Bristol Traffic Chaos - Leadership Please!

Driving through the city centre rush hour yesterday morning - a journey

I

don't often do at that time - I was amazed again at how bad the traffic

congestion is in the centre of Bristol at peak times. For once, the

overused term gridlock was entirely appropriate to describe the scene.

I felt sad, as someone who has lived in Bristol for 12 years, that

despite a lot of talk, nothing fundamental seems to be actually

happening to

radically change the current appalling situation. In particular, it

seems that the

dominance of the car in our city is the unchallenged assumption in most

of the big decisions that are made about the city's infrastructure and

transport. That's despite the label of a cycling city.

I was particularly disappointed having made a day trip to Nottingham on

Saturday (for a university open day) and discovered that it has a 14 km tram

system that serves the city centre and beyond.

The failure of the local authorities in the former county of Avon to

agree to a tram system linking Bradly Stoke / Parkway with Temple Meads

and the city Centre is, sadly, a matter of historical record. So is the

failure to date to re-open the rail line from Portishead to Bristol.

The Department of Transport in 2008 cited a "lack of anticipated demand"

for such a rail link as their reason for not funding the project.

Meanwhile, we choke in the fumes of thousands of cars and pay thorough

the nose for a bus service. Recent example: I paid £1.80 for a single

on a Wessex Express bus from Southmead Hospital to Westbury on Trym

village, a journey of a little over a mile.

In Nottingham, an all day adult ticket (for the whole tram

network) costs £2.70. The trams can carry 200 passengers and are

cutting an estimated two million car journeys a year through the city.

I know

the grass is always greener, but I was struck on Saturday at how few

cars there were in the city centre, compared with an equivalent

Saturday in central Bristol. Nottingham is so confident about its

system - reliability and

punctuality are currently running at 99% - that, in the summer, the

city gained approval from the government for a phase two that will add

major

extensions to the tram network.

I'm not clever enough to know exactly how and whether a tram system

would

work in Bristol. I also recognise that there are other options that

are on the table - including the expansion of the

suburban

railway network that serves Redland Station. I also know that the work

of doubling the number of regular cyclists in the city is a measurable

objective of the cycling city campaign which is at an early stage.

There's

something about the tram - its size, I guess - that says assertively

that cars take second place in the city. I think that message is the

key one, and at the moment we seem nowhere near reaching it.

But if they can do it in Nottingham, surely there must be people in

Bristol with the knowledge, and the leadership, to actually make the

dramatic changes needed to get us out of this mess.