Just before Christmas the Mayor began a consultation on proposals to 'upgrade' the Number 2 bus route that dissects the City. 

As you would imagine this has proven to be a very mixed bag. Some elements are indeed welcome - such as the introduction of the mini-roundabout at the junction of Henbury Road and Crow Lane. This has been a pinch point traffic wise for years now and has been a long term aspiration for the community for years. 

Sadly the few good elements are very much outweighed by the misguided and downright foolish ideas that were also being proposed. Such as closing Park Street, installing short bus lanes that will do nothing, narrowing roads (reducing Southmead road from 4 lanes to 2) - the list goes on. 

There are genuine chances to improve traffic flow in North Bristol - that will benefit both cars and buses - but this grab bag of suggestions will do very little to help. It doesn't help anyone if the improvements increase congestion to the point that the buses are caught in the artificially created traffic jams. 

On behalf of the Conservative Group I have formally responded hoping that many of the short sighted proposals will be abandoned and that common sense will prevail. 

To see the formal response please click below.