Tackling congestion: Bristol fashion

Like virtually all major UK cities, Bristol has major congestion problems – and they’re getting steadily worse in a city where two-car ownership figures are amongst the highest in the country and dependency on public transport is unusually low. Now a £68 million package is being developed, aimed at putting ‘Bristolians’ back on the buses.

How do you persuade people to forsake the comfort of their cars and put their faith in public transport? It’s a conundrum that local authorities all over the world are facing. Sticks like congestion charges will go so far. But the carrot that is proven to work, time and again, is to provide a public transport system that is actually the preferable option. And that means guaranteeing certain levels of comfort, quality, reliability and cost.

And that’s the solution now on the table for the city of Bristol and its surrounding unitary authorities. With so many of the people who work in Bristol living outside of the city boundaries, and vice versa, a joined-up approach is the only workable option. So, following a recommendation from the Department for Transport, the four local authorities – Bristol City, Bath & North East Somerset, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire – are working in partnership to plan and deliver major transport improvements in the Greater Bristol area.

If all goes to plan, £42 million will be coming from the Department for Transport to develop the Greater Bristol Bus Network over the next four years, providing 10 new Showcase routes giving infrastructure improvements, better bus priorities, new bus stops and Real Time Information at bus stops, on the internet, and SMS messaging. A further £20 million will be coming from the bus operator First Group for new vehicles to run on these premier routes. Additionally, £6 million will be raised (in the form of 106 Agreements) from developers who will be benefiting from having smart new buses serving the new homes and offices they are building.

As this article goes to press, the parties involved are nervously – but optimistically – waiting for DfT approval to enable work due to commence this autumn.

The plans are ambitious. Already bus services make up the backbone of the sub-region’s public transport network – currently carrying over a million people a week. The proposed work will develop a network of ten new showcase bus corridors, serving up to 40 improved bus routes that will transform transport and ensure fast, reliable and accessible services – as well as improving congestion, road safety and air quality.

Infrastructure changes, including the creation of new bus lanes and prioritising traffic lights, will give buses the edge in speed over car users. But a great deal of the all-important reliability factor will come in the form of a state-of-the art telemetry system, which will not only inform First Bus of exactly where every vehicle is at any point, but also provide that data to passengers waiting at the bus stop or, via the internet, in their homes or at work.

Passengers can use SMS, WAP phones or their PDA’s to be able to monitor the progress of their bus while they sip the last of their coffee before stepping out of the coffee shop and along to the bus stop. That last scenario might sound futuristic for some bus users, but it’s a future that’s already here.

Bristol City Council has been providing bus users with real time passenger information for over 10 years. Using satellite navigation to track the location of buses and send information to displays at bus stops, passengers can already see in real time the progress of buses approaching their required stop. The system, supplied by ACIS, currently encompasses over 100 on-street displays, 90 vehicles, and over 40 junctions, across twelve routes – including the increasingly popular bus route serving Bristol International Airport.

The creation of the GBBN, however, will take this system to a whole new level of scale and functionality.

“The Bristol real time passenger information system has expanded on a route-by-route basis in the past, and it has worked well,” says Dee Watkins, Regional Business Development Manager for ACIS. “However all our experience from around the country has proven that – to get the very most out of the system in terms of service reliability, performance and passenger satisfaction – you really need to equip a bus company’s entire fleet.”

Taking that on board, Bristol City Council have made the commitment to install RTPI equipment into all of the 250 buses belonging to First Bus which operate over 90% of bus services in Bristol. And, in the spirit of partnership, First Bus have committed to pay all of the ongoing maintenance costs for this equipment and provide the ACIS BusNet software, which will enable them to monitor and manage their bus services efficiently.

In the words of the Bristol City Council spokesman: “For this investment to work, and to persuade Bristolians out of their cars and onto the buses, we know we have to offer a service of European quality.

“We have effectively trialled the network on two key routes serving the Hartcliffe area of the city and bus journeys have gone up by 13%, making a significant impact upon road conditions. Interestingly, it has also led to a sharp rise in the numbers of cyclists who are making use of the new bus lanes.”

It is no co-incidence that the routes chosen serve an area of Bristol that is the principal target for what its leader Barbara Janke describes as the “suburban renaissance of the city”, connecting council estates with high unemployment and pockets of deprivation to the city centre. Throughout the Greater Bristol area, the envisaged bus improvements will help to meet the Government’s aspiration of economic vitality and improved accessibility – helping to meet its objectives of social inclusion throughout the community.

Co-operation will be key to the success of the scheme, and ensuring that the maximum benefits are gained, with First Bus personnel working alongside Bristol City personnel in the Urban Traffic Control room.

But it will not simply be Bristol gaining from the new network. Bath has, if anything, even bigger congestion issues than Bristol to contend with, with high volumes of traffic coming from Bristol into Bath each day, as wells as from the Norton Radstock area. One of the arterial routes being upgraded is the A4, another is the A367, and the proposed work in and around Bath will include bus infrastructure improvements on local routes throughout the city, providing quicker and more reliable access between residential areas and employment and leisure in the city centre, the Universities and the hospitals.

Much of the planned growth in the sub-region is pencilled in for north of the city – notably the new Science Park at Emerson’s Green and significant residential growth at Harry Stoke. But the congestion problems on and around the northern ring road serving those developments are now severe. The northern fringe is also home to Cribbs Causeway, the biggest out of town shopping mall in the region, as well as the University of the West of England and a series of large business and distribution parks.

The new bus services won’t simply be helping the inward bound commuters: they will be transporting large numbers of people living in the city out to the places where they want to work, shop and study.

As a spokesman for South Gloucestershire points out, traffic growth in the last 10 years has been three times the national average: further growth is untenable. “This will take us forward for the next five years,” he says, “although longer term we will need to look for other solutions.”

A light transit system between the city and key nodes on the boundaries has been the subject of debate – and disappointment – in the last decade. “That would represent a step change in spending,” say South Gloucestershire, “which is why the Government were reluctant to back the bid for an LRT before. But we have kept the routes available for consideration in the future, although it would almost certainly be a bus-based system rather than a rail one.”

While the Government will be the biggest backer of the new network, the £20 million investment from First Bus is not inconsiderable, even for a company that already has 22 operations around the country. “We will only win new customers if we create an offer that rivals the comfort and convenience of the car,” maintains First Bus Commercial Director Simon Cursio.

“How many new customers? That’s almost impossible to say, but these are very modern vehicles and quite unlike the buses many people remember.

‘’When drivers start to see the buses going past them on journeys, and we develop a track record on punctuality, then we’ll begin to make inroads. But we see this as a long term investment and our commitment to the economy of the city.”

Bristol is a city that regularly comes in the top handful of “places to live” in Britain. But even its biggest admirers would point to its overcrowded roads as detracting substantially from the quality of life on offer and a deterrent to inward investment and economic growth. With the GBBN, a major roadblock to progress will be removed.