Latest CAZ news is mostly positive for Camden and North East Bath
We are most fortunate to have a close relationship with the project team and have followed up our December meeting with another one last week. They have agreed the following answers to our questions.
Overall it is pretty positive other than the prospect of not getting a meaningful P&R facility on the east of Bath which the diagram above shows leaves a massive gap in the protection of the environment of Bath.
1 Reason for delay from 18th December till a special cabinet meeting on 5th March?
- There was a large, late and unexpected volume of responses (expecting 6000-7000 responses and got 8500) and some of which are very technical and long (e.g. 65pp).
- The project schedule left not enough time to assimilate and reflect – greater response than estimated.
- If you want to see what happened, blow by blow, on 18th December you can watch this here.
- A decision would probably have been conditional on more confirmatory work anyway.
2 Will a real decision be made on 5th March?
- All the outputs and reports from the project team will be ready for due consideration.
- In the meantime, the confirmatory work is being done so a decision could be final, in which case there would not be a significant effect on the intended implementation date of 12/20.
- Main consultation report 250pp at the moment, so there is a lot of information to assess and consider.
3 What has the consultation found out?
- Fair, balanced response.
- People want air quality improvement but with support to upgrade…
- …which the project team are working on hard with extra bids to JAQU (Joint Air Quality Unit –DEFRA and DoT) for each support package.
4 Other pointers on the CAZ?
- The CAZ boundary is likely to change a little – my guess is in the eastern quarter (Pulteney and Bathwick Estates) will get included.
- ‘Boundary effects’, as raised by us (see here, for example) – this is getting responded to, and applied to other bits of Bath too, which is heartening.
- CAZ is still likely to include non-compliant cars (‘Class D’), even if the arguments for it are not that easy to explain (The ’80:20 Rule’ is quite helpful here – in many situations the last 20% takes 80% of the effort. In terms of the CAZ, getting under the legal NOx level (<40mgm-3) gets harder as you approach it.
- CAZ signage will not be simply adding to the existing street clutter as there will be a decluttering exercise too.
- I’m suggesting a branding exercise which is informative to visitors not expecting/used to a CAZ regime which the team has in hand.
- There is going to be monitoring started ahead of going fully live so the project will know if they are on track to get NOx levels down according to the binding High Court Direction which is a clever and sensible approach.
5 Camden and NE Bath concerns
- The Eastern P&R, in my view, is essential to reduce traffic levels through NE Bath into the city centre from M4, A4, A363. No significant progress on this:
- Maybe some small local hubs towards Box.
- No serious re-consideration of Charmy Down site which is only a four minutes up the A46 from Batheaston.
- One carriageway of the Batheaston bypass under review as P&R but because it belongs to Highways England – another agency, separate from B&NES – it has challenges.
- Journey to Lansdown P&R from M4
- Signage to be significantly increased compared to the current plans which is good news, especially as this will involve variable electronic signage so that its messaging can be adapted if it is not working as expected.
- Freezing Hill Lane / A420 junction improvements in progress.
- We are getting our point across that signage, pre and post the A420 junction with the A46 has got to provide meaningful warnings to drivers of the CAZ further down the road…
- …without an Eastern P&R it will be a very troublesome outcome for drivers with chargeable vehicles.
6 P&Rs more generally?
- There is agreement between us that these should become the ‘alternative of choice’ for people visiting Bath, irrespective of whether they are in lower NOx emitting cars or not.
- The plan is for the existing fare/payment structure to be reviewed. Paying to parking (instead of riding) will be looked at but it does have issues (parking is VATable; riding is not). Other options are therefore being explored that retain the existing concept of paying for riding but encourage usage. I agree with this but there is more work to do. There are two variables to consider when trying to encourage the right behaviours – party size and length of stay; i.e.:
- How do you encourage commuters, perhaps driving on their own or with one other or having dropped off kids, to park all day at a chargeable P&R?
- How little do you have to charge a family coming to do their shopping for a couple of hours to deter them from parking in the city?
Jeremy, Chair
I think there is a lot to be said for the idea of out-of city transport hubs. Further out than our current park and rides – even based in Chippenham, Trowbridge, Keynsham. Free parking, regular, reliable buses. Commuters don’t need to drive near us. Cheap land too. But this isn’t a solve-all. Reliability of alternatives to commuters is paramount
I always copy someone who has solved the same problem I have. If many have done so then all the better, I can learn and use the best ideas. Plenty of European cities have achieved their target reductions years ahead of us even starting to organise a plan.
There is a common theme, they remove city centre and arterial on street parking, they used the new space to build bus lanes and cycle lanes. Cycle lanes safe enough for primary school children to use to get to school. They invest in good quality public transport. A really great city is not one where the poor can afford cars, but one where the wealthy use public transport.
It takes vision and there is a lot of resistance because people only see what they might lose initially, but it works and can be done in 4 years as it was in Seville.
Not everyone can use alternatives, lots of people travel in from small villages, but if you provide enough attractive low pollution options it can make a big impact. We have focused for years on trying to address through traffic and ignored the fact 80% of the pollution problem is being caused by journeys of just a few miles.
Sadly our councils are so poorly funded they can do little to improve public transport and it takes people with political will and funding to make the required changes.
Some very interesting points here:
1. The ride of P&R does not have to be just buses, but can be train, bike or electric bike (coming to Bath (ref yesterday’s announcement)). The train is quick but only gets you to the station with no stops in between.
2. Sometimes taking a solution which suits one location does not work elsewhere. Bath is hard:
a) no ring road to take passing traffic
b) very hilly, unlike Seville for example, which makes cycling and even walking harder
c) very limited river crossings to the east of the city
d) Southern european cites are more temperate and outdoor travel is more appealing
e) Bath is relatively small (89,000 vs 690,000 in Seville) so economies of scale don’t apply in quite the same way
f) Bath has 5 million visitors per year (compared to 2 million in Cheltenham, for example), many of whom are hours/day visitors who all need to come and go.
3. Absolutely agree on the causes of resistance being to do with perceived loss, rather than potential gains, which is why I hope the small curtailment of traffic from the CAZ will illustrate what life could be like and will generate an appetite for a less congested city.
4. Through traffic versus radial journeys. I think this may be an overly simple distinction. How would a journey from Bathford to the RUH be classified? I think some intra city car journeys are made because the alternatives are a multi legged journey. Some work has been done by Cycle Bath to reconfigure bus routes to give circular routes linking the main hubs for people. Other journeys to the outskirts of Bath, from the M4 to Locksbrook for example, are going to imply a journey through Bath.
Jeremy
There’s been a little more correspondence on this subject on Bath Newseum recently. Here’s my bit…
As far as I understand the CAZ is dealing with NOx, not pollution in general, nor climate change and not congestion – the central government imperative and consequent funding rules do not stretch that far. NOx is a hidden enemy because it is undetectable by those breathing it – the transport fumes and smells we are aware of are something different. We did a blog post on this last year (https://camdenresidentsbath.org/2018/02/23/understanding-air-quality/). The less obvious benefit of the CAZ is that it gives us the technical infrastructure (cameras, computers, charging and enforcement) to bear down on the actual cause of the fumes we also object to – vehicle numbers – in due course.
If the modelling is correct then there will be a small, but hopefully significant, reduction in traffic levels and proportionately less diesel cars like mine, which emit many more fumes and particulates than their petrol equivalents. Hopefully these detectable effects will be enough for users and residents of Bath to push harder for exclusion measures for the worst emitters which are more achievable with the technical infrastructure in place.
What the Camden Residents Association is asking for are ways to keep vehicles out of the city by providing better alternatives in the right places. We have 5 million visitors each year mostly arriving by road. We don’t have a ring road which could get people quickly to a few peripheral P&Rs from all the radial routes, so we need more, well positioned hubs to serve all the main radial routes in. At present only 40% of radial routes into Bath even have a P&R. If you don’t believe me look here (https://camdenresidentsbath.org/) at our post entitled ‘Latest CAZ news…). Setting these up creatively and supporting them with cleaner mass transport solutions into the city must be the right direction for us.