Ban on cars driving through busy street in Bristol approved

Banning cars from driving through Park Street will make “traffic evaporate” according to Green councillors who have approved the scheme.

Work is now due to start this October restricting through-traffic from the shopping street in the city centre, which gets clogged with congestion.

The £15-million scheme stretches from the bottom of Whiteladies Road to the Centre, and includes widening pavements, installing bike lanes, and stopping general traffic from driving through Park Street.

Cars will still be allowed to access the street via side roads, and park there too. The giant roundabout at the bottom of Whiteladies Road will be turned into a smaller junction.

But the government-funded plans have caused controversy, with some local business owners claiming they will be forced to leave the area because reducing traffic would “kill Park Street”. Conservative councillors on the transport policy committee warned the traffic could instead be displaced onto Park Row and past the Bristol Royal Infirmary, on Thursday, March 20.

Councillor Mark Weston, leader of the Conservative group, said: “Traffic flows like water. Once you start stopping it up, it then moves into random directions. We’re creating a problem, we’re not solving it, we’re just moving it. We need to have a resilient road network where traffic can flow, not constantly keep limiting the roads that are available to use.”

This was disputed by Green councillors, who said the changes would influence people to behave differently in how they travel. Cutting bus journey times might encourage more people to use public transport instead of driving in a private car, for example. At the moment, buses often get delayed driving down Park Street in the afternoon rush hour, due to sheer volume of traffic.

Green Cllr Rob Bryher said: “Water and traffic are not the same thing. Traffic doesn’t work like water, roads aren’t pipes. If you block a pipe, obviously the water will go a different way because of physics. If you block traffic, that isn’t the way that it works because it engages people’s travel behaviour. It’s a fundamental transport planning principle.

“There’s been lots of literature that shows if you restrict through-traffic, then traffic just evaporates. It’s part of transport planning that everyone understands if you’ve done a little bit of research into it. People behave differently if you change the priorities of a street, it’s just as simple as that. You have to get your head around that a bit more.”

An alternative route for drivers coming from the St James Barton roundabout, also known as the Bearpit, will be along Upper Maudlin Street, past the hospital, and up Park Row. But this route is already congested and suffers from high levels of air pollution. A key reason this is congested is due to a lack of capacity at the roundabout, but the Park Street scheme could actually help this.

According to Adam Crowther, head of city transport, there will be less traffic going through Lewins Mead, which creates extra capacity at the Bearpit. This would in turn then help traffic flow along Park Row and Upper Maudlin Street. He added that new electric buses planned for Bristol will also help reduce air pollution, and drivers are also upgrading to cleaner vehicles too.

Another concern however was the new bike lanes. A new two-way segregated lane will be built along Queens Road, protecting cyclists from cars and buses, but meaning people cycling south down the hill will have to cross over the road at the bottom of Whiteladies, and again at the Park Street end of Queens Road too. There are also no bike lanes planned for Park Street itself.

Liberal Democrat Cllr Nicholas Coombes said: “Would this scheme help me cycle from Queens Road down to Park Street? Actually it wouldn’t. The discontinuities on that cycle path at three different locations means that on all three of those occasions, I would have to do something illegal, unsafe, or get off the bike and push it around a corner. I would expect a consistent cycle route for the cost of £15 million going from one end to the other.”

The transport committee voted to approve the plans, which still face one final hurdle. Greens voted in favour, Labour abstained, and the single Conservative and Liberal Democrat councillors voted against it.

The council will submit the full business case to the West of England Combined Authority for approval. On Thursday, May 1, voters will head to the polls to elect a new mayor to lead the West of England, and one candidate has spoken out against the Park Street plans.

After the meeting Steve Smith, a former Bristol councillor and the Conservative mayoral candidate, said: “The business community have been very clear — this scheme will damage trade for local independent businesses and potentially force them to leave. Why do the Green councillors think they know more about what is good for someone’s business than the people who run them?”

Despite the vocal opposition from some business owners, only 315 people have signed a petition against the changes. The threshold to spark a council debate is 3,500 signatures. Meanwhile, the extra space for pedestrians has prompted some local venues to consider putting on a new arts festival.

Green Cllr Ed Plowden, chair of the transport committee, said: “I’ve met with some of the biggest people like at the Hippodrome, St George’s music venue, and the BID Business Improvement District. They were quite reassured that we’ve taken on board their concerns and dealt with them.

“Next week I’ll be meeting with some of the smaller traders, in order to listen to their concerns as well. Victoria Rooms, the Royal West Academy and St George’s are talking about some kind of arts festival, and they feel that the space is there that they can use now, rather than having a great big racetrack in front of the beautiful statues and architecture.”

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