Ismail Mohammad pushes a buggy down the centre of a narrow road in east Bristol. His two sons stay close as vehicles could come from either direction at any moment. “There are cars [parked] on the pavement. We have to go on the road,” says Mohammad as he hurries to the boys’ primary school in Easton. “It’s dangerous because cars sometimes come fast through here.”
What in tarnation ? What a sorry state of affairs. Good luck to the council !
Bryher has little sympathy for drivers who claim they must park on pavements on narrow roads. “You need to park somewhere else instead … there are enough [spaces] for everyone to park in the city,” he says. “It’s just that you might have to park further away and you might have to consider whether you need a car.
Indeed
Nice to see my home city here! As a resident for almost forty years I can give some context.
Sadly, cars are necessary in Bristol. Public transport has been a monopoly for far too long, and getting anywhere is both expensive and unreliable. On no less than two occasions I’ve watched as someone breaks down into tears on the bus because they’re late to work for the last time, because a 25 min car journey and a 45 minutes bike ride has taken 90 mins+. We are big on cycling, but when you bear in mind that parking is nonexistent and Bristol is very hilly, it paints a picture where cycling is basically the only cheap way to get around.
We have a lot of gammons here, but Bristol is mostly a progressive city, and as someone with a young child it isn’t uncommon for cars to be on pavements. It’s absolutely the right step, but with ULEZ, residents parking charges, 20 mph lanes, traffic slowdown measures, and simple roadworks that can often take 18-24 months, motorists also have every reason to be pissed too. I appreciate where I’m posting this, but ultimately Bristol just likes to ignore the impact of cars instead of leaning one way or another - and it ultimately just pisses off motorists to make everything a vendetta.
What Bristol needs is another form of public transport that isn’t buses. I hate to say it because he was a corrupt cunt, but Marvin Rees’ subway idea was IMO the only way to solve this. Add it to the current train lines, add stations to the centre, and pay it off over 50-60 years with the construction company footing the bill and getting the proceeds + interest if they can build lines asap. I’d go as far as to way to also build underground cycle lanes too, so that cyclists can cycle without fear of shitty roads and dangerous cars.
The article says part of the plan is to use fine money as a way to inject cash into the bus system. That seems like a good idea, but I’d like a local’s opinion! Is the bus system not working due to lack of routes? Long intervals? Something else?
It’s a great idea in theory, but the bus service here is dominated by one company that has underperformed for decades. Not only that, but they have a history of pushing competition out where possible, and reducing routes to overload other companies that move in - so there’s that problem.
Politically, Bristol is quite strange. Lots of corruption, lots of green ideas, but lots of problems that need tough solutions. Around two decades ago we were sick of our council being so corrupt, so we voted for elected mayors like London. The two mayor’s we had were both corrupt - one syphoning off green capital money to his family, one pretending to build an underground subway and an arena while taking kickbacks from YTL and achieving literally nothing. Both mayors touted a subway, and one funneled tens of millions into…another set of bus routes now controlled by private companies. The second spent a decade of terms pretending to build a subway, and achieved literally nothing. We now voted to get rid of mayors, and the council are shit again.
To then answer your question - all of the above and more. The bus service would probably need to expand by 3x overnight to be reliable, it would also need additional routes AND to somehow not get caught up in the horrendous traffic in the city. The buses have been so bad for so long, with so many broken promises, that many locals just drive or cycle, because at least that way you’ll get where you need to go on time. It’s probably the one thing that everyone in Bristol is unified by, and any talk of trams, subways, etc are all met with “you can’t even run a fucking bus route, how will you manage that”.
To cut my rant short, Bristol is too big, too expensive, and too poorly connected to make commuting possible. It needs a bold decision to be made, rather than giving First’s shareholders some more money.