Transport policy is now ‘no transport’

So many recent actions, or absences of action, by our council: low traffic neighbourhoods and the CAZ in general; in particular, turning John Wood’s Queen Square into a “traffic calming installation”, park and rides to have or not to have, the “ring of steel”, no practicable private car or freight access to Milsom Street and other parts of our Central Business District (CBD), and the ongoing debate about how to keep HGVS off Cleveland Bridge. All of which indicate that the transport policy objective of Bath and

North East Somerset Council has become to have no transport at all (at least, none that is mechanically propelled).

But no transport means no trade – whether in tangible goods or by serving visitors – no trade means no prosperity, and a city of no prosperity will have a bad impact on all of us.

Around 40 years ago the city of Chester, an attractive city with Roman origins and a medieval wall all the way round that had been the most attractive shopping centre in the north-west of England, chose not to take measures to improve facilities for visitors who used cars to come from Liverpool, Manchester and other towns in the region. Meanwhile, by 1998 a private developer had completed The Trafford Centre an out-of-town shopping centre on the west side of Manchester, directly connected to the M60 and so to the rest of the north-west’s motorway network, including more than 12,000 free parking spaces for cars. The result played out over several years: Chester CBD’S prosperity declined and everyone in the north-west went shopping at The Trafford Centre. Part of Chester’s response has been to develop four park and ride sites.

The idea espoused by at least one key councillor that park and ride schemes are not effective, following the views of the transport studies department at UWE, flies in the face of Department for Transport and Highways England planning advice and funding criteria based on studies they commissioned over several years. Yes, some park and ride schemes have not been successful but the great majority have been. The city of York, another attractive city with Roman origins, a medieval wall all the way round, and a carefully managed and developed tourism industry, has just opened its sixth park and ride site,

despite early difficulties with a “rubber-tyred tram” vehicle used with the first two sites.

I always thought that Lib Dems were not warmongers but Lord Strasburger’s letter, “We can win battle to keep out lorries” (September 30), denigrating Wiltshire Council and characterising our traffic problem as a “fight” with Wiltshire, indicates the contrary. The people of Wiltshire are not our enemies, thousands of them come into our city to work, study, shop or use their designated NHS hospital on the further side of Bath, then go home again. This “chuck the problem over the fence” attitude also reflects a transport policy of “let’s have no transport”. These people, like others coming and going each day, as Martin Veal so thoroughly explained (October 7), help make our city prosperous.

I also have to agree with Adam Reynolds, the “Real issue is how to tackle local traffic” (October 7). The 1990 Batheaston Bypass public inquiry inspector threw out the A36 Link Road part of the Avon County Council scheme, partly because “it would only serve local traffic”! And as I have also written before, the Bristol and Bath to South Coast study (BB2SC) Table 3.1 clearly showed that at Limpley Stoke 73 per cent of traffic on the A36 is “local”.

North-south traffic including (other survey data indicates) around 800 HGV movements per day does have a serious impact on the east side of our city and we need to agree on a solution – other than war with the neighbours.

LTNS are not really a new idea, they are a derivative of garden city planning or Radburn planning in which up to 200 homes are set around a cul-de-sac to prevent through running of vehicles and with footpaths to adjoining neighbourhoods. They were a concept for new towns like Letchworth,

Welwyn Garden City, Radburn New Jersey and Yate based on a road network built up from a “hierarchy of roads”. The principle was further developed by Colin Buchanan in Traffic in Towns, 1963, then again in the 1987 Roads and Traffic in Urban Areas design manual published by the Department for Transport. However, Buchanan’s proposals for the insertion of higher category roads into established urban areas including parts of central London and for Bath, his 1965 report, all demanded the demolition of swathes of these cities to make way for the faster roads.

So without roads of the higher categories of the hierarchy what happens to through traffic? Either diversion to other unsuitable residential roads, or it just evaporates perhaps by suppression of journeys which means suppression of social or economic interaction. Nobody knows how, we are told. But actually Jane Jacobs in The Death and Life of Great American Cities, 1961, essentially showed “how” and showed that by abandoning strict planning zoning – residential, retail, industrial, cultural – local areas could become more self-sustaining and less traffic would be induced. And Jane Jacobs wrote a lot more helpful stuff besides, relevant to traffic access to Milsom Street and the “ring of steel” areas. In short, we cannot just tinker with traffic arrangements without thinking about land-use planning, social interaction, economic interaction and other aspects that do not seem to have been thought about before choosing LTNS. Some “garden city” developments have, sadly, shown that pursuit of the single objective of separating vehicles from pedestrians has led directly to antisocial behaviour and crime in areas without “eyes on the street”, to use a Jane Jacobs phrase.

The continuing prosperity of our

city needs the continuing development of the understanding of our transport needs and the development of our transport assets themselves. A north-south bypass on the east side of the city, a single carriageway road of less than one mile in length, at an intermediate level in the hierarchy of roads, would help to relieve local “through” traffic that simply wants to reach another part of our own local area, could also include a park and rideby-rail station for all car-borne travellers arriving from the east and south-east and, en passant, would also help remove the Bristol and Bath to South Coast traffic that seems to have become a casus bellum.

Dorian Baker

Bath