If you live in SGC, and 300K people do, Cribbs Causeway is essential.
Thirty years ago Bristol failed to address traffic, parking and shopping issues that severely impacted the new and established areas of SGC. This failure created the Mall@Cribbs and further complicated the traffic issues in the Northern Fringe.
If Bristol CC had encouraged and help fund the Avon Metro envisaged, then it is unlikely Cribbs Causeway would exist as a retail hotspot as now.
To me, that sounds a little simplistic as a history, although on the right path. But 30 years ago, we still had Avon in charge of transport amongst other things, not the individual squabbling councils. In any case, I doubt that improved transport to Broadmead from Yate, Thornbury, Kingswood and the like would have prevented the Mall from being built. The Mall at Cribbs was not built primarily because of traffic problems, but because of consumer demand, and opened long before tram plans were finally abandoned. The first major development there was the Carrefour superstore on the site now occupied by Asda. That was served by a free bus service from outside the Colston Hall in Bristol, and I used that as free transport to the M5 a few times around 1978 when hitch-hiking back to Lancashire.
According to
Bob Fowler, former Project Manager for Bristol City Council Rapid Transit the initial ATA project failed through lack of political support (I think he means Dawn Primarolo) leading to loss of funding. The finance model of covering the costs of building from the increased values of properties along the route didn't include a valid mechanism for extracting that money, so was a bit suspect anyway. The second incarnation of the idea in the 1990s died with Avon County Council in 1996. The joint Bristol / South Glos submission of outline business case in 1998 was received by a government that suddenly turned pro-bus, even though 60% of the funding would have come from the private sector.
Although private interest evaporated with the 2½ year hiatus that followed, the plan was not dead, and money was made available in early 2001. According to Mr Fowler (who admittedly could be biased):
At this point, faced with putting promise into reality, South Glouscestershire Council got ‘cold feet’. They wanted to reconsider the location of the northern terminus and the route to it. Instead of going east from Abbey Wood through the University of the West of England and then NE, they wanted to go west to the shopping mall at Cribbs Causeway. Bristol argued that the core route was viable and should go ahead but S.Glouscester could re-assess their alternative proposal. By Christmas 2002, the Bristol route to Parkway showed a positive cost/benefit ratio but the S.Glouscester route didn’t - so Bristol is going ahead, with an extension (ultimately to Cribbs Causeway?) safeguarded as a future possibility.
Faced with such division, Government lost patience and pulled the funds, telling the councils in 2005 to come back with proposals of a more rubbish nature, based on buses. Hence we not only end up with MetroBust, but almost saw the Severn Beach line turned into a guided busway.
Rightly or wrongly, I see South Glos as being far more behind this atrocity than either Bristol City Council or north somerset parish council. As evidence, I cite an article in one of their propaganda sheets earlier this year (or late last year - I'll have to look it up again) in which the author refers to the "already successful MetroBust project". I sent an email asking how they had measured that success - passengers carried, operators engaged, budgets kept to, schedules met, or jobs created at South Gloucestershire - but I am still waiting for a reply. I may have stood more chance of getting one had I not started the message "Dear Comical Ali, I wondered what had happened to you after the end of the Iraq war".
We certainly, collectively, missed more than one golden opportunity to connect the different parts of the geographical area formerly know as the County of Avon. Politics is the problem at both local and national level, and no one district or party is to blame entirely. Much money was spent on the various schemes, almost all wasted, and what we are finally getting has caused many more problems than it will ever solve. But suggest an Independent Transport Authority, and all bar Bristol scream "Remember Avon!"
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