New Stations for Bristol Commuters

[whole diary]

[Red Squirrel]

So, what did the Joint Spatial Plan say about it?

Apologies for not being able to immediately find the copy of this kindly posted on another thread.

Cycling is mentioned 413 times in SD16B, but I can't find any reference to the Bristol-Bath path... maybe someone else will have more luck. As an aside, cycling groups in Bath and Bristol are unhappy that WECA^» (West of England Combined Authority - about) are failing to spend £80M allocated for cycling improvements:

You should be extremely alarmed that this man [Tim Bowles] has sat on £80M of City Transformation Funding. That the wording he uses around this money is about strategic transport. That he wants to ‘promote’ cycling, despite WECA scrutiny panel assuring me in a written statement that the term promote would no longer be used and replaced with enable.

The reality is that Tim Bowles is utterly failing the people of the West of England, and before you try and defend him in anyway, Andy Street [West Midlands Mayor] is Conservative and Andy Burnham [Manchester] is Labour. It is not about parties, it is about ability, about political will, about surrounding yourself quickly with good people and delivering.

...

This situation is utterly depressing and is very much down to Tim Bowles and his utter failure to get a grip on Transport from all aspects unless it has to do with 18a of the M4 junction.

As Chris Boardman said “It is not what does it cost to get people cycling and walking, but what is the cost not to get people cycling and walking”.

With the Joint Local Transport Plan not being published until April 2020 at the earliest, Tim Bowles will have set back the west by at least 2 years. In the meantime other mayors are absolutely killing it, focusing on enabling walking, cycling, and transforming public transport.

It’s less Metro Mayor Tim Bowles and more Teapot Tim.

We need a commitment from Tim Bowles to allocate the £80M he has been given to walking and cycling, implement a Strategic Cycling Analysis exercise, and begin delivery of a complete cycle network across the west. This could be done this year.

Source: Cycle Bath

Edit: grahame picked me up on a typo. _{Mutter mutter mutter.}

[grahame]

As an aside, cycling groups in Bath and Bristol are unhappy that WECA^» (West of England Combined Authority - about) are failing to spend £80 allocated for cycling improvements

80 quid won't go very far ...

[Red Squirrel]

As an aside, cycling groups in Bath and Bristol are unhappy that WECA^» (West of England Combined Authority - about) are failing to spend £80 allocated for cycling improvements

80 quid won't go very far ...

Good point... maybe it would buy Tim Bowles a second-hand bike?

I will edit my post.

[Bmblbzzz]

Just to note that there are quite a large number of commuters who cycle from Bristol to Bath and vice-versa. It's not just the inner sections that are used by commuters. But like any transport corridor or mode, the proportion of commuters to leisure users will vary by time and day.

[Dispatch Box]

Take a look at the filton bank thread, added items on there, you,ll be amazed.

[Wizard]

Badminton station would I feel be easy to open, as it is along loops and when I last looked the buildings were still there.

There are no loops at the site of Badminton station.

[Red Squirrel]

Talking of Badminton, I read this:

I suggest that, if there is one lesson which we ought to have learned in the last 10 years, it is the lesson of the enormous difficulties and expense of relieving congestion of traffic in urban areas and providing adequate parking space. It is true to say that at Badminton there is parking space, because the old goods yard is virtually unlimited and in any case it can be extended ad lib at very small expense, because the surrounding land is open land.

...

My third complaint is the ludicrous nonsense that inquiries before the transport users' consultative committees have become. They are entitled to look only at the question of hardship. I am not denying that there is hardship here. When people from the country areas with luggage or children and prams are forced to stagger on to a bus, on which there is no sort of accommodation for the sort of thing, when they generally end up at bus stations well away from the railway stations, and when there is no porter to help them, of course there is hardship. There is also hardship for the person who has been able to get to the railway station for a 4s. 6d. taxi journey and is now charged 25s. But the committees should be able to consider the wider questions to which I have referred.

...

We have a position which, whatever its merits from the point of view of the railways, has none from the point of view of town and country planning. The railways are making a staggering financial loss. Badminton station shows a profit. Are they really in a position to turn up their noses at any profit in this day and age?

...

I hope that the Ministry of Transport will occasionally think of something other than a rather bogus policy of trying to make a particular railway line a little more convenient to the railway authorities and instead consider the wider situation and the enormous extra costs that may be thrown on the city authorities in widening the roads in Bristol and providing adequate parking space.

F V Corfield, MP^▸ (Member of Parliament) for Gloucestershire South, May 1968
 
Source: Hansard

So back in the sixties, South Glos recognised that its transport issues were inextricably linked with Bristol's... If only they'd had an integrated transport authority...

[AMLAG]

I once worked with the last Stationmaster of Badminton who often recollected how it was very much the station of the Duke of Beaufort and his family.
With its closure Chippenham stn as an alternative was under ten miles away and of course the nearby M4 motorway serves it particularly well.

[martyjon]

Talking of Badminton, I read this:

I suggest that, if there is one lesson which we ought to have learned in the last 10 years, it is the lesson of the enormous difficulties and expense of relieving congestion of traffic in urban areas and providing adequate parking space. It is true to say that at Badminton there is parking space, because the old goods yard is virtually unlimited and in any case it can be extended ad lib at very small expense, because the surrounding land is open land.

...

My third complaint is the ludicrous nonsense that inquiries before the transport users' consultative committees have become. They are entitled to look only at the question of hardship. I am not denying that there is hardship here. When people from the country areas with luggage or children and prams are forced to stagger on to a bus, on which there is no sort of accommodation for the sort of thing, when they generally end up at bus stations well away from the railway stations, and when there is no porter to help them, of course there is hardship. There is also hardship for the person who has been able to get to the railway station for a 4s. 6d. taxi journey and is now charged 25s. But the committees should be able to consider the wider questions to which I have referred.

...

We have a position which, whatever its merits from the point of view of the railways, has none from the point of view of town and country planning. The railways are making a staggering financial loss. Badminton station shows a profit. Are they really in a position to turn up their noses at any profit in this day and age?

...

I hope that the Ministry of Transport will occasionally think of something other than a rather bogus policy of trying to make a particular railway line a little more convenient to the railway authorities and instead consider the wider situation and the enormous extra costs that may be thrown on the city authorities in widening the roads in Bristol and providing adequate parking space.

F V Corfield, MP^▸ (Member of Parliament) for Gloucestershire South, May 1968
 
Source: Hansard

So back in the sixties, South Glos recognised that its transport issues were inextricably linked with Bristol's... If only they'd had an integrated transport authority...

Met Sir Fred on a number of occasions and was a very good constituency MP unlike the plonker that followed him then we had the now Sir Steve ousted by another plonker in 2010.

But in 1968 it was Gloucestershire County Council and Sodbury Rural District Council and the Constituency was Gloucestershire South. The County Council became Avon, remember them, the District Council was merged with Thornbury to become Northavon and there was a bus service (31 Bristol - Swindon) to Badminton station too giving Yate/Sodbury a link although the station was really in the Village of Acton Turville.

[TonyK]

Talking of Badminton, I read this:

I suggest that, if there is one lesson which we ought to have learned in the last 10 years, it is the lesson of the enormous difficulties and expense of relieving congestion of traffic in urban areas and providing adequate parking space. It is true to say that at Badminton there is parking space, because the old goods yard is virtually unlimited and in any case it can be extended ad lib at very small expense, because the surrounding land is open land.

...

My third complaint is the ludicrous nonsense that inquiries before the transport users' consultative committees have become. They are entitled to look only at the question of hardship. I am not denying that there is hardship here. When people from the country areas with luggage or children and prams are forced to stagger on to a bus, on which there is no sort of accommodation for the sort of thing, when they generally end up at bus stations well away from the railway stations, and when there is no porter to help them, of course there is hardship. There is also hardship for the person who has been able to get to the railway station for a 4s. 6d. taxi journey and is now charged 25s. But the committees should be able to consider the wider questions to which I have referred.

...

We have a position which, whatever its merits from the point of view of the railways, has none from the point of view of town and country planning. The railways are making a staggering financial loss. Badminton station shows a profit. Are they really in a position to turn up their noses at any profit in this day and age?

...

I hope that the Ministry of Transport will occasionally think of something other than a rather bogus policy of trying to make a particular railway line a little more convenient to the railway authorities and instead consider the wider situation and the enormous extra costs that may be thrown on the city authorities in widening the roads in Bristol and providing adequate parking space.

F V Corfield, MP^▸ (Member of Parliament) for Gloucestershire South, May 1968
 
Source: Hansard

So back in the sixties, South Glos recognised that its transport issues were inextricably linked with Bristol's... If only they'd had an integrated transport authority...

Not the sort of thing you would want your servants to read.

[Western Pathfinder]

Not too worry then mine can't read let alone write.

[TonyK]

Not too worry then mine can't read let alone write.

As Spike Milligan put it: "He was illiterate, but didn't know that, because he couldn't read."

[Bmblbzzz]

I once worked with the last Stationmaster of Badminton who often recollected how it was very much the station of the Duke of Beaufort and his family.
With its closure Chippenham stn as an alternative was under ten miles away and of course the nearby M4 motorway serves it particularly well.

Presumably that's why it was called Badminton station rather than the more geographically appropriate Acton Turville.

[Red Squirrel]

Of all the stations on the list, I'm interested to know what role people see Badminton Station fulfilling... it doesn't seem to be be near anywhere, and I'm starting to wonder if I made a mistake when I voted for it!

[grahame]

Of all the stations on the list, I'm interested to know what role people see Badminton Station fulfilling... it doesn't seem to be be near anywhere, and I'm starting to wonder if I made a mistake when I voted for it!

OK - I admit it - I included Badminton in the list as a 'control' to see how many people would vote for anything - of 27 voters, 7 did ... but only 4 voted for Coalpit Heath, so perhaps the last laugh in on some of the voters who have looked carefully and said that Badminton IS a good idea but Coalpit Heath is not.   Comments welcome