Tardis - the latest way to travel around Bristol?

[whole diary]

[grahame]

I have been asked to let people know of WECA^» (West of England Combined Authority - about) meetings on 27th July (by D.R. who many of you will know).  Can't attend myself, but useful meetings to get public points across / into the minutes

See https://www.westofengland-ca.gov.uk/category/meetings/

A meeting of the West of England Combined Authority Committee was held on Date: Friday 27 July 2018 Time: 10.30am Place: Council Chamber, Kingswood Civic Centre, South Gloucestershire Council, High Street, BS15 4AJ

Noting that this message has been brought to us from the future .... "was"    . Perhaps the minutes of the meetings have been written too, and are awaiting publication later on the day of 27th?

[Bmblbzzz]

And I thought this was going to be a reference to:


 

[Western Pathfinder]

And there was I thinking what on earth Has Marvin come up with now !.

[johnneyw]

Apparently when you flush it makes Tardis sounds outside. Not tested it myself yet but seen it down on the footpath/cycle way past the Avon Valley Railway.

[Red Squirrel]

Warmley. And isn't it a 'Turdis'?

[johnneyw]

Warmley. And isn't it a 'Turdis'?

I'm desperately trying to work out an acronym for that. 😁

[martyjon]

And I thought this was going to be a reference to:

 

There was I thinking that this was to be Marvins answer to relieve all those residents and visitors to Bristol of the pain they are suffering by his decision to lock shut all the city's public loos as a cost saving measure.

VISIT ENGLAND, ANYWHERE OTHER THAN BRISTOL.

I'm ashamed to say it of my birth city but that is how I feel over this crass stupid measure when there are other measures which would achieve even more savings than this.

Did

#joinusinamasspissintothecityhallmoatasaprotestagainstmarvinsmassclosureofthecityspisshouses

take place, does anyone know.

[Christina Biggs FOSBR]

I have been asked to let people know of WECA^» (West of England Combined Authority - about) meetings on 27th July (by D.R. who many of you will know).  Can't attend myself, but useful meetings to get public points across / into the minutes

See https://www.westofengland-ca.gov.uk/category/meetings/

A meeting of the West of England Combined Authority Committee was held on Date: Friday 27 July 2018 Time: 10.30am Place: Council Chamber, Kingswood Civic Centre, South Gloucestershire Council, High Street, BS15 4AJ

Noting that this message has been brought to us from the future .... "was"    . Perhaps the minutes of the meetings have been written too, and are awaiting publication later on the day of 27th?

Thanks grahame - as you may imagine, FOSBR^▸ (Friends of Suburban Bristol Railways) is on the case. There is also WECA
Scrutiny two days before on Weds 25 July, 10.30am at Somervale Pavilion, Keynsham which I usually attend as well to get more detail and informal contacts before the decisions at WECA Committee - well worth the extra day and still time to hone the final WECA statement by the Thursday 26 July 12 noon deadline. Also a bit closer for our friends from the Far East?
 
Friday 27 July is billed in the WECA Business Plan 2018 as a "gateway decision" on MetroWest Phase 1
- hopefully they will have come up with a proposal for further funding
bids for Portishead as I don't think the N Somerset councillors will
have changed heart on the issue of joining WECA. We are attending a Scrutiny meeting in Weston super Mare tomorrow 11am Weds 18 July at Weston super Mare Town Hall - held by N Somerset Council who are very much looking for ideas. I'm going to suggest they hire a consultant to make the technical and emotional case for private investment as some commentators have felt the present application did not make the financial case for investment effectively enough to beat the rival Highways England bids for the first DfT^» (Department for Transport - about)-recommended pot of funding. Although the Portbury Docks seem to have entirely stopped using the freight line, the argument that they have purchased paths against future eventualities still stands, and having re-scoped once, no-one will have the appetite for finding further savings on the £48 million price-tag still outstanding. So I think we just have to search high and low for 48 millionaires, or one Bill Gates-type person who fancies keeping his passion wagon in Portishead Marina and commuting by steam train?
 
I think it would be also timely to have presentations on Pilning, receiving a boost from the current Clean Air preoccupation, as a good surgical intervention to alleviating air pollution at the bottom of the
M32 where it stops in Bristol - ie get the the cars off the road before they even get on the M32. We had a great meeting with DfT today at Bristol Parkway at their last roadshow for the XC^▸ (Cross Country Trains (franchise)) Franchise consultation (deadline 30 August) as we are working up a submission to ask for the once-daily 07:00 Cardiff to Manchester train (reversing at Temple Meads) to make a stop at 07:32 at Pilning. This is because it was the top time choice for local commuters into Bristol when we held our first pub(lic) meeting at the Plough Pilning in 2016. We are hoping that the modest nature of our request (as this once daily service stops at every station on the stretch from Newport and Filton Abbey Wood anyway), plus the increased slack on XC timetables and their pre-eminence in the Automatic Route Signalling software we are fighting for Severn Beach Line, will make a good case for a 24-month trial. UWE have done us a Cost Benefit Analysis for Pilning for a variety of footfall scenarios, and we now have maps to show that the 2019 planned M49 junction will be very close to Pilning and that there will indeed be a way in to the Western "Wall" commercial development to the south of the M49 junction.

Also I think there is a need to demonstrate substantial public support for Thornbury. Do
you lovely people have contacts in Thornbury we can alert? David Carter the new WECA
Infrastructure lead has been to Tytherington but I think WECA and S Glos need
evidence of public support before they actually put it in the West of England JLTP (Joint Local Transport Plan) consultation draft in September 2018. From the general silence from "our man in Thornbury" I fear it's falling prey to politics around the proposed Buckover Village development - a group called TRAPP'D are so passionately against any further development they are perhaps regarding the Thornbury Rail idea as a lure to get them to succumb to Buckover, only for the rail project to be cynically withdrawn once the JSP is approved.
 
Thoughts welcome and see some of you on Friday 27 July if not Weds 25 July as well?

Tina Biggs
FOSBR Secretary
general@fosbr.org.uk

[martyjon]

I have been asked to let people know of WECA^» (West of England Combined Authority - about) meetings on 27th July (by D.R. who many of you will know).  Can't attend myself, but useful meetings to get public points across / into the minutes

See https://www.westofengland-ca.gov.uk/category/meetings/

A meeting of the West of England Combined Authority Committee was held on Date: Friday 27 July 2018 Time: 10.30am Place: Council Chamber, Kingswood Civic Centre, South Gloucestershire Council, High Street, BS15 4AJ

Noting that this message has been brought to us from the future .... "was"    . Perhaps the minutes of the meetings have been written too, and are awaiting publication later on the day of 27th?

Is this another classic case of a public body performing yet again A FAIT ACCOMPLI.

[grahame]

Is this another classic case of a public body performing yet again A FAIT ACCOMPLI.

Having attended a couple of the WECA^» (West of England Combined Authority - about) meetings recently to make an input on cross-border buses into Wiltshire (have your passports and visas ready!) I do questions whether some meetings are so pre-planned that anything that happens on the day has little or no effect on the outcome.

Having given that jaded comment, a stream of comments, meeting after meeting, which differ but all encourage WECA along in the same general direction, may in time help the ball to roll along.    After all, what better way to move forward tun to work with the community, for what the knowledgable members of the community are looking to achieve, and to be able to tout the support of those community members and what you've achieved together when you come to be re-elected.

[Christina Biggs FOSBR]

Thanks Graham. We do seem to be getting somewhere by simply turning up time after time over almost ten years in my own case, and trying to tailor our statements to current issues, if only in terms of personal trust and mutual respect with both officers and elected members.

In terms of why I regard the Friday 27 July WECA^» (West of England Combined Authority - about) Committe meeting as particularly worth turning up to, it's just that I've been advised that if we just wait for the consultation draft of the Joint Local Transport Plan in September 2018 it will be very hard to persuade WECA to make changes then (despite it being a consultation) - so I'm hoping that bringing along some real people (as opposed to usual suspects) upstream of the draft being finalised. I'm hoping that new faces may yet persuade officers to put in more elements of the FOSBR^▸ (Friends of Suburban Bristol Railways) Rail Plan. In fact I have heard that they about to publish a rail study into capacity of a series of proposals across the region, which I hope will include some of our many aspirations. I'm not expecting all of our recommendations to be followed, but I find that by presenting a varied menu of starters, main courses, regional delicacies and delicious small bites (like Pilning) as well as great fat porky propositions like Thornbury and old sour grapes like Henbury Loop, some may entice the appetite. Indeed one of the WECA officers told me he'd been to Tytherington....

Tina

[grahame]

In terms of why I regard the Friday 27 July WECA^» (West of England Combined Authority - about) Committe meeting as particularly worth turning up to, it's just that I've been advised that if we just wait for the consultation draft of the Joint Local Transport Plan in September 2018 it will be very hard to persuade WECA to make changes then (despite it being a consultation) ...

Consultations are but a step.  If you can help WECA (or any other body) include the right questions in the first place - consult and discuss between various options that the public or sections of the public want - so much the better for everyone.  If you / we are seen around and seen around with positive, co-operative and co-ordinated depth, it gives the specifiers of the consultations confidence that ideas put forward will be supported into the future and they and their colleagues won't be left holding someone else's baby alone.

[TonyK]

"Consultation" got something of a bad reputation with MetroBust, becoming more a case of telling people what they wanted or thought would work, then asking why we all agree with them.I would hope that WECA^» (West of England Combined Authority - about) and the Western Super Mayor go a long way to repair that damage, although "hope"may be the wrong word to use.

[SandTEngineer]

In my front line railway union rep days we were always taught that 'Consultation' mean't "Hard luck, this is what you are going to get" and 'Negotiation' mean't "Now then, what would you like?".....

[TonyK]

I forgot to mention that my own Tardis is playing up of late. I can't understand it - it was working fine next month.