport alternatives” are in place.
Given the WoEPs and local council’s track record on improving our public transport, 2013 seems to me to be wildly optimistic.
We have the worst performing, most expensive and least well regarded urban public transport infrastructure in Britain, so it’s going to take far more than five years to turn the situation around.
Even the dunderheads constituting our local Labour and Lib Dem parties know that the imminent imposition of congestion charging without a reliable and affordable alternative would spell political suicide.
The Tories are jumping on the populist bandwagon by coming out against congestion charging because it suits them at the moment. Should Cameron get into No. 10 in the next two years and decide that congestion charging is actually a really good revenue-generating wheeze, then the Tories’ local mandarins will soon fall into line behind their leader.
I’ve two further points to make about the Tories opposition:
1, Do you really think that they could run an effective anti-charging campaign? Let’s be honest, these buffoons would struggle to run a bath.
2, Is a local Tory administration too high a price to pay to rid our city of the threat of congestion charging?
The reason why the pro-charging Labour councillor lost his seat in Manchester is that plans for a Greater Manchester are at a very advanced stage. People are already calculating how much out of pocket they’ll be and they’re rightly mobilising to defeat it.
The same thing will happen in Bristol should the plans reach an advanced stage and it will be ordinary people, not discredited political parties, who will carry the fight.
Ordinary people from all walks of life successfully saw off the madcap Railway Path plan and I sincerely hope that the same thing happens to congestion charging in Bristol.
Perhaps we may yet get a fully-integrated, affordable, accessible, reliable and accountable mass-transit system in this city. But as we all know there’s more chance of First charging reasonable fares on their bus and train services – ie, No Chance.
Until we do, Bristolians should continue to scrutinise and oppose these ridiculous plans and make it clear to our local politicians that they’ll be out of a job if the try to impose CONgestion charging in our city.
“Out of interest, what do you think will happen? There’s overwhelming (although strategically silent) political support for congestion charging from the tax ‘n’ spend Lib Dems, Greens and Labour.”
I doubt the public support would be “overwhelming”. Bristol does seem to have more than it’s fair share of millitant vegan fairtrade cyclists that might support a congestion charge without question but most residents who drive realise that the main reason for doing so is because the public transport here is so poor. I don’t think your average Bristolian would let them implement a CONgestion charge without noticable improvements to public transport.
Whatever happened to the plans to bring the trams back?
What would happen? I’m not sure. I don’t think much *can* happen quite frankly, FirstBus seem to have Bristol City Council over a barrel. There must be a reason as to why bus services are so dire in Bristol, so it’s either major incompetence in sorting it out on a grand scale from BCC, or the “over a barrel” option.
As for the “absurdity” of creating congestion in order to garner support for a charge, this isn’t quite as mad as it sounds. It’s already been revealed that TfL did exactly that (see above) and as BB mentioned, there is overwhelming political support for it, mainly, it has to be said, for the sheer amount of revenue it would generate for relatively little outlay (and they’d probably get grants to pay for the infrastructure etc). It’d be a huge money-spinner for them, and since it comes under the great green umbrella, they can pretty much charge what they like for it whilst bleating about carbon footprints. The only way the general public will accept a congestion charge is if the congestion in the city is very bad, hence it being in their interest for it to be!
And finally if you needed any more persuasion that it was deliberate, the Department for Transport released a leaflet with guidelines for Local Government on traffic management which included sections on deliberately creating congestion. I can’t find a copy of it online (I will have a further look and post it up here if I’m successful) but it was featured in a lot of motoring magazines (one was MotorCycle News) at the time.
Finally BB – is there a way I can contact you privately? I have some information regarding something you posted on another forum but I’m not comfortable posting it on a public blog 😉
My email is bristol_citizens@yahoo.co.uk
The contributor who said that the public do not see the problem as close enough and therefore are not mobilising is spot on. The problem is that on schemes like BRT and the Avonmouth incinerator key decisions are being made in the near future that will tie the hands of elected politicians in the future when the public have woken up and got angry. The incinerator for example,is not due to operate until 2015 but the WOE are planning to slip through decisions shortly that will insert penalty clauses for cancellation. Accountability is being quietly slipped away.
Penalty clauses of that sort seem very anti-democratic. One administration can commit to any number of projects with penalty clauses and make it very difficult for a subsequent administration to withdraw, even if they have a clear popular mandate to do so.
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