Bristol: A stupid city?

[whole diary]

[Red Squirrel]

A multi-storey car park will be built next to Bristol's new arena and the nearby former Royal Mail sorting office demolished under new plans unveiled just a week before proposals for the long awaited venue go before councillors.

Parking was likely to be a contentious issue when the arena plans go to a vote on Wednesday, March 2, with initial proposals outlining as few as 45 on-site parking spaces.

Mayor George Ferguson told Bristol24/7 in October that he believed only a ^stupid city^ invests in new parking instead of finding transport alternative.

But in a concession to residents in Totterdown, who have warned their roads will be clogged when the 12,000-capacity arena holds large-scale events, the council has put forward plans to build a 480-space, eight-storey car park on the site of the Kwik Fit garage on Bath Road - across the railway tracks from the arena.

A new eight-storey, 480-space car park will be built on the site of the Bath Road Kwik Fit

Ferguson is set to take a decision on the car park alongside a raft of other works for the area surrounding the arena at a cabinet meeting the evening before the arena plans are discussed.

Read full article in Bristol 24/7

Meanwhile:

University Hospitals Bristol (UHB) has held a long-term aspiration to replace the multi-storey car park (MSCP) (120 places) on the north side of the junction of Marlborough Street and Dighton Street with a new MSCP (820 places.)

...

The new, larger MSCP would close Eugene Street and demolish the Eugene Street flats with the loss of the city centre homes. It is reasonable to infer that if the 700 new parking places had an 80% occupancy rate and rotated three times a day there would be over new 3,300 new daily car movements.

Source: Bristol Civic Society

[Tim]

Not a stupid city, but a stupid country. 

Why do we view cars and public transport as antagonistic to each others?  German cities seem to manage to simultaneously make good provision for their cars and for public transport.  Germans love their trains and it isn't because they are priced or bullied out of their cars.

I'd favour putting some effort into properly connecting the new arena to the station perhaps with a new link bridge.  Make it easy to go by train and you might find that people are reluctant to drive.  I also wonder if a dual use car park is worth some consideration.  Daytime it could be used by rail commuters (and therefore be a "pro-rail" car park), in the evening it could be used by concert goers.

 

[Red Squirrel]

I'd favour putting some effort into properly connecting the new arena to the station perhaps with a new link bridge. 

Something like this?



(image courtesy of Bristol 24/7)

Why do we view cars and public transport as antagonistic to each others? 

I'm not sure we do. But use of the private motor car has to be limited if there is to be any quality of life for people who live in cities.

Make it easy to go by train and you might find that people are reluctant to drive.

It's next door to a major rail hub. The only way to make it easier for people to get there by rail would be to invest in improving rail services.

I also wonder if a dual use car park is worth some consideration

I would imagine that most of the time the proposed car park would largely be used by rail passengers - many of whom might otherwise have got to Temple Meads by public transport.

[eightf48544]

Not a stupid city, but a stupid country. 

Why do we view cars and public transport as antagonistic to each others?  German cities seem to manage to simultaneously make good provision for their cars and for public transport.  Germans love their trains and it isn't because they are priced or bullied out of their cars.

I've always thought one reason many German cities don't have much congestion is that most have on street trams. Which seem to get priority. Once on a tram  Rostock when someone misjudge pulling out in front it. Tram 1 Car 0 not a scratch on the tram but big dent in passenger door..

[TeaStew]

That spiky bridge will seriously outdo the cheese-grater!  (..yes, okay, I realise that isn't the finished surface)

[simonw]

The new car park will probably be very busy as there are no car parks in that area, other than the temporary car park by Temple Meads that will be built on as part of this project.

Whist I agree that a car park should not be needed by a rail station, in an ideal world, you assume that Bristol Public Transport is fit for purpose. It is not.

If MetroWest Phase 1+2 happen, and if the mothballed stations are bought back in, and if the bus network interfaces with MetroWest, then the car park will not be needed (fingers crossed). However until then, it is needed I am sorry to say.

[Tim]

I've always thought one reason many German cities don't have much congestion is that most have on street trams. Which seem to get priority. Once on a tram  Rostock when someone misjudge pulling out in front it. Tram 1 Car 0 not a scratch on the tram but big dent in passenger door..

agreed.  I suspect cost is a factor too.  German intercity prices overlap with UK^▸ (United Kingdom) intercity prices.  But every German city has an integrated local network where the season ticket costs something like a few hundred Euros.  Most of the locals therefore have one of those tickets in their wallet which makes the incremental cost of an extra journey nil, so they jump on a tram, bus, train without thinking. 

[Red Squirrel]

If MetroWest Phase 1+2 happen, and if the mothballed stations are bought back in, and if the bus network interfaces with MetroWest, then the car park will not be needed (fingers crossed). However until then, it is needed I am sorry to say.

Big events are likely to draw in people from a wide area, and for many public transport will not be a viable option. As an example, someone coming in from somewhere like Melksham would probably have to leave before the end of the event if they wanted to get home by public transport. Most people would choose to drive under those circumstances.

So, sadly, a car park is required to prevent Totterdown turning into carmageddon on gig nights.

[grahame]

As an example, someone coming in from somewhere like Melksham would probably have to leave before the end of the event if they wanted to get home by public transport.

Probably have to leave before the start 

It's going to be a pretty unusual station (Berney Arms, Dovey Junction) - or in an age to come - where there's no requirement for car parking.   For sure, within a certain catchment people can walk / cycle.  For significant flows to the station you'll have buses ... and of course other rail based solutions, but for some it's gonna be the car.   As the public transport network gets better in the future (?), the call for car parking in city centres decreases - I suspect you see that in London where car parking at London termini is tiny in proportion to passenger numbers, but there's always a case for some (*) - especially where you have situations like the Millennium Stadium at Cardiff where the public transport network simply couldn't cope with getting everyone away after a 10 p.m. finish.

* - Example.  Many moons ago, I lived in north west Kent and used to take "Merrymaker" trips with my Grandmother from Euston - a day trip to Chester, or York, or Morcambe of Carlisle.  But at her age, catching the local train into London, the tube over, early in the morning and reversing that late at night would have just been too much ... so a drive into central London ...

[simonw]

Agreed.

Its a shame that the Avon Council Metro plan was mothballed when the council was broken up in the 1980s. If not we may(!) have had a German quality transport system for Bristol and Avon area.

[Red Squirrel]

As an aside, according to Steve Melia's research Germans own more cars than Britons and drive more miles in them.

[Bmblbzzz]

Well, Germans have cheap prices for cars (but expensive servicing) and it's a bigger country.

But getting back to Bristol, Ferguson is hoping to be re-elected as mayor in a couple of months. He's already annoyed the "motorists' rights" lobby by introducing residents parking zones and 20mph speed limits, so his decision is likely to be based on whether he tries to cement his green image by rejecting the car park or moderate it to appeal to the hardworking family driver. It's most likely that despite Bristol's (mostly self-indulgent) green image, there aren't enough greenies to outweigh the harddriving family workers. At the same time, by being just outside the arena, he can claim he isn't contradicting his previous statements.

[Red Squirrel]

He's already annoyed the "motorists' rights" lobby by introducing residents parking zones...

I think it is possible that if you put it to the vote, you'd find that most people who live in RPAs now see the benefit and wouldn't want to go back.

...and 20mph speed limits

Again, I think most people would not want the speed limit in their street put back up..!

...he can claim he isn't contradicting his previous statements

According to the Points West this lunchtime, they may close other car parks to keep the total amount of parking much as it is now.

[Tim]

As an aside, according to Steve Melia's research Germans own more cars than Britons and drive more miles in them.

Interesting.

The thing that strikes me most about German trains is that they seem more efficiently run than in the UK^▸ (United Kingdom).

Staffing levels look lower, most S-Bahns are DOO^▸ (Driver-Only Operation (that is, trains which operate without carrying a guard)), many underground station platforms are unmanned (the hoards of "dispatch staff" in their high vis are missing), many trains are longer than in the UK, many stations are unmanned, most tickets are bought from a machine (in fact it costs slightly more to use a ticket counter in many cases) which is fine because fares are simple and almost all stations are not barriered (I don't suggest that the Germans are more honest, but they seem to have got themselves into a virtuous cycle of local tickets being so cheap that the average resident holds a season ticket anyway and the money lost from not collecting fares in not large enough to justify action to reduce it)   

I expect capital costs in Germany are higher than the UK - underused sidings abound and the main stations consume vast acres of city centre real estate with each platform only getting perhaps one train an hour (Munich station managed to find a huge spare disused booking hall and waiting area to use as a migrant reception centre at their Hauptbahnhof.  In the UK that space simply would not be there and if it was it would have been sold off)  but that operating costs are lower.

We need to discover a model whereby instead of the tax payer pouring subsidy continually into a service, the tax payer can pour a one-off chuck of money into a whole network to make it cheaper to run so that the need for ungoing subsidy is reduced. 

[Bmblbzzz]

Again, I think most people would not want the speed limit in their street put back up..!

I think this is true of RPZs as well. Most people don't want other people speeding along their street and are happy to keep parking for themselves ^ but they still want to drive at 30 through other streets and park in them. The human brain is very good at holding two seemingly contradictory opinions simultaneously; it's what makes us superior to the monkeys!

(Of course the 20mph limit is mostly nominal anyway.)

...he can claim he isn't contradicting his previous statements

According to the Points West this lunchtime, they may close other car parks to keep the total amount of parking much as it is now.

That's interesting. Presumably the ones they'll close, if they do, will be those nearest the Arena, in order to avoid shifting traffic patterns too much (although of course it's possible they want to do this too), in which case it looks a bit silly building the new car park.