Building work is due to begin this summer on two major walking and cycling upgrades in Bristol with a third planned next winter. Pedestrians and cyclists are set to benefit from the three projects scheduled to start construction this year.
A new cycling route will be built joining up the “missing links” between the end of the Bath Railway Path through Old Market to Castle Park and Baldwin Street. A pedestrianisation scheme in Cotham Hill and a temporary bike lane on Park Row will also be made permanent.
Elsewhere, Bristol City Council is applying for new cash from the government to change the city’s streets and make them safer for walking and cycling. The growth and regeneration scrutiny commission heard updates on all this work and more on Wednesday, January 25.
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Adam Crowther, head of city transport, said: “The Cotham Hill scheme will tidy everything up, make it look a lot nicer and improve the general feel of the street. We’ll be putting in some continuous pavements, and that will start this summer.
“It’s not ideal to do things in bits, but if we didn’t do things in bits we wouldn’t have the Baldwin Street cycle route, and we wouldn’t have what we’ll end up with when the [Old Market] scheme is complete. This will complete the cycle provision from the east side of Old Market all the way to Castle Park. There’s two or three routes we’re looking at from the Old Market roundabout to link into the Railway Path.”
Construction on the Old Market and Cotham Hill projects are due to begin this summer. Currently cyclists can ride on segregated routes from the city centre, through Baldwin Street and Castle Park to the Old Market roundabout, but then there is no clear route joining up with the Railway Path, which runs through the east of the city all the way to Bath. The Cotham Hill project saw the busy shopping road shut two years ago to motor traffic.
Builders will begin work at the end of this year on Park Row, where a temporary bike lane was installed during the pandemic. This has been widely criticised, as floppy plastic bollards meant to mark the bike lane are frequently driven over, and drivers often park in the bike lane. The new permanent scheme should mean big changes to this route.
Mr Crowther said: “I cycled up and down Park Row a lot when it first went in, checking on the traffic, it was great. It’s a little bit tired now, it has been parked all over, and those little plastic bollards can work — but they need to work in the right environment. This scheme will put hard starts and finishes to a lot of those cycle lanes, so it feels more like a cycle lane rather than someone’s just put a cone in the middle of the road that you can drive over if you want to.
“The traffic signals will be replaced, the bus stops will be upgraded, and there’ll be better pavements. It’s a big scheme, really ambitious, and it’ll be impressive when we get to a finalised permanent scheme.”
Councillor Don Alexander, cabinet member for transport, added: “[Park Row] has been awful for decades. I can remember in the 1980s when very tragically a doctor was crossing between one building and another, and he was knocked down and killed. It’s not going to be quick but hopefully it’ll be massively better. Everyone is frustrated with the time that these things take, but that’s just part of being involved in transport; you have 101 things going at once and they all move very slowly.”
The scrutiny commission also heard about the progress on improving walking and cycling in Bristol made since summer 2020, when the government made millions of new cash available for local councils as part of its Emergency Active Travel Fund. The investment followed a huge rise in cycling during the lockdown, as roads across the country suddenly saw far fewer cars.
Projects since June 2020 include a timed closure of Princess Victoria Street and Cotham Hill; segregated cycle routes along Castle Street, Mina Road and Park Row; a bus gate banning general motor traffic on Bristol Bridge; upgrades to certain parts of the Railway Path; a new all-weather path through Stoke Park; and a botched bike lane on Nelson Street still being built.
The government has been giving councils money for walking and cycling upgrades in three tranches so far, with a fourth tranche of the Active Travel Fund expected soon. Problems with the funding include strict rules about how it must be spent and how quickly, such as developing and delivering projects within three years. But the next round of cash could partly be spent on improving the barely visible cycle lanes by the fountains in the City Centre.
Mr Crowther said: “It’s quite a challenge. It’s difficult developing and delivering highways schemes in that sort of time. So you have to tailor what you’re trying to do based on that. For example, if you wanted to do a major cycle route down a really busy arterial corridor, designing, developing and delivering that in three years is going to be very challenging.
“The bit through the Centre, it’s not the best defined cycle route. There may be a solution that could be relatively quick. Paint could be an option. Certainly it could be something we could look at, and it wouldn’t be that expensive. But the City Centre is also a very big, busy pedestrian space and we don’t want bikes flying through there at high speed.
“Whether we got it right with the current design is open for debate. The intention was to not make it too clear, so that cyclists weren’t going 20mph through a busy pedestrian area. But I think it could do with a review, certainly.”
