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Proposals for 'fully prioritised bus route between Bristol and Bath'

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edwin_m

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Hopefully they won't want to re-purpose the cycle route - expect a massive outcry if they do.
 

stuu

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Hopefully they won't want to re-purpose the cycle route - expect a massive outcry if they do.
They don't, it's all on the A4. How it will cost £540m is a mystery though. I hope that actually most of the money is going on other schemes
 

The exile

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If "a fully prioritised route between Bristol and Bath" effectively means "a continuous bus lane between the two bus stations" there are going to be some bits which will pose an interesting challenge - threading it through Saltford, for example. Presumably would represent a pretty good first step to a tram route, though! The cynic in me thinks that, as the Bristol City boundary is somewhere between the Brislington P&R and Hick's Gate and Bath starts at Newbridge "a fully prioritised route between Bristol and Bath" might actually prove to be a lot shorter (and cheaper) than 23 Km, with Saltford the only major challenge!
 

thelem

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There's some vague information about the project on the travelwest website.


The intro states:
It aims to improve travel between Bath and Bristol through better bus services and enabling more cycling and walking.

So that should mean it won't be a bus lane at the expense of existing cycle lanes.

There's also a map showing the Bristol end of the project extending to the Temple Meads area
 
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carlberry

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They don't, it's all on the A4. How it will cost £540m is a mystery though. I hope that actually most of the money is going on other schemes
Most of the money will end up in legal fees when everybody kicks off about loss of parking/slowing car journeys so the only thing that'll be delivered will be a couple of new junctions that'll mostly benefit car drivers.
 

philosopher

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Given this is the UK, I suspect it will not be much more then some bus lanes, bus traffic signal priority, some fancy looking bus stops and buses with dedicated branding. I would be very surprised if it ended up being a proper Bus Rapid Transit system such as the Cambridgeshire guided busway.
 

Irascible

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Surely £540m would buy an express tram between those two :p Portishead decision got put off for six months, so maybe some of that cash is earmarked for the govt to pull that one out in April when they need another shot of popularity.

( also point of order - as labelled that's West of England, not South-West :p we had our Okehampton, so that's us for a decade ).
 

JKF

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Hopefully they won't want to re-purpose the cycle route - expect a massive outcry if they do.
Definitely not going that way - my understanding is that Sustrans have split the land ownership into multiple parcels so as to make any future CPO process hugely expensive/impractical - I think this was done as a defence against numerous rail/tram reinstatement proposals, though it didn’t stop the council obliterating a large chunk of the path with the new ring road several years back, leaving preposterous diversions to what was a flat and simple route (and an end to any hope of the Bitton railway making it to the interesting triangular station at Mangotsfield).

Apparently the cycle track conveys more people each morning than trains ever did, though it should really be compared against what a tram system could carry.

(I do really like the path btw!)



Regarding the A4 route, the real bottleneck on that route tends to be the multiple Junctions around the retail parks past Brislington, always an absolute mess when I’ve driven that way, needs a tunnel or a flyover for buses (something like the massive eyesore they built at Ashton Gate!)
 

LSWR Cavalier

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Lots of Bristol people work in Bath. Lots of Bath people work in Bristol. Making travel easier encourages more travel. People should be encouraged to live near their work. Plenty could not swap, but plenty could.

Instead of encouraging travel, of whatever sort, even encouraging cycling, travelling, especially driving, should be discouraged.

Living near home, travelling less, is a no-brainer (was for me).

Does this count as off-topic? Certainly would not be irrelevant for me if I lived nearby.
 

ScotGG

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No it's a good point.

Those hideous retail parks mentioned above are a great case in point.

Traffic inducing and a sea of tarmac. Much better to use land like that for housing and High Streets and larger units among homes.

More homes would also help affordability.
 

JKF

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No it's a good point.

Those hideous retail parks mentioned above are a great case in point.

Traffic inducing and a sea of tarmac. Much better to use land like that for housing and High Streets and larger units among homes.

More homes would also help affordability.
It’d work better if there was a single parallel ‘service road’ for the retail units with a set of lights rejoining the carriageway at each end, rather than what seems to be traffic lights every 100 metres. Maybe there isn’t space for this without taking parking away. Though I probably share your opinion that it would be better if these ugly car-centred developments didn’t exist at all.
 

Irascible

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I would imagine the retail park issue will eventually solve itself with more online retail & delivery ( which might make the units well placed as distribution centres ) - but what's wrong with encouraging cycling? it's overall good for health ( cycling around in the wet cold is not necessarily good for health! ).

I personally think people should live where they enjoy & work where they can, rather than the other way round - work should be a thing you do rather than your way of life ( unless you're one of the lucky ones who can combine the two without getting them hopelessly entangled ).
 

TheGrandWazoo

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The retail park on Bath Road is a factor but it is by no means the biggest issue. If you want an end to end resume of the problems...

  • You leave Bath bus station and have to wait to exit onto the road, and then you have to navigate around the one way system on Avon Street and then onto James Street (W) and there is no bus priority. Moveover, there is the zebra crossing by the Odeon....It should bus only between Kingsmead Square and down to Corn Street preferably or, at the very least, access only for delivery vans and an outbound bus lane by removing the
  • Right at Green Park and then you're out onto the Upper Bristol Road in Bath where the first bit is difficult to get much bus priority but there's a long stretch by Royal Victoria Park where you can get rid of on street parking and have an inbound bus lane
  • There's a natural pinch point by the Weston pub and the junction towards Weston and the RUH - not sure what you can do about that but once you get onto Newbridge Road, there's definitely scope for an inbound bus lane by removing on street parking. Further along past the former car showrooms, the road broadens and this is where I've long said a bus could and should be constructed; it does my nut in that you have houses with driveways, and cars parked on the road; it should have had a bus lane a long time ago to help support the park and ride
  • Newbridge is another natural pinchpoint and don't see a new bridge being built, and then you have the dual carriageway to the Globe that could easily have a new bus lane created, possibly with a left hand filter lane as you heading from Saltford to Bath and that the filter at Twerton Fork could be bus only
  • Then you get to Saltford and, to be honest, this is the most difficult part of the route to solve and without a bypass, I'm not sure how you do it though perhaps stopping some of the right turns might help
  • As you leave Saltford, there's scope to broaden the road and create a bus lane westbound, removing the wide verge especially near the petrol station. Then you approach the roundabout at the end of the Keynsham bypass and that could be remodelled to create a bus lane onto the A4 though whether they'd be brave enough to have a full bus lane and reduce the A4 to one lane each way, I somehow doubt
  • Now from Hicks Gate, you can do all sorts of things but that might be subject to changes in light of a new P&R and a mind to a new route for the A4174 around Stockwood? As you head on past the current P&R, you have bus lanes and they work ok but they're only 0700-1000 past the retail parks but even at that time, the buses really struggle to get across into the right hand lane to head through Brislington. I don't know if they dare remove the left hand turn into West Town Lane on inbound? However, remove the right hand turn into West Town Lane from Brislington and that would allow for an inbound lane down the hill. If nothing else, at least make the bus lanes 0700-1900 as a minimum. Again, Brislington Village is not an easily soluble so perhaps the plan must be to use the old rail line from Callington Road Tesco either to run buses or to remove road traffic? If not, then it's difficult to get past the pinchpoint near Proper Job
  • You drop down the Bath Hill and again, the issue of part time bus lanes. Not good. Another pet hate of mine is the poor bus lane management by Arnos Vale and then the roadside parking by the Paintworks which sees buses stuck in traffic until they hit the bus priority up to Three Lamps
There's a load you can do and some of it can be done relatively easily
 
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