The Mayor and his Cabinet have now formally approved the heavily revised scheme to ‘upgrade’ the A4018. I touched on this in my last newsletter. My colleagues and I are broadly supportive of most of the revised plans.

We do though still have some concerns and formally submitted a statement to the Cabinet meeting to express these directly to the Mayor. You can read the full submission on the link below but our main suggestions are that:

i. The Passage Road bus lanes are too long and need to be modified so that the outbound course starts from Dragonswell Road, with the inbound corridor commencing from Brentry Lane. 

ii. Part of Roman Road (by the Water Tower) should be closed to vehicles to facilitate traffic flows on the main carriageway into Bristol.

iii. There ought to be air quality monitoring stations installed at key points along the A4018.

iv. Secondary junctions at Crow Lane/Henbury Road require further consideration to help the road network operate more freely and efficiently.

v. We remain concerned over the consequential loss of trees along Falcondale Road.  The loss of green canopy represents a profoundly environmentally damaging move.  It is a retrograde step contrary to the Council’s ambition to double the number of trees on public land.

vi. A much stronger commitment to delivering a pedestrian crossing on Canford Road (west of the junction with Canford Lane) is a necessary mitigating road safety feature and would go a long way towards selling other aspects of this plan to local residents.

Sadly approval was granted without these being addressed. We will continue to raise these issues in the hope of getting revisions including as part of the technical and planning process.