Mark Bradshaw - a man in the firing line
Councillor Mark Bradshaw is a brave man to put himself in front of the firing line over the Prince Street Bridge proposal.
Whether you admire the courage of his convictions or deplore his lack of judgement over the scheme, shutting one lane of the bridge to motorists is certainly a bold move.
He must have known about the outrage the proposal would provoke but he still turned up for the press call on a windy, cold Thursday morning to attach his face - and his reputation - to the scheme.
It will be interesting to see if he can stand firm in the face of the gale of criticism which will doubtlessly follow the announcement of this proposal.
And similar intrigue will follow the first few days of the scheme, to see whether the transport planners have properly calculated their traffic flows.
I've met Mark many times - we've clashed on some issues and agreed on others - and he has a genuinely long-term vision for transport in the greater Bristol area.
But with this Cycling City bid, he is caught between a rock and a hard place.
On the one hand, the city has just been given more than £11 million to turn Bristol into a showcase for cycling.
Just last night, the city was featured on the BBC's Newsnight programme as a paragon of eco-friendly transport activity.
With sustainability a national buzz-word, the eyes of the country are on Bristol to see what it does with the money.
But on the other hand, Councillor Bradshaw faces the more immediate task of representing the majority of Bristolians who use their cars to struggle through the city's highly sensitive road network every day.
It's a risky, tricky game but one which he's clearly prepared to play.
Maybe, just maybe, this is another scheme which will prove to be surprisingly successful.
To be fair, we all expected the opening of Cabot Circus to be a transport nightmare - but the gridlock never happened.
Whatever the result, Mr Bradshaw will no doubt continue to do what he thinks is the right for the city.
So we will wait and see whether the Prince Street Bridge proposal is a calculated and courageous measure, or just fatally flawed.
Comments
by Steve, Southville
Friday, October 24 2008, 11:41AM
“...he (Bradshaw) has a genuinely long-term vision for transport in the greater Bristol area..
That's just complete nonsense.
Bradshaw, like Brown before him and the likes of Janke, Holland etc have absolutely no idea what to do about transport in Bristol.
They are simply carrying on an ignominious Bristolian tradition of tinkering around at the edges of our traffic problem whilst ignoring the need for the dramatic solutions that are clearly required.
Other cities in the UK have made brave decisions and have made huge efforts to secure funding for their transport infrastructure whilst Bristol has fallen further and further behind and allowed its transport agenda to be dictated by the First Group monopoly.
Bradshaw managed to alienate most of East Bristol over the bonkers idea to destroy the Bristol to Bath Cycle Path and allow First to run their overpriced buses along it.
Bradshaw is one of the local transport chiefs who have so far totally failed to establish a Transport Authority for our region, despite the requisite legislation being in place for two years. Such an Authority would have the power to regulate fares and hold First to account for their poor standards of service and reliability. This failing is the principal reason why we suffer the highest fares and worst reliability of any of the major British cities. Bristol is unique amongst major British cities in not having such an Authority.
Bradshaw and his transport officers have completely failed to make any significant improvements to Bristol's scandalously underused local rail network, resulting in the fact that we have the lowest level of rail commuting than any comparable British city.
Bradshaw has no long term vision, he, like the others, is totally bereft of decent ideas for getting people out of their cars.
Whilst Bristol "celebrates" £11 million for its Cycling City intiative and £40 million for the ridiculous "Greater Bristol Bus Network", Nottingham is quietly getting on with building Lines 2 and 3 of its massively popular and effective light rail system on the back of £400 million of Government funding. Newcastle has received a similar amount for the Tyne and Wear Metro and Edinburgh is just started building its own tram system.
These cities are all approximately the same size as Bristol and don't have the same congestion problems as we do so why aren't we doing something similar?
The answer lies in weak and incomptetent political leadership and that I'm afraid, is down to Cllr Bradshaw and his ilk.
Bristol has been let down for far too long by by local and national transport policy. Pointless tinkering by imposing resident's car parking charges, closing bridges and building a few cycle lanes will not get enough cars off the road and will not address the deep-seated problems with Bristol's public transport infrastructure.
Bradshaw does not have a long-term vision or any practical solutions to our transport problems - the evidence is all around you, every rush hour of every day in our congested city.”