Council scraps plans for ring road throughabouts
COUNCIL chiefs have scrapped plans for a series of controversial throughabouts and other big changes to junctions on the A4174 Avon Ring Road around Bristol.
South Gloucestershire Council temporarily put the brakes on the £30 million proposals a year ago amid huge opposition and fears the new layouts were dangerous.
Authority leaders said at the time they were postponing a bid for government money for the alterations to five roundabouts on the dual carriageway, three of which would have been turned into throughabouts, and would review the situation in a year. Now they have decided to abandon the plans, insisting there has been a “significant reduction” in delays on the ring road since they were first drawn up in 2018.
Council bosses also say the £6.9 million A4174 Wraxall Road throughabout, which was completed just weeks before the wider changes were halted, has had a “positive impact”, but it would appear not enough to justify remodelling three other roundabouts similarly. They say the work is now not needed because both northbound and southbound ring road traffic at morning and afternoon peak times dropped by up to 14 per cent between 2018 and 2022 as travel patterns changed following the Covid pandemic.
Conservative cabinet member for regeneration, environment and strategic infrastructure Cllr Steve Reade said: “We have made the decision not to submit a funding bid and to withdraw the proposals. We monitored the ring road and have the evidence that traffic patterns have changed.
“We have seen that there are now not as many delays, largely due to our new post-lockdown travel habits and journey time savings thanks to the Wraxall Road throughabout. Our data for the Wraxall Road junction improvement indicates that many of the congestion issues on the ring road between Siston Hill and Kingsfield have now been reduced.”
The plans were met with a 84 per cent disapproval in a public consultation. South Gloucestershire Council had hoped the Wraxall Road throughabout scheme would serve as a template for improvements along a five-mile stretch between Lyde Green and Kingsfield roundabouts to cut jams and stop drivers using local roads as rat-runs.
More traffic lights and entry lanes would have been installed and land at the edges of the ring road developed to provide the extra space. But no dedicated bus lanes were proposed and the proposals were criticised by Greens and Labour’s West of England metro mayor Dan Norris who said road-building generated more vehicles.
And it would have meant motorists enduring three years of roadworks. The roundabouts that would have been changed were Lyde Green, The Rosary (also known as Emersons Green), Siston Hill, Deanery Road and Kingsfield.