No gridlock in traffic to Cabot Circus

The most remarkable thing about Bristol rush hour traffic on the morning of the Cabot Circus opening was that there wasn’t any.

With chaos forecast from all quarters and queues expected to blight the city centre, transport officials were delighted at how the first morning proceeded.

Roads stayed clear, car parks had plenty of spaces and with no accidents near the middle of Bristol the whole operation ran smoothly.

And by midday there were still more than 2,000 spaces left in the new Cabot Circus car park.

The day saw the opening of the new bus lane around House of Fraser, which had previously been coned off causing difficulty for motorists heading towards Newfoundland Circus.

On the other side of Bond Street, another new bus lane added much-needed capacity to the road layout, allowing cars and buses to move freely around the city.

The real test, admitted transport chiefs watching from Bristol City Council’s traffic control centre in Wilder St, St Paul’s, will come on Saturday.

And they are expecting rush hour this evening to be busier than the morning period which was one of the clearest they could remember.

At the traffic control centre this morning, city council transport bosses joined police, Highways Agency and officials from First to monitor proceedings.

The new centre has a bank of television monitors fed by 200 CCTV cameras from around the city centre.

Alongside a new programme which tracks car parking spaces and First’s of system of tracking their buses, the authorities have the power to make subtle changes to the sequencing of traffic lights to speed up or slow down traffic where necessary.

John Laite, highway network manager at the centre, said: “Everybody’s worked really hard to get us to where we are today for the opening of Cabot Circus and I’m pleased with the way it has gone.

“To be honest, we couldn’t have hoped for better and it’s rare to see the city centre this free of congestion.

“We will manage it to the best of our capability and the most important thing is to keep the centre moving, even if that means holding up the traffic coming off the M32 for a while.

“The Bristol Alliance has been very clever in the launch, by having one at lunchtime and another in the evening.

“We will have to see what happens later but I am quietly confident that we have got the capacity to cope.”