Filton Bank may not even register on the national scale...
ORR» have published their PR13 (
CP5▸ ) 'draft determination' today. There's 815 pages in the whole report, and even then you'll not find item by item discussion of individual projects, it is still at a high level such as 'Bristol Area improvements':
http://www.rail-reg.gov.uk/pr13/consultations/draft-determination.phpPaul
I found mention of Dr Days to Filton Bank in page 783, in Annex E: Funding of Enhancement Projects. It is one of the schemes subject to further review, as "Other named schemes and
CP4▸ Rollover". It is listed as "Dr Days to Filton Abbey Wood capacity", so isn't necessarily Four Track, Yet. Others more connected than I to the corridors of power in Bristol City Hall seem to think it's a more or less done deal. I await the first hard hats.
Just spotted this; it's the proposal for re-routing the most bonkers bit of the Bonkers Rusty Transit:
https://www.bristol.gov.uk/committee/2013/sc/sc024/0620_11.pdfI find this much less objectionable to the current scheme:
1. It doesn't involve ripping up (and re-laying, sometime never) the Harbour Railway;
2. It doesn't route the buses through the Industrial Museum or over Prince St Bridge.
As far as I can see, the guideways have gone (did I miss something?). To my mind this means the thing has become a JAB (Just A Buslane) rather than the dreaded '
BRT▸ '... I don't really object to buses as long as they don't rip up railways for them.
Although the report doesn't explicitly mention it, I have read elsewhere that some guided busway must remain, or DafT won't see it as a public transport initiative, but will recognise it as the road-building exercise that it really is. So although the buses will have to enter and leave a number of guided sections, slowing each time, we must keep them or we don't get the money. If that happens, the whole crapola scheme bites the dust, millions are finally seen to have been utterly wasted, and my champagne bill will hit the roof.
The residents of Cumberland Road, and they are more than you may think, will not be amused. Nor will Spike Island, where Aardman live, and where a very large number of the staff arrive by bicycle. Those coming from the south and west do so over the very popular cycle and walking route, away from all the traffic, that will be destroyed with the commandeering of Ashton Avenue bridge. That route is also extremely popular amongst the students at UWE's Bower Ashton campus, as well as Bristol City fans, who in my limited experience are unlikely to be deterred from trespass on matchdays by something as insignificant as a "Walking Verboten" sign. The police, incidentally, are rumoured to have warned against letting football fans use the buses from Temple Meads.
Also not happy will be the park and ride passengers. Stop BRT2 hired their own transport consultant, and conducted surveys. These showed that the majority of
P&R▸ passengers on the currently perfectly adequate bus service along Hotwell Road disembark at Anchor Road or the centre, with few continuing to Temple Meads. The journey to work for the majority will therefore be lengthened, unless the existing bus route is retained, If that happened, BRT, or Build Roads Today, would run almost empty at huge cost, whilst the 903 continued to flourish.
Also not happy will be the many people who will no longer be able to catch the airport bus in south Bristol, because from Temple Meads, it will double back to avoid the major centres of population. This will not inconvenience just holiday makers, clutching buckets, spades, Heinz beans, diarrhea tablets etc, but also a lot of the workforce, who rely on the the unsocial hours kept by the Flyer to get to the airport.
The saving of Prince Street bridge and the Harbour Railway, and indeed the ambience of the Harbourside area including M-Shed is a plus, but still doesn't justify this awful scheme. The consultation was woefully inadequate - a lot of people on the original route were completely unaware of the scheme until local pressure groups handed out leaflets. A lot of people in Highridge, Withywood, and Hartcliffe will soon wake up to the fact that their childrens' safe playgrounds will be a major road, built to give lorries a safe route from the A370 to Brislington's trading estates without making a mess of Coronation Road, but open to all traffic - with a few ponced-up buses to nowhere they want to go thrown in to justify the eye-watering costs.
Bristol City Council are to be recommended to leave the compulsory purchase orders for the southern Bristol link to North Somerset
DC▸ . That move is acknowledged as posing a medium risk of legal action. I don't know many people in the area who would know how to go about that. A much higher risk of legal calamity will come from Long Ashton,
IMHO▸ , where the populace have already scuppered the new football ground with their town green and landscape plans - although there, I reckon Lansdowne may get the last laugh, by abandoning the stadium, and building a glue factory instead.
Wholly in favour of this madcrap scheme are about two councillors, the unelected, unaccountable oligarchy that is West of England Partnership, and North Som and S Glos councils, whose citizens will find it easier to drive to the residents' parking zones in Bristol. And of course, Atkins, who will trouser much of the scarce millions being lavished on this abomination. Others are at best lukewarm. The Mayor's outraged antipathy has mellowed to a desire to meddle with only a small part of the route. Councillor Mark Bradshaw, who has taken on the transport portfolio, now calls "Metrobus" an important part of the city's anti-congestion, clean air, and (of course) carbon reduction strategy. Not the "lame duck project with virtually zero public support" he called it last November. I reckon they have both been nobbled by DafT. One of them would never take a backhander, the other would never need one, so I think they've been told in no uncertain terms that they are stuck with it, even if it is as much use as a chocolate teapot, and as welcome as a fart in a spacesuit.
In case anyone is still unsure as to my take on the whole sorry shambles that is Bust Rabid Transit, I am against it. In one sense, I don't wholly blame the local councils - after all, we voted them in or didn't vote them out. They were given Avon County Council in 1974, only to have it taken away again in 1996, just as they were getting used to it. That, to my mind, was the beginning of the end for any tram system. The fact that it took 9 more years for that finally to be knocked on the head, then another 6 years for the present fiasco to be submitted says much about the way national politics are done. This has been foisted on us by DafT as a booby prize for not getting it right first time, but to my mind, it serves to show how little authority actually rests with local councils, and how not much more rests with national government.
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