Council chiefs have pledged to do more to support the traders of East Street in Bedminster after they were given a tour of the area affected by the Malago Road roadworks.
And those in charge of the works were able to explain exactly why the entire length of Malago Road is being closed one way for two and a half years.
During the informal ‘walking meeting’, the traders who said they’ve seen drops in business by as much as 50 per cent since the start of the works last month, were able to put forward ideas to make it easier for people to drive to East Street’s car parks again.
Read more: 'Help us save East Street' say traders as roadworks begin to bite
Traders on East Street and Malago Road have been appealing to the people of South Bristol to come and support them ever since the start of roadworks on main A38 road that provides access to some of East Street’s car parks.
Bristol City Council has closed the road northbound over a 700m section, and effectively re-routed the in-bound traffic away from the East Street area. That has turned the access to East Street’s main car park from a quick turn off a main road into a two and a half mile detour - and traders have been left making dire predictions about East Street’s fortunes because the council intends to keep it that way for two and a half years.
After Bristol Live reported several times on the traders’ pleas for action from the council and for customers to make the effort and continue to visit East Street, the senior council officers in charge of the project and the contractors doing the work met with a group of East Street’s traders on Thursday morning.
Read more: Heat Network roadworks in Bedminster will 'kill us off' say East Street traders
The meeting was led by George Grace, the chairman of the Bedminster Business Improvement District, which represents traders, and traders raised a number of issues with council chiefs.
The first focused on why the road had to be closed for such long distance and for such a long time.
Then, as the group moved along Malago Road, to the Little Paradise car park and onto East Street itself, ideas of ways to tweak the road closure and diversion system, as well as promote the fact East Street’s businesses were still open, were discussed.
The ideas proposed by traders included relaxing parking charges on the Little Paradise car park - which is normally full but the council chiefs saw it was little over half full - improving signage around Bedminster’s road networks to point shoppers to the car parks that are more accessible, installing a new temporary bus stop towards the top end of East Street, allowing traffic down East Street as far as the turn-off to the Little Paradise car park, and creating a big marketing campaign to promote the street.
Council chiefs promised to take the ideas away and consider them before meeting the traders again in a fortnight.
One council transport officer explained to the group and to Bristol Live why Malago Road had to be closed for so long.
“The whole project on Malago Road is actually a huge one, and very complicated,” he said. “Around 90 per cent of the road itself is going to be completely dug up - and in fact a lot of the road is going to be realigned, moved completely to the side. The issue with that is there is a lot of stuff under the road that has to be moved too, we’ve got a 3,000-volt electricity cable, gas, BT and various fibre cables down there and when we move the road, we have to move that too.
“It’s a really, really big job. We are also installing the District Heat Network, which will be going along a lot of Malago Road, and also we’re widening footpaths, creating a bus lane and cycle paths, as well as creating public spaces in front of where the new buildings of the Bedminster Green developments will be,” he added.
“The easy option would be to put in some traffic lights and keep the road open two ways, but there are complications with that. For a start, it would mean that the whole thing would take even longer than the two and a half years, because with the road down to one way, we’re able to do multiple things at once and do things more quickly.
Read more: What is the Heat Network coming to Bedminster?
“But having traffic lights where we are working on Malago Road would mean there would be really long traffic queues that would build up. The length of the road between one end of the roadworks where the lights are and the other would mean the lights would have to be on red one end for a long time to let traffic coming the other way go through, and that would create long tailbacks.
“Add into that the fact that all along Malago Road are side roads that would also need traffic lights to be timed too, and it would mean everything would just stop.
“And Malago Road is a key bus route, heading south, so the buses would end up being caught in that, and one of the main priorities we have in the city is to keep the buses moving. We already have a one way system for the buses going down Malago Road and back up East Street, so it makes sense to do it this way,” he added.
One of the frustrations of traders on East Street is that, since the road was closed one way on January 10, there has been little evidence of work actually taking place - apart from the builders on some of the Bedminster Green sites using the sides of the roads to store rubble and machinery.
One trader, Tony Miller, who recently opened two businesses on East Street, even filmed a video travelling down Malago Road to point out the lack of any work taking place.
The council’s transport officer said the scale of the works going on there would grow in the coming days and weeks. “In a few weeks, we’ll have a trench dug right the way down Malago Road to install the Heat Network system,” he said.
“There may well be times where it doesn’t appear to be that much going on, but we will be working as hard as we can to get this done as soon as possible,” he added.
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