“Sorry to correct you Bob but Nottingham does not have an ITA. Nottingham has a city council and is surrounded by Notinghamshire county council. The tram sytem is operated by a joint venture between Transdev (a French transport firm), and Nottingham City Transport, the municipal bus operator. Having an ITA isn't a magic wand either. West Yorkshire ITA has no control over First's bus operations in it's area, and South Yorkshire ITA has no control over First's operations in its area either. The ITAs have campaigned for and got a change in legislation giving local authorities more powers over bus operators, but to date these have not been used. Because they will in effect mean that commercial companies will have their businesses taken away by the state with no compensation, they could be challenged in law right up to the European court. Personnally I think 'Quality Partnerships' will be the way forward. One of the first examples is Oxford (again not an ITA), where the council, Stagecoach and Go-Ahead owned Oxford Bus Company, have agreed to replace competative bus services with co-ordinated ones, with ticket inter-availability, and even headways on jointly operated routes.”

“Has anyone looked at this route closely, and noticed that it overlaps directly with the historic harbourside railway (the only one left in England)? How might this service affect the feel of the historic harbourside and the chocolate path, not to mention the route not serving anyone in most of Ashton, Southville or Bedminster - a group who currently lack a fast and direct public transport link to the city centre?”

“James,

I've noticed your strongly held opinions about the boundaries and governance of Bristol over the past few months, and to a certain extent I agree with them.

When Avon was abolished the government at the time missed a trick by not expanding Bristol's borders and by creating the Dibleyesque N Somerset and S Gloucestershire.

I agree that Bristol's boundaries should take in the contiguous urban area with a bit of expansion space and that S Glos and N Somerset should be broken up and returned to their ceremonial counties.

However, I don't agree with you on a couple of points.

Nottingham is in an even worse position than Bristol. It's boundaries are even more tightly drawn - the city boundaries contain just 288,000 people out of a wider urban population of 660,000. Yet Nottingham has an excellent and expanding tram network, an Arena and a bucketload of other facilities (National Ice Centre, National Watersports Centre etc etc) that us Bristolians can only dream of.

This is because they have an ITA for transport initiatives and are far better than Bristol at identifying and obtaining Government funding - also Labour is more interested at distributing largesse to places like Nottingham than to Bristol - God knows why.

The second thing I disagree with you is about the Supertram debacle. It's a widely-held fallacy that the pathetic squabbling between Bristol and S Glos councils put paid to the tram. That's not true - it didn't help, but it was Alistair Darling, the then transport minister who took the decision in 2005 not to fund any more light rail schemes.

His decision affected Liverpool, Leeds and Gosport-Portsmouth as well - it was known as the 'Darling Axe'.

One thing we desperately need is an ITA and the chumps like Elfan ap Rees who block it are blinkered parochial morons of the first order. Mike Gollop from Network Rail gave evidence to the Parliamentary Select Committee on Transport in the South West a couple of months ago and he said that Bristol gets very little rail funding because most of it goes to London and to the powerful ITAs in other parts of the country - Bristol just doesn't have a powerful enough voice because we don¿t have an ITA and the West of England Partnership is a very poor substitute.

We could also spend what we do get better in Bristol. With many Bristolians clamouring for an Arena or a decent sized venue - what do we do? Spend £18 million on a foyer and bar for the Colston Hall and £26 million and rising converting one perfectly good Industrial Museum into what will be the biggest white elephant in the South West - the M Shed.

So, we need a change of governance and a wholesale clearout of the local quangos, politicians and their failing officers who are doing a brilliant job ensuring that Bristol falls further and further behind every major city in the country.”

“Bob,

I may run this ike an old fashioned cracked gramophone record but I never tire of pointing out that Bristol is highly unusual in that its boundaries have not been extended for nearly fifty years.

The urban area has expanded remorselessly in that time so that three other councils, as well as the city council, now control different parts of what in any other part of the country would be one city of well over 600,000 inhabitants instead of the 420,000 that municipal Bristol currently houses.

This would have two advantages immediately:

Bristol would be seen as a larger entity in the country with a bigger voice and there would not be the endless arguing and petty, parochial points scoring between the 'Bristol' councils that has blighted the area for so long.

One high profile casualty was the tram because Bristol and South Gloucestershire could not agree on the location of the northern terminus.

We also have the other three councils declining to join a much needed startegic transport authority.

If anyone is to blame it's us - the dippy people who live in Bristol (both the municipal one and the physical one) for putting up with this crazy local governance for so long.

We need one council for the entire urban area, not four.”

“Odds on First getting the contract and making this the most expensive 3 or 4 mile journey known to mankind? Paul, Bristol.

Paul, absolutely spot on. Watch First get the contract, despite our politician¿s denials.

Nothing can hide the fact that this Bus ¿Rapid Transit¿ route is a fudged compromise, born out of Government pressure to abandon the Supertram in 2005 as it was deemed too expensive.

Study after study has shown that these Bus ¿Rapid Transit¿ schemes just don¿t attract that many people out of their cars, because, basically they will be more First buses and we all know how much Bristolians love those.

The Minister Paul Clark is talking complete nonsense when he claims ¿That is why we're investing significant amounts of money in Bristol's infrastructure¿ ¿ really? So this short, half-baked compromise scheme is ¿significant¿ is it? As significant as the £400 million given to Nottingham to extend their tram or the £1.2 billion given to Manchester to extend their tram?
Or the £100 million given to Liverpool for their brand new Arena, or the £200 million given to Cardiff for their new Valley Lines rail network?

During the years of plenty Bristol has fallen further and further behind other cities in Britain when it comes to infrastructure. Rubbish public transport, crumbling hospitals, no Arena, no sports facilities ¿ the list goes on and on.

Now were supposed to be grateful for these overpriced buses with bodykit which the likes of Swansea, York and soon Cambridge already have? That¿s because under this Labour government and for the majority of that time we¿ve also had a Labour council, our great city of Bristol has been funded as if it¿s a Swansea or a York or a Cambridge ¿ not as a major city and regional capital should be.

So as the minister and Jon Rogers and Helen Holland trumpet this kind of thing as a wonderful victory for Bristol, just remember that it¿s not.

It¿s simply symptomatic of the underfunding of Bristol¿s infrastructure and how Labour view Bristol as they pump our money into their Northern heartlands and the devolved administrations.”