A Great Place To Be
- Adam
- Jan 14, 2016
- 3 min read
South Gloucestershire is a great place to live. Depending on what poll you read, it is either the best or in the top ten best places to be.
This is not just down to the geography and the beautiful Gloucestershire countryside and history, but also due to its location and transport links.
The council, a unitary authority is a wonderful authority, exceeding in the fields of community liaison, recycling, food standards, communication, social cohesion, business support, equality and education.
However, when it comes to traffic and highway schemes, it is often falling short. This is not unique to the council. A unitary authority is essentially a district council that is given county council responsibility. And often than not, due to the shortage of qualified engineers highway schemes do not pass safety audits, economic scrutiny or help traffic journey times (maybe on a traffic model dependent on parameters).
Examples?
Travel along the northbound slip road of the M32 and lanes 1 and two state you can get to Filton, however when you cross the traffic lights, the white lines show you cannot get to Filton but to the M32 (again) and Hambrook only. Very dangerous.
Making a pelican/Puffin crossing on New road operate a green man so a bus can get access to the main road is against Pelican and pedestrian directive. Very dangerous.
Making dual carriageways like Gypsy Patch Lane and great Stoke Way (both parts) 30mph, is pointless as they are designed as 50mph roads (clue is the barriers and large grass verges). Making these roads 30mph takes away the importance of actual 0mph roads in built up areas especially around schools. These are only 30mph because the roundabouts have accidents and the council has run out of ideas on how to make them safer.
Putting double 100mm yellow lines around The Green in Stoke Gifford. Ugly, and is not in keeping with the village atmosphere. Places such as Chipping Sodbury and Patchway have the delicate 50mm cream lines, so why has the village got inter-urban (mass transit) huge ugly yellow lines?
The Metrobus is a project which is doomed to failure, its already been reduced by one route before its been built. Bristol City Council is appealing against expansion of The Mall at Cribbs Causeway as it’s a direct threat to the Broadmead shopping areas, yet the Metrobus is precisely designed to link the two. Nonsense. The tram failed for precisely that reason. Both shopping centres are in competition, why would either council encourage travel out of its area to a rival centre?
However, this petition and report is not against the Metrobus. That’s down to other organisations, as we feel improving transport is the future (though the Metrobus is definitely Not the future). Our issue is that the route given the green light was for a north-south route along the new By-Pass (link road). Not, along Hatchet Road. To state it needs to go along Hatchet Road because a private bus firm wants it is ludicrous, and against the reason for public funding.
The petition has been popular, and the blogs have been written by various contributors. Hopefully they will be considered and debated, and we hope common sense will prevail and our alternative options decided to be adopted instead. We wait and see.
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