Number crunching the city’s traffic

Richard Luetchford, writer of a letter describing the long-delayed A36/A46 link road as unfairly derided, should have attended the excellent council-hosted Bath Hacked Hackathon held last year that enabled multiple groups to analyse two weeks of traffic data collected using 45 Automatic Number Plate Cameras at the beginning of November 2017. The base-load of London Road is around 1,800 vehicles per hour and peaks at around 2,200 VPH in the weekday morning rush between 7-9am. During this period around 45 vehicles per hour are the A36/ A46 through traffic. So one vehicle every three minutes heading east and one heading west. The peak time is 2-3pm where it reaches 60 VPH, or one every two minutes each way. In contrast, the Batheaston Tollbridge is coping with 120 VPH during the morning rush hour, dropping off during the day and peaking at 130VPH at 4-5pm. The argument that we need a £120million bypass to be built in a structurally unsound valley really is nonsensical when it is only 2 per cent of the traffic on London Road during the peak hour. As a side note, the peak time for HGV A36/A46 through traffic is 6-7am, eight VPH east, 11 VPH west. The council should be praised for the way they have uniquely worked with Bath Hacked to make the traffic data publicly available. The data captures 3,467,856 movements of 384,594 vehicles over a two-week period. It is an amazing study of Bath traffic. It provides us with an opportunity to really understand why a link road will not solve Bath’s transport problems. As to the East Park & Ride; Richard should read the analysis UWE did on the origin of P&R users. The Newbridge P&R is primarily used by Keynsham residents. Residents with good, but expensive, public transport links to the city. The city does not need more P&R parking but simply needs to offer P&R ticket pricing on Corsham/ Frome/keynsham/radstock buses to the city. Call it “leave (at home) and ride”. I’d go so far as to suggest the P&R should be slightly more expensive than taking a bus from Radstock. We do not need a P&R on the east side of Bath. We need an attractive public transport solution. Adam Reynolds Bath