90% of the peak hour traffic on the South Bristol Link - "a new road linking the more deprived suburbs of South Bristol to the existing road network at the A38 and the A370" - won't serve those suburbs, it'll just go straight through.
And even if becomes impossible to provide the promised Rapid Transit buses along it, the council will still consider building the road.
These two disclosures came in reply to questions I put to Executive Member Tim Kent at Tuesday's full council meeting. They show emphatically that, despite years of denials, a Ring Road is the ambition. Bus Rapid Transit and a half-promise of economic development were mere figleaves, designed to hide the ugly fact that in an age of climate change, peak oil and congestion, they still think it's good to increase traffic.
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References:
Q. Does traffic modelling indicate what proportion of journeys on the two sections of this new road will originate or end in those 'more deprived suburbs'?
A. The traffic modelling indicates that in the morning peak, approximately 10% of trips would be to/from the more deprived deprived suburbs. In the inter-peak this would be approximately 20% of trips and in the evening peak this would be approximately 10% of trips.
A further answer showed that the Link could be threatened, unless 'certain aspects' of the Ashton-Vale-to-City-Centre bid go ahead. A supplementary verbal Q&A (which will be on the webcast) showed this means BRT on the Link won't work without BRT on the rest of the line - but doesn't rule out going ahead with the road anyway.
1 comment:
Well done for exposing what has been obvious for a while now, the BRT element to the SBLink is just a smokescreen for building a new road, mainly to placate the Airport who see it as a more direct route for their Flyer. You also prove at the same time that the claims about it creating jobs for the people of south Bristol is tripe. As for BRT3, will somebody please explain who the passengers are expected to be and why would anybody forsake the showcase buses which in most cases would run into their communities, in favour of BRT which in most cases won't.
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