Bath’s city roads are now operating at maximum capacity – says the city’s MP Ben Howlett – and that means any accident or obstruction within the system is causing chaos.
He’s jumped into the traffic issue fray by urging B&NES to pull its finger out and take measures to ease things.
Mr Howlett says Bath city centre has seen even worse congestion than normal in recent days.
In a statement he says, “It is increasingly clear that the city’s roads are at maximum capacity and that any accident, or obstruction causes widespread traffic issues. I am therefore calling on the Council to place renewed energy behind the Integrated Transport Strategy, which has received cross party support, to improve cycle paths, create safer non-car routes to schools and facilitate a stronger focus on walking in the city.
I also urge the Council to take the long overdue decision on the park and ride to the East of the city to reduce the volume of traffic entering the city from that side. The West of England Local Enterprise Partnership received £2.3M on encouraging more people to leave their cars outside of the city and I would like to see these fund spent to the benefit of Bath residents, businesses and commuters alike.
I strongly believe it is also time to get on and build the long overdue A36/46 link road to relieve the volume of through traffic and therefore begin to relieve congestion to the eastern side of Bath.
Plans for the A36/46 link road are already being discussed with Highways England, Local Authorities and the West of England Combined Authority following a meeting with the new Transport Minister last month. My own petition has now received over 2000 responses and announcements are due shortly on the next steps towards this vital infrastructure project.
I hope in light of the severe traffic issues seen recently that the Council will take urgent remedial action to address the situation, alongside implementing longer term strategic initiatives and infrastructure projects to bring Bath’s roads back from their current capacity status”.
Reblogged this on CycleBath and commented:
It’s good to see that Ben seems to be focusing on walking and cycling. However I’m guessing Ben didn’t get the more recent memo from the council where they admitted that the East Park And Ride would have no effect on congestion and that it was all about ‘future’ required capacity. This is all going on while in Wiltshire plans are moving ahead to open up Corsham Train Station with a high capacity car park sometime 2019 onwards. What’s significant about this is that they are predicting 400,000 journeys a year with a focus on people wanting to get to Swindon. Corsham could become a Bath Park and Rail site and double that number of journeys from that train station. I hope BaNES are supporting the case for opening the Corsham Train Station and in particular working with Wiltshire to create a good park and rail option for Bath.