Greater Bristol Transport Innovation Fund Bid Confirmed

[whole diary]

[Lee]

Bristol City Council has confirmed it is to submit a joint bid with three other local authorities, including Bath, for Transport Innovation Fund (TIF^▸ (Transport Innovation Fund)) money to ease congestion in the two cities (link below.)
http://www.nce.co.uk/news/2008/09/bristol_and_bath_to_bid_for_tif.html;jsessionid=B2766719A2172A987C490C38E56798F1

The news was confirmed by the leader of Bristol City Council Helen Holland at the Labour Party Conference in Manchester. Bristol will join forces with Bath and North East Somerset, North Somerset, and South Gloucestershire to secure funds.

Holland told NCE that the government had already awarded Bristol City Council ^2M to upgrade a previous study, "Our Future Transport", published in 2007, to a full bid, to be submitted some time in 2009.

The bid would be for up to ^1.4bn in government money to improve public transport, and BCC^» (Bristol City Council - about) to impose a congestion charging scheme.

Holland said that Bristol had the worst urban congestion in Britain outside London.

"^350M is lost every year due to congestion, and the average speed is down to 16 mph," she added.

She said that the Bristol scheme had learned from the failure of a proposed congestion charging scheme in Edinburgh.

"We have taken our neighbours with us, The Edinburgh scheme had neighbours as objectors," said Holland.

"So far we have been able to convince business that charging is the best for the economy. Our next step is to move businesses from supporting the idea in principle to supporting the detail."

[bemmy]

Brilliant. This 1.4 billion quid will pay for:

- 1 fact finding tour for councillors to visit various countries around the world to see how they get around their cities, and to discover that we can't afford to do any of that here.
- 10 new bus routes along the path of 10 existing bus routes, which they will replace.
- 100 new bus lanes with a separate red light for buses, so that they have to use the car lane if they want to actually get past the traffic light.
- 1,000 new initiatives to annoy drivers.
- 10,000 new signs saying "cyclists dismount".
- 100,000 leaflets in 28 languages explaining how wonderful the council's transport policy is. They won an award for it, you know. 

[Mojo]

Yet more whimpering and half-hearted attempts from Greater Bristol to get something which will make little difference at all. Where are all of the innovative tram and train schemes? The strategy to create an ITA^▸ (Integrated Transport Authority)?

Bristol is Englands second economic centre (BBC^» (British Broadcasting Corporation - home page) News) and the most congested city in England (AA) and they're planning a few loony bus routes and a hotchpotch of infrequent local rail services which all go to Temple Meads. To top it off drivers are going to be expected to pay because there's no real alternative for them!

Oh I'm glad I'm moving out of Bristol this weekend!