The future of a project to turn a disused railway line through the heart of Brislington into a cycleway appears in serious doubt. Those backing the Brislington Greenway project claim the council’s planning department - who originally didn’t want the project to go ahead - are now putting so many demands on the project organisers that it has made the scheme unviable.
The plan would have seen almost a mile of the old railway line that runs from what is now the Tesco superstore at Callington Road, under the Bath Road in Brislington to what is now the Sainsbury’s supermarket opposite Arnos Vale converted into a cycleway to create a traffic-free commuter route for bikes and e-scooters.
And the plan would have been funded by the creation of a temporary work hub, with offices and creative spaces set up in shipping containers along one section of the old railway line.
Read more: Bristol's lost railway line and the four ideas for its future
The plan was controversial. Some local residents objected, although hundreds of people in South Bristol and beyond wrote in to support the idea. Council chiefs at Bristol City Council said they did not want it to happen because it would create a precedent for the use of the old North Somerset railway line as a cycle path.
The officers and council chiefs did not what this to happen because they still wanted the old railway to form part of the bigger plan to ease traffic congestion on the A4 Bath Road, and there are multiple options to turn the old railway line into a new road, a road just for buses, or part of the mass transit system being worked up by the Mayor.
So back in March this year, a planning application was recommended for refusal by council officers, mainly because the council was still earmarking the railway for some kind of road - despite mayor Marvin Rees and deputy mayor Cllr Craig Cheney had both insisted months before there were no plans for a relief road. The refusal recommendation was overturned by the councillors themselves, who unanimously backed the idea. Since then, nothing has happened on the ground, and now one of the local councillors who supported the idea, Cllr Andrew Varney, has said he is worried it will never happen.
He told Bristol Live that the planning permission was granted with some conditions to be negotiated between council planning officers and the applicants, Bristol-based firm Meanwhile Creative. But since the permission was granted, council officers have brought new conditions to those negotiations, which will cost another £10,000 to the applicants.
And that increase, coupled with the rocketing rate of inflation, particularly in the construction industry, mean the project is now in serious doubt.
Cllr Varney told Bristol Live: “I have a feeling it will never happen and given it’s only a temporary three year permission and we’re already more than six months into that, plus all the time it will take to create, it will run out of time and money.”
Bristol City Council have been approached for comment on the project. No one from Meanwhile Creative was prepared to talk to Bristol Live about the scheme, but in a post on social media, Cllr Varney shared what its founder Fred Wyatt had told him.
“Despite receiving unanimous, cross-party support in the spring, hopes of a new active travel corridor along the former Brislington Railway Line are diminishing, largely due to the cost of living crisis,” Cllr Varney wrote. “Speaking to the Managing Director of Meanwhile Creative, who was planning to finance the scheme, he said, ‘my personal costs to date are £30,000. The council want another £10,000 of reports, and our build costs due to inflation are double what they were when we first costed the project two years ago. Coupled with the economic outlook now quite bleak, it makes for a very risky venture’.
“We have been campaigning for an active travel corridor here for the last five years so are obviously disappointed but we totally understand the reasons why it’s looking less and less likely to go ahead,” Cllr Varney added.
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