News / Friends of Suburban Bristol Railways (FoSBR)
Mayor rules out scrapping Bristol bus lanes
Bristol mayor George Ferguson has ruled out following Liverpool’s lead in scrapping most bus lanes in the city.
Following a year-long trial, a review recommending the retention of only four of the city’s 26 bus lanes has been backed by Liverpool city council’s cabinet.
Mayor Joe Anderson introduced the trial in September 2013, saying bus lanes “simply don’t work”.
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But at a public debate on transport issues held on Friday, Ferguson said there would be no repeat of the trial in Bristol.
“Bristol and Liverpool are different cities. Liverpool is a more impoverished city with less car traffic, as well as wider roads, so it may be possible for this policy to work there,” he said. “But in Bristol we need to continue our work to make it easier for buses to move around the city.”
Speaking at the SERA Will Fancy Memorial Lecture in Old Market on Friday, in which transport campaigner and candidate to be mayor of London Christian Wolmar gave the lead address, Ferguson once again defended the introduction of residents parking zones (RPZ) across the city. He said RPZ would reduce traffic levels into and out of the city, making bus services faster and more reliable.
The mayor intimated that a ‘smart’ congestion charge for drivers coming into the city could be a feature of Bristol’s transport network in future, but he said he had no plans for introdcuing such a scheme.
He cited the example of Singapore, the head of state of which he welcomed to Bristol last Thursday. Drivers in the south-east Asian nation have trackers installed in their vehicles, and are charged at separate rates depending on where they drive but also which time of day – being rewarded for avoiding city centres at peak times.
Meanwhile, rail campaigners stepped up their call for the Henbury Loop rail line around north Bristol – particularly with the recent proposed plans for thousands of homes on the site of the former Filton Airfield and expansion of Cribbs Causeway.
Friends of Suburban Bristol Railways (FoSBR) and trade unionist Bristol ASLEF secretary, Bernard Kennedy, stepped up calls for investment in the line, but highlighted the “death by a thousand strategies” that hamstrung efforts to build public transport links over road links.
They revealed that the thousands of homes have to be built first at Filton before funding to build the rail infrastructure to service the new population could be released. But funding for new road links to exactly the same area could be released immediately, before a brick has been laid.
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