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A4174 Ring Road disastrous plans
There's a petition here: https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/scrap-the-a4174-ring-road-rejig to scrap the proposed changes to the A4174 (nr Bristol).
BristolPost article here: https://www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/bristol-news/hundreds-sign-bristol-ring-road-5902074
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There will be years of disruption
If these plans go ahead we would have an estimated three years of delays, road works, noise and construction traffic affecting all users of the ring road -
Buses, cyclists and pedestrians are neglected
The plans do not provide adequate provision for either pedestrians or cyclists and make no commitment to improving bus frequency and reliability. A larger and busier road could also potentially increase the risks of accidents involving pedestrians or cyclists. -
The plans do nothing to address the climate emergency
South Gloucestershire Council has declared a climate emergency. These proposals will not make any positive difference to the enormous environmental challenges we face. And the latest IPCC report underlines the urgency of taking climate change seriously.
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23 comments
Coming back to this after a month due to the new comments, it occurs to me that if the artist's impression were anywhere close to realistic, it would help whichever body that decides on this far more.
Missing from the image:
- Nose to tail motorised traffic.
- 9403 pieces of litter thrown by drivers and car passengers, mostly to do with fast food, drink cans and single use plastic bottles.
- Roadside cruft, that delightful mix of grit, glass, tyre rubber and silt that some think makes a terrific surface for cycling.
- Stranded cyclists and pedestrians at the sides, wondering where the hell they are supposed to go.
- Atmospheric pollution, though difficult to portray in an image.
- Communities under water in Tuvalu, the Maldives, Bangladesh etc.
- Comfortable, well fed executives of construction and fossil fuel companies.
Meanwhile, there's been a bit of a crash at the newly opened Wraxall 'throughabout'
https://www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/bristol-news/a4174-traffic-live-crash-new-6185075
And what is the make of the front-ended car which very likely caused the collision?
Probably a BMW, but that's verging on make-ism.
I like the prescient quote:
It is a BMW, and I plead guilty to makeism with the mitigating defence that it's entirely justified on the basis of decades of experience and on 2 1/2 years of video evidence
Bristol Post site claming the bmw driver is innocent and was rear ended !
OK- could be true, but I'm still suspicious; leopards, spots etc
As everyone noted - in some places we're now at the stage where councils say things like "climate emergency" and there are a few extra fractions of the transport budget available to put in dropped kerbs and crossings. However don't anyone actually say things like "peak car"! Or at least, you can say it but we'll still pay for it.
Just south of Edinburgh "predict and provide" is going strong. This being "Cycle-crazed Edinburgh" of course where we had the widespread (though inadequate) "spaces for people" interventions during Covid which even persuaded some locals that this was the end of the War on the Motorist and they'd lost.
So just as some councillors are saying things (of other schemes) like:
"My concern is that this could increase the traffic coming into the city at a time when we're trying a whole range of measures to reduce vehicles coming in and out of the city and promote active travel with our commitment to 2030 net zero. This, for me, doesn't quite fit."
Midlothian (just south) says "one of the pipes going into Edinburgh is getting backed up - let's add more pipes".
https://www.a701reliefroad.co.uk/
According to the Bristol Post, they're suspending these changes for 12 months after overwhelming opposition (84% of 880 respondents): https://www.bristolpost.co.uk/news/bristol-news/controversial-a4174-bristol-ring-road-6150944
I can't see what you're complaining about. Just take primary position, you'll be fine...
As I understand it, one of the main complaints is that it will VERY MUCH prioritise traffic which is just sailing along on the ring road itself and will extend the time it takes for traffic to get on and off the ring road. So, a great design if you wish to spend your days driving around and around in circles but not so good if you live in one of South Glos's surburban sprawl areas and wish to use the ring road to get anywhere.
(And they decided not to bother with bus lanes or cycle lanes)
What grinds my gears is that they 'declare a climate emergency' and then just go ahead with building more roads.
They've previously had to restrict traffic at the Hambrook junction due to poor air quality and there's been plenty of collisions there including Tom Harris: https://road.cc/content/news/cyclist-suffers-brain-damage-after-collision-282293
But yeah, just keep on trying to optimise for cars and pretend that the planet isn't burning...
Edit: found an earlier quote from a council spokesperson about plans to deal with the excessive ring-road traffic:
and runways, and oil wells and coal mines.
It's like they know what the direction of travel needs to be, but instead of stopping going in the opposite direction they are just slowing down slightly*.
* with sufficiently accurate measurement it may be possible to provide this slight reduction in the increasing use of fossil fuels, or it may not actually exist.
To my mind it's really simple - no new fossil fuel extraction - no new oil wells, coal mines or fracking. Then as the existing resources run out carbon emissions will drop, price rises will force people to alternative clean energy.
This is absolutely the bare minimum, really we should be looking at reducing extraction and leaving known exploitable resource in the ground.
One of the problems is that we don't have control over other countries continuing to extract fossil fuels. What we do control, however, is our demand for those fuels, so I think we have to shut down our continued burning of fossil fuels as soon as is physically possible. Building new roads and airports is just ridiculously stupid as what we need is infrastructure for pedestrians, cyclists, scooters and public transport.
we don't but just about every country in the world has signed up to the latest UN climate statement on the climate emergency. Globally there should not be any more exploration of new fussil fuel sources.
My cynicism suggests that where there's money to be made, someone will be exploiting.
That coal, oil any gas is going nowhere, it's been there for millions of years and it will still be there IF we ever desperately need it.
Our fundamental issue would seem to be we're still using energy and resources like free credit. I'm pretty sure there has been no time human resource usage has decreased in history. Even when we've shifted resources because of technology or to avoid some particular shortage overall usage has increased. (Outside of the odd major cultural collapse or dramatic reduction in humans - also taking the whole lifecycle "cost" of things). Kind of a resource Mathusian trap.
What are the strange space invaders / bat logos painted all over the road for?
They're the road number that each lane leads to e.g. A4174
Hmm - not sure giving them in Wingdings is going to help driver navigation.
It looks terrible - someone's on a nostalgia trip there, or needs to bury an opponent under tons of asphalt.
Traffic lights on roundabouts always seem to indicate an epic failure of design. If the demand isn't even enough for a roundabout, make a crossroads, and then you can have ASLs, pedestrian and bike phases. Is it actually that difficult?
On an unrelated rant, why don't the illuminated signs on motorways that say "check your tyres" (what, now?) get programmed to say "queuing traffic is your fault, get the train"?
Aren't traffic lights on roundabouts usually an indication that the roundabout's design capacity has been exceeded, not that it's too small? They are sometimes because of very unbalanced flows (where one arm dominates) but even that isn't a problem really if flows are within limits. But they're not necessarily a bad thing as they can vastly improve pedestrian and cyclist safety and usability.
Also, on the lines of "throughabout", am I the only one who calls a roundabout with traffic lights a "lightabout"? Oh, okay...