Pressure grows to drop idea for Bristol underground
City mayor Marvin Rees is being urged to drop his “completely unrealistic” dream of an underground for Bristol
City mayor Marvin Rees is being urged to drop his “completely unrealistic” dream of an underground for Bristol.
Opposition Conservative group leader Cllr Mark Weston has tabled a motion to full council on Tuesday (January 9) backing Labour metro mayor Dan Norris in ruling out a London-style tube network as too expensive.
Fellow Labour mayor Mr Rees has long championed an underground and insists mass transit that has sections only above ground is unrealistic, because of the enormous disruption its construction would cause.
But Mr Norris vetoed the idea at October’s West of England Combined Authority (Weca) committee, comprising the leaders of Bristol, South Gloucestershire and Bath & North East Somerset councils.
Now Cllr Weston wants Bristol City Council and Mr Rees to formally drop plans for an underground.
His motion, which is unlikely to be debated at Tuesday’s meeting because of a lack of time, said: “This council endorses the stance recently taken by the regional mayor in seeking to rule out further consideration or exploration of the option to build a substantial mass transit underground for our city.
“Council is particularly concerned over the city mayor’s largely unsubstantiated claim (made in his last State of the City Address) that an overground mass transit system is undeliverable.
“Whilst, from a practical, engineering, point of view, it might still be arguable or conceivable that some tunnelling could be a solution to overcome an exceptional geological or other feature along the proposed three main routes, this council recognises that Mayor Rees’s hazy (at best) vision of a Bristol Metro is completely unrealistic in terms of cost and timescale.
“Accordingly, council calls on the city mayor to accept and finally publicly acknowledge this reality and to commit to working more collaboratively on the combined authority on this major infrastructure project.
“Attracting Government capital investment and delivery of a viable, modern, and attractive public transport system has to be a political priority for the present and any future administration.”
Bristol’s Labour group said ruling out tunnels for a mass transit system would mean shutting 12 of the city’s main roads to traffic – displacing cars and HGVs to residential roads, making popular bus routes unviable and leaving little to no space for walking and cycling.
It said a Weca report made clear that any major public transport scheme needed to be fully integrated with other forms of traffic and that sharing the road with general vehicles would create the same poor reliability facing buses.
The party said this meant two options remained – shutting key transport arteries like Gloucester Road and Church Road to general traffic, which were too narrow to support segregated mass transit without closing streets, or tunnelling where needed.
Labour said road closures would cause traffic chaos in neighbourhoods and harm businesses, with large bills needed to compensate firms for loss of trade and expensive compulsory purchase orders for property and land, along with high costs of re-routing utilities above ground.
The group said: “These factors make an overground-only option much more expensive than its supporters acknowledge.
“The Labour group is the only party that acknowledges or understands the challenges facing mass transit in Bristol.”
It said the Tories appeared to support overground only while opposing road closures.
Labour cabinet member for transport Cllr Don Alexander said: “If we want a mass transit system to provide a reliable, efficient alternative to private cars, it needs to be fully segregated from other forms of traffic.
“If it has to share the road with other vehicles, it will have the same reliability and journey time issues as our buses.
“To achieve modal shift – people switching from cars to public transport – we need to have a fast, reliable alternative.
“If you agree with that principle, we are left with two options – close main roads to all forms of traffic barring mass transit or use tunnels where necessary.”
Mr Norris told Weca committee in October that he would not “waste a penny more of taxpayers’ money on an underground” after a report to the meeting said the price tag could be more than £18billion – a figure Bristol’s mayor disputes and insists is about double the actual cost.
The mass transit project remained in limbo after all three council leaders blocked further moves to continue with an overground-only scheme.