Your say / bristol city council
‘The majority in Easton support streets designed for people rather than speeding vehicles’
In the coming week, Labour Party councillors for the inner city wards of Easton, Lawrence Hill and Eastville will decide whether or not to give the go ahead on an exemplar two-year community-led urban sustainability project called Easton Safer Streets.
The scheme is under threat because of the lobbying of a democratically-important, but nevertheless misguided, campaign misnomered as ‘Easton Voice‘. I live in Easton, and this group doesn’t speak for me.
In this context, the word ‘safer’ is to do with slowing motorised vehicles through the heart of the Easton area, discouraging these vehicles from crossing this residential area in the first place (when there are alternative routes on larger, arterial roads) and creating the space for local people to more easily and safely move through the area using more sustainable means of transport: walking, scooting and cycling.
is needed now More than ever
Map detailing the proposed changes
It is backed up by two years of high profile engagement and consultation work by Bristol City Council and Sustrans and years of academic and practical research into the measures needed to create more liveable residential communities.
I have lost track of the number of times I have felt like yelling at a passing car for going way over 20mph in Easton.
Our streets (particularly one end of St Mark’s Road, Chelsea Road and Bannerman Road) are rat runs and play areas for speeding motorists, and we use too much of our public space for car parking.
Add this together and you get a detrimental effect on all, but most particularly on the safety and independence of children and for parents with infants in buggies. This is before we even start on how a wheelchair user would navigate our pavements, cluttered as they are by (technically) illegally parked cars.
PlayDay’s report Making it Our Place: Community views on children’s play found that amongst the adults it interviewed, it was not seen as safe for children to play in local neighbourhoods without adult supervision.
The study heard that adults spent a lot of their childhood playing freely in the streets and surrounding areas near to their home. However, today’s children do not enjoy this freedom.
One of three reasons given was concerns about children’s safety, and “an increase in road traffic” was one of the leading contributing factors cited.
Without the specific changes that a scheme like Easton Safer Streets provides, we will struggle to adapt our city to the needs of our time.
When similar highways changes take place (e.g. Queen Square being re-imagined as a gorgeous green public space rather than a dual carriageway), local people rarely, if ever, look back and wish for more traffic in their immediate vicinity.
Beyond the obvious positive health and environmental impacts (less air pollution, more active than passive travel journeys), the evidence shows that the more traffic you remove from an urban area, the greater the positive impact on small businesses.
Rob says less traffic will provide multiple benefits to people and businesses in St Mark’s Road and beyond
When people walk, people stop and spend, and this can only be good news for the businesses of St Mark’s Road and Stapleton Road.
This scheme could be an exemplar for other Bristol neighbourhoods and start a chain reaction for making positive changes to our street scene under the banner “people over pollution”. The reason this scheme is still being discussed is because of two factors that are very familiar to anyone who has observed the progression of other transport management schemes in Bristol.
Some of the members of Easton Voice who have expressed concern about the proposed changes
They argue that the changes “divide the community”, failing to see the irony that their intervention has done exactly that when the community had reached a decisive conclusion on what it wants: safer streets with more control over fast-moving/rat-running vehicles.
With these kinds of debates, it often comes down to this: ask people whether they want their freedom to drive wherever they like slightly curtailed, they are unlikely to say “yes, please”.
Ask people whether they want safer, less cluttered streets, cleaner air and better walking and cycling routes, free of through-traffic, they are unlikely to say “no, thank you”. I side with the second statement because of the evidence from other cities that it works for the many, not the few.
Secondly, and perhaps more pertinently for those who are already sold on the urbanist agenda, is the position of the Labour Party. As with many seemingly contentious issues (Brexit, freedom of movement, proportional representation, the cutting down of trees in Sheffield), the lack of a position is the hallmark of the Labour position.
I have emailed my local Labour councillors over the last few days and got risible answers back on whether they will back or scrap this scheme.
After two years of consultation and therefore (hopefully) a thorough understanding of the reasons for the scheme, the clearest thing to a position I have been given is that we “need to think how this affects disadvantaged people”.
I definitely agree with the needs of the disadvantaged as a starting point. The disadvantaged are far less likely to be able to afford a car (more than 1/3 Easton residents don’t own a car), and are also far more likely to live in inner city areas that suffer from the highest air pollution which, in Bristol’s case, is currently at illegal levels.
This scheme is in their interests when it comes to health and social justice. Easton residents who drive don’t need to be routed through the centre of a compact, mostly terraced residential community when they will still have access to larger, arterial roads that skirt around the edges of Easton, all for the sake of a couple of minutes’ less journey time.
Easton Voice propose a ‘solution’ (i.e. the status quo) when there isn’t a problem with the plans in the first place.
Labour’s Easton, Eastville and Lawrence Hill councillors need to make a choice. Will they choose leadership on health, environment and community liveability, or disingenuous waffle that tries to appease both sides of this debate?
If you’re a local resident, there is still time to influence your councillors and convince them that scrapping the scheme will be unpopular with you by visiting: www.bristolcycling.org.uk/easton-safer-streets-ask-councillors-to-support/.
I strongly believe that the majority of people in the Easton area support streets designed for people rather than speeding vehicles. Now we have to make sure our councillors listen to this preference and push forward this scheme so we can, to paraphrase mayor Marvin Rees, “unleash Easton’s potential” for safer, liveable streets.
Rob Bryher is a former Green councillor in Bristol and is studying for an MSc in urban planning at UWE Bristol.
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