Bristol congestion charge 'still on agenda'

“Thing is that there are multiple pieces if research to verify my figures Peter/Rob, so it a questions of established facts not the view I take.

For example one European Commission document notes that a German study calculated that car travel produced 180g of carbon dioxide per passenger km, compared with 80g by public transport.

A Belgian study showed cars produced 126g per passenger km, compared to 50g for public transport.

What you seem to be asking me to do is accept figures provided by someone from the Drivers Alliance, who obviously defend car use, as more reliable than published data!!”

“Wasting your breath Craig. Greenies are like King Canute.

He thought he knew best too.

Rob, Clifton

Told you! Hurry up Glenn - the tides coming in........”

“Peter Roberts, Drivers Alliance -

The figures I quoted are from published work. The comparison I made is fair. You are choosing figures to suit your argument - no surprise given that you think buses are '..the most inefficient gas guzzling form of transport ever devised by man... '. Quite a rant.

Even if I accepted your figures they are in fact an argument for getting more people on buses to raise occupancy levels. To do this we need real investment in public transport, possibly accompanied by congestion charging, not car-focussed thinking.

Bear in mind we are only talking about fuel use and emissions here. Congestion is also about take up of land for roads and parking and safely managing the movement of a very large number of small vehicles with low occupancy - we simply cant sustain current car-intensive patterns.”

“Glenn Vowles,

Your facts on bus emissions are confusing and appear to be factually incorrect.

The average occupancy for a bus outside London is 9.2 ¿ evidence all the empty buses running about polluting the air for no benefit.

The CO2 emissions from a bus are 160g/passenger km for buses outside London (Source MH, 3). You will of course be aware that Nitrogen Oxides and PM10s (Particulates) are many times higher from a bus than modern car.

The average CO2 from cars today is 165g/km and the average occupancy is 1.6, so a car is emitting about 103g/passenger km which is some 64% more efficient than an average bus.

If you are not convinced, do the sums yourself; it comes out a lot worse than the published figures.

A litre of diesel produces 2.62kg of CO2 when burnt. A bus does about 1.42km/l which equals about 1845g/km of CO2 when a car is doing 165g/km.

With the average occupancy of a car at 1.6 people/km, you need approximately 18 people on the bus for every km it travels to equal the fuel efficiency of a modern car; and we all know most buses run pretty much empty.

So I restate my original accusation that a bus is the most inefficient gas guzzling form of transport ever devised by man and as an environmental champion, you should recognise this and stop your attempts to increase bus journeys which in turn will clean the atmoshpere.

It is not cars which make Manchester's Piccadilly and Bristol's bus station the two areas in the UK with the lowest air quality.

However, Bristol are proposing a CONGESTION charge which will simply make people drive further to avoid the cost and increase fuel use ¿ as seen in London around the charging zone.”

“Glenn,

It's too important and we've waited too long to accept a fudged solution or a botched compromise.

Yes, the money's on the table, yes, it's inadequate and yes, the BRT solution is being driven through by First (remember they had two people on the Board that was attempting to run BRT down the Railway Path even though Bradshaw insisted that no operator had been decided upon).

However, these things, as with all things political, are transitory.

There's a General Election next year, hopefully resulting in a hung Parliament. People shouting loud enough and kicking up enough fuss may well get what they want. It would sharpen Labour minds wonderfully if their majority was on a knife edge and public transport was enough of an issue in Bristol to threaten their local MPs' seats.

In addition, we really don't need to spend the hundreds of millions on BRT - we could have the same effect with buses and bus lanes for a fraction of the cost - after all BRT is just buses with bodykit and a bus lane with a kerb.

The money saved could go towards making a massive difference to our local rail services, expanding a line further into South Bristol, reopening the Henbury Loop to passengers, Portishead, bulding new stations etc etc.

Rail is the one mode, along with light rail, that is absolutely proven to get people out of their cars, and it's more reliable and less polluting than buses.

Walking and cycling and full integration of all these modes into several interchanges around the city should also be pursued. And it is essential that we have a PTA.

BRT is being driven by First and is a hideously expensive fudge.

I say call the Government's bluff, keep up the pressure and strive for a solution that will actually work - which is, after all, what we all want isn't it?”

“I do agree with a fair bit of what Bluebaldee says. However, what I suspect both of us would much prefer ( even larger investment than Govt is proposing and for longer, along with effective regulation of a proper integrated transport system...) is not now on offer. Its Green policy but not Labour policy.

Should we therefore reject the significant money that is available and settle for less investment in city transport??”

“Lots of misinformation and/or incorrect information in this debate (not that the facts seem to get in the way of some people's views!!).

Rob from Clifton - Canute attempted to command the tides to demonstrate the limits of his power to foolish courtiers, the opposite of wanting to 'show he knew best'. Like Greens he sought to show we are subject to natural forces like tides and waves and cannot command them!

Francis from Bath - buses certainly do not pollute vastly more than cars, on a per passenger km basis. A double decker bus consumes 1.1 megajoules of primary energy per passemger kilometre at 20% occupancy, single decker 1.4. Even a small petrol car with 25% occupancy level consumes 3 megajoules per passenger kilometre and a small diesel 2.4 (figures from a table in the booklet Travelling Light by Stephen Potter and and James Warren).

The efficiency advantage of public transport over cars is well established - its simply that they carry more people per vehicle (and the higher we can get average occupancy the better, thus my argument for congestion charging). Why else would green groups, supported by climate scientists, argue for public transport? Why else would govts and councils who want to lower carbon emissions want people to switch to buses and trains??”

“To Glenn and others who believe that a Congestion Charge is Bristol will work:

I'm not wholly against the idea of a Congestion Charge under the right circumstances and I'm most definitely in favour of persuading people to leave their cars at home and also for improved public transport.

However, a Congestion Charge in Bristol will not achieve its stated aims of encouraging modal shift from the car onto public transport and relieving congestion for the following reasons:

1, In London the Charge works pretty well because of an extensive public transport system. In Bristol we have nothing of the sort. In fact, we have what is by comment consent, the worst urban transport system in Britain. The proposed 'improvements', which are there for everyone to see on the West of England Partnership website, are little more that a few 'Bus Rapid Transit' (First buses with bodykit) lines, a couple of Park and Rides, and some vague promises about more frequent local trains. And that's it. Manchester has an extensive tram network, so do Nottingham and Sheffield, Glasgow and Tyne and Wear have excellent urban Metros, Liverpool has their urban rail system, Merseyrail. Bristol has First Bus. Whoopee.

2, Cost. The proponents of the Bristol Congestion Charge never mention this. There is absolutely no evidence that a Congestion Charge will raise anywhere approaching the amount of money needed to improve public transport to acceptable levels. These Charging schemes cost an enormous amount to implement and run. Factor into that the handsome (and ever increasing profit) that whichever of Labour's favourite private companies gets to run the thing, and you're left with not a lot left over. One of the major problems for the Manchester Yes Campaign is that they were not prepared to release the figures showing how much their Charge would raise for public transport, citing 'Commercial Confidentiality'. The electorate quite clearly saw straight through this.

3, Fares. Bristol is unique amongst major cities in Britain in that we don't have a Passenger Transport Authority. These bodies can regulate routes and fares and generally curb the worst excesses of the deregulated private transport operators. One of the most visible byproducts of this is the fact that Bristolians pay more for their bus fares than anywhere else in the country. Another is that First cut routes that are deemed insufficiently profitable as they wish. What do you think First will do when a Congestion Charge comes in? When they have a captive market and no regulation? The fares will become eye-wateringly expensive, so not only will car drivers have to pay extra to get to work, users of public transport will too. The legislation has been in place for Bristol to create its own Passenger Transport Authority for a while now, but as usual our hopeless, bickering local councils can't agree and subsequently we won't get one. Responsibility for transport matters has been devolved to the West of England Partnership, an unelected, unaccountable quango.

4, In light of the above, a Congestion Charge will hit the less well off the hardest - and it will also hit those on average incomes hard too. Fares on the buses (especially the BRT's) will go up. The Charge will take the best part of £1,000 from each motorist having to enter the Charging Zone to go to work annually. That figure equates to around 6% of the take home pay of someone on an average wage. And before the usual suspects sneer, that makes a massive difference to someone that's only trying to put bread on the table for their family.

5, A charge will damage Bristol's economy. Do city centre traders really want to see their trade drop off during the Charging period, whether it's morning or afternoon, or both? After paying the Congestion Charge and for parking, won't people just go and shop elsewhere ie, Cribbs Causeway?

6, It will not make one iota, not an ounce of difference to Global Warming. The Government ”

“Congestion charging doesn't work. Like any western religion, it has its own version of good and evil. On the evil list are cars and their drivers. On the blessed list are the alternatives, like cycling,
walking, buses, etc. The idea is that by increasing the costs of driving a car, the driver will pick an alternative from the blessed list.

However, cars are already much more expensive to use than the alternatives (if ALL costs, not just petrol, are taken into account). If the items on the blessed list were any good, then most car drivers would already have switched. And they haven't switched, have they? More work is required here...

On buses - buses pollute vastly more than cars, on a per passenger km basis, so that the number of passengers
in the cars and on the buses has already been taken into account. Bus engines are very inefficient, compounded by the fact that many buses are old. Hybrid buses are much cleaner, but also much more expensive. The reaction of environmentalists to buses is very odd. Environmentalists don't like SUVs, irrespective of
how many people occupy the vehicle. As the SUVs get bigger and more thirsty, the environmentalists get more
and more hot under the collar, until the SUV reaches the size of a bus (and a bus is just a big SUV, when all is said and done), when suddenly the vehicle becomes fluffy like a little cloud.

On bus lanes - the capacity in the urban area is determined by the capacity of the junctions, not the capacity of the road in-between. Therefore, taking out a road lane and turning it into a bus lane doesn't reduce the capacity of the road for the non-bus vehicles - strange, but true. (If anyone wants to see the maths behind this,
this can be arranged).

I would like to see more work done on car clubs and bicycles. The car club means that a car driver can drive
a brand new car, but only pay for it when they use it. Many cars are bought for one purpose, but then get used for other things, since otherwise the car would be too expensive for just a few trips.

Bicycles aren't much use for travelling between London and Edinburgh, but tick most boxes for travelling around town. What is needed now is engineering to fix the remainining problems - hills, load carrying, weather, safety, etc. In the 21st century, this shouldn't be impossible...”

“"We get the traffic conditions this shower of a CONcil have forced upon us. Just look at how easy the traffic flows when their traffic lights are out of action.."

This effect is well known. When traffic lights are removed, car drivers merge in turn, in a grown up way, without the childish beeping of horns and gesticulation. However, it does require car drivers to slow down, and some don't want to. As always, a minority spoil things for the majority.”