Through traffic to be banned in parts of Bristol for ‘liveable neighbourhood’ scheme

Good URL though

Good link- usual Bingo comments with malevolent thicko NIMBYs pretending to care about the disadvantaged, disabled etc. On the same page is the enlightening "Man dies after being found seriously injured in Bristol"- this is about 99% probability a hit-an-run, but the death is described by the police as 'not being suspicious'. This roughly translates as 'somebody driving a vehicle has killed somebody else, but that's not deemed to be as serious as somebody not driving a vehicle killing somebody else. The police statement wording implies that their 'investigative enquiries' were completed by about 5:50am- I hope this is not true.

All good - it's stuff like this which ought to be "just do it already" and which should be "quick wins" (because has zero effect on motor traffic when it's not vital).  As we've seen even "slam dunk" stuff like this can become a battle though!

Also perhaps "nothing to see here" but to my eye curious language: "... temporary barriers" but " ... The permanent schemes encourage ..." - suggesting that maybe even temporary barriers erected for a short period twice a day might be seen as a big change and subject to being removed if "it causes congestion" etc.

I'm actually wary of changes that have little impact - because these tend to be "window dressing" set out so we can say we have one thing when in fact the status quo is unchallenged.

Example: my building is actually on a signed "home zone".  It's a cul-de-sac leading to a car park - street goes nowhere else.  Some "engineering" has been done - the street is signed 20mph and it narrows to a single lane in several places, plus the required double-yellows and signs are everywhere.  But the home zone sign means nothing legally and of course people carry on as normal, paying little attention to parking restrictions or speed limits.

I've not seen children playing in the street.

Maybe they are waiting on their bikes at a red light while wearing an orange jacket and a helmet. 

How is St Werburghs going to have a school street outside it?  The road outside it is the main road - other than the motorway - to get out of the city centre to points north (St Werburghs, Eastgate, Eastville, etc).

hawkinspeter wrote:

brooksby wrote:

How is St Werburghs going to have a school street outside it?  The road outside it is the main road - other than the motorway - to get out of the city centre to points north (St Werburghs, Eastgate, Eastville, etc).

Maybe they'll prevent traffic on Glenfrome Rd at drop-off and pick-up times. Apart from the M32, it does seem to be the only road that goes in that direction.

I think it's a good idea - the motorway is there, after all! - but it'll be hilarious reading comments BTL in the Post 

Warminster Road? There is a gate at the NW end that opens onto the playground

Looks like the school is split site, and it's the other part of the site on Mogg St that's getting a school street: https://travelwest.info/projects/bristol-school-streets-st-werburghs-primary-school/

Look how permeable this area is to motor traffic (even with lots of fairly "narrow streets")!

And the entry from the massive busy urban motorway onto Mina road is nuts!  Talk about a hopeful "drop anchors" (there's also a really skinny cycle path emerging from the left here too).

Perhaps the speed differential not quite as bad as it looks though - the section of M32 (Maja Rd?) before and after the Mina Rd turn-off has a 40mph limit anyway.

quiff wrote:

Looks like the school is split site, and it's the other part of the site on Mogg St that's getting a school street: https://travelwest.info/projects/bristol-school-streets-st-werburghs-primary-school/

Thanks for this.  Mogg Street is often used as a rat-run by motorists (and cyclists, to be fair) who want to avoid the Mina Road mini-roundabout, so this will be interesting… 

Crazyhorse wrote:

My main concern is the potential impacts for less mobile and disabled residents.

Agreed. Well, also for other groups unable to switch (trades, care workers that need to travel between multiple locations each day), but...

Crazyhorse wrote:

Less mobile residents may simply be unable to walk/cycle and there is an absence of any viable public transport in Bristol meeting their needs.  

We don't need everyone to walk, wheel or cycle all the time, we just need more people to do it more often. Walk past any traffic queue and tell me that everyone in it is unable to switch modes or change their journey time. 

Crazyhorse wrote:

LTNs seem to have real adverse impacts for disabled/less mobile residents. If so, then I cannot support them.

Are there any rigorous impact assessments that would reassure us on this?

In Bristol? Depends on your view of rigour. At any rate, the EBLN assessment was not exactly reassuring, though it does point out that "60% of disabled people have no access to a car and use the bus around 20% more than their non-disabled counterparts." and that "disabled people with a range of learning and physical impairments, state that a reason for their lack of activity is due to the inaccessibility of the pedestrian environment"

https://democracy.bristol.gov.uk/documents/s82537/Appendix%20E%20-%20Equ...

Elsewhere? Depends on how specific you want the assessment to be.  Peer-reviewed evidence shows that, in London, LTNs reduce traffic on internal roads and do not on average increase traffic on boundary roads. That might be reassuring for people that do need to use motor vehicles. It really depends on the long-run 'traffic evaporation', which is not a universal law.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2213624X23001785

Turning to specific disucssion of LTNs and disability, its is easy to find qualitative research, which finds that e.g  "Feelings of discrimination were noted by... disabled car users"

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214367X24000632

Crazyhorse wrote:

My main concern is the potential impacts for less mobile and disabled residents. Less mobile residents may simply be unable to walk/cycle and there is an absence of any viable public transport in Bristol meeting their needs.  

(part 1) As HP says a LTN should not prevent vehicle access (otherwise it's not an LTN, it's a "pedestrianised street".

The dilema we have is this: the status quo isn't good - but that is the baseline for people, usually.  Worse - keeping existing road policies will lead to worse congestion *.  So what we're doing now is already not helping less mobile and disabled residents.

But - without some "push" (AKA less convenience) for motorists in general nothing can change.  We can't only have a "pull" effect from adding "nice things" like cycling and improved public transport.  a) We need space for this, which is currently clogged with private motor traffic.  b) We "can't afford it" because of the costs of providing for all that traffic. c) There "isn't sufficient demand" for buses / cycling - because the default is "jump in the car".  And until the cycling and public transport are a LOT more attractive that will still seem the best option for most people.

Certainly public transport is generally bad in the UK, but for reasons above just adding more buses won't fix much.

In general we need to get to a point where there are viable alternatives to driving.  Simply removing through traffic from where it shouldn't be is a small part of that "chicken and egg" puzzle.

* Because motor vehicle numbers are going up, and often there is no place to put more / wider roads even if that helped.  Which the general consensus is that in the medium to long term it doesn't.

Crazyhorse wrote:

LTNs seem to have real adverse impacts for disabled/less mobile residents. If so, then I cannot support them.

Are there any rigorous impact assessments that would reassure us on this?

As HP says - impact assessments are local.  And always depend on the behaviour of motorists in the overall area.

I guess there's a big one available though - all the thousands of existing "LTNs" which have quietly existed in the UK for decades - and more.

Then there's much of the urban environment of NL - they apply these very commonly.

Local authorities could always apply stuff like "blue badge only" parking, or bollards which let through / traffic lights which halted other traffic to permit residents who'd been assessed as having disabilities priority.  In fact - they could start doing that right now wherever people might be impeded by other traffic!

But... they do this in a very limited fashion if at all.  Because those who need this are drowned out by the cries of those who actually don't but feel they might be delayed.  It doubtless costs even more money, and adding this can see people take to the courts to challenge it or just start cheating / gaming the system (blue badge parking enforcement anyone?).

There ia lot of concern.  That's understandable if life is already hard for you, and you've realised that most people don't really give a stuff.  Of course - it also turns out that some of the concern comes from people who only get concerned about others when it might affect them.

chrisonabike wrote:

the thousands of existing "LTNs" which have quietly existed in the UK for decades

I think this is one of the issues with some recent LTNs - they have been created as relatively large-scale, high-profile programmes of change that are likely to generate opposition. On one hand, there's clearly a rational case for comprehensive, integrated changes (and I think that might have been what funding was available for) - but I do wonder if a more incremental, "boiling the frog", a street or two at a time, might have been more politically astute in some cases.

Making a road one-way can help - that's also a common Dutch treatment for residential areas. Though in the UK I suspect it will help ... once per day! (Which may be worth it of course).

I was surprised by the scale of the current proposal, given that the previous propsal had been sucessfully opposed, was half the size, and still allowed through traffic (albeit one way on Beaufort Rd and the other on Crews Hole Rd). The Barton Hill and St George sections of the scheme are seperate (with a boundary road between them), so starting with St George (where people are on average a bit wealthier and better able to adapt) might have made sense. But much of the current objection *is* just about the acute impacts of St George part, with Barton Hill still largely permeable to motor traffic.

Yes, in that LTNs "a street or two at a time" would be ... cul-de-sacs!

Probably not in that if this didn't have *any* effect on traffic, it wouldn't be worth doing.

There may always be slightly better politics or places to choose but I just don't think anything which makes more than a fractional difference (which would be negated within a year or so by more driving / drivers) is getting done without "outrage" yet. And that is with "picking the battles" (eg. acknowledging in many places doing more than say putting in a crossing by a school is just not possible).

There are a lot of frogs who think they're nearly at boiling point already, despite the pans being the biggest and best ever, because of the numbers of frogs!

EDIT on particular strategies I recommend some of Chris Boardman's recent talks.