Latest dirt from BCC on railway path

Stephen Kinsella <sjkinsella@...> wrote:

From: "Stephen Kinsella" <sjkinsella@...>
To: "dreadisam@..." <dreadisam@...>
Subject: Save the Railway Path - Council Meeting on 1 April 2008
Date: Wed, 2 Apr 2008 20:24:26 +0100

To all supporters of Save the Railway Path, Bristol Cycling Campaign, Sustrans, CTC West, TfGBA.
From Steve Kinsella, CTC Right to Ride Representative
Dear All
The hundred or more of us who were in the public gallery at the Bristol City Council Meeting last night saw the motion by Cllr C Bolton opposing BRT on the path defeated by a narrow majority.
A Liberal Democrat amendment supporting and strengthening the original motion was passed, but then a second amendment by the ruling Labour group was passed with Conservative's support. This final amendment removed all references to avoiding buses on the path, replacing these with general statements about not damaging cycling. This amendment was supported by Cllr Bradshaw, leader Cllr H Holland and other current and past members of the executive.
Mark Bradshaw said that the public consultation would continue and would include the proposed BRT route on the Railway Path.
(You can see the whole sorry 4hrs 45minutes on the Council webcast http://www.bristol.public-i.tv/site/player/pl_compact.php?a=14173&t=0&m=wm&l=en_GB#the_data_area )
My impression is that the Executive wants to achieve Bus Rapid Transit on the path and sees the full public consultation as the means to make the arguments, however spurious campaigners may find them, to advance the project.
The Executive Member and his supporters are not going to have their view changed by any argument. My impression is that some council members have been swayed by the technical case advanced by the consultants, chiefly that a 4m wide cycle track will be retained, and that ecological surveys and reports will protect the natural environment. It is easy for those who wish to be convinced, or who have not seen the route, to accept these assurances as fact. Meanwhile, to those who know the path such assurances are clearly untenable. The proponents of the project want it to go ahead, then having committed to it, "compromises" will be made, trees will be cut down, concrete laid, and the cycle track narrowed or removed altogether.
My feeling at this point is that the Save the Railway Path Campaign should now concentrate on the technical issue. Campaigners need to prepare a case to oppose the technical arguments that will be advanced in the consultation document. The objective must be to prepare a watertight case for the campaign's own response, and to publish this in good time to influence other responses to the consultation. Here's just one idea that occurs to me: - In a few weeks the trees will be in full leaf. A series of photographs at say 100m intervals along the route could be used to demonstrate the number of tree trunks and bushes that would be cut down, and gardens taken over, etc, etc, to accommodate bus tracks and the supposed widened cycle path. On the wildlife side, campaigners who are expert in this field need to prepare a full report on the consequences of BRT. Possibly the Campaign needs to raise funds to have this work done by hired experts. In this case the campaigners' efforts need to move into fund-raising mode.
As for the weekend press reports of "shelving" the plans - it seems that these these arose from a distortion of Mark Bradshaw's intention phasing the work. It clearly has not been shelved.

Incidentally, while the RP Campaign has rightly gathered the wide support from many people other than cycle users, I noticed councillors invariably think of the path as a cycle path (as I have above). I'm not sure of all the pros and cons of this. Possibly not such a bad thing - cycling is transport, this is a transport issue - I'm biased of course.
Steve Kinsella
CTC Right to Ride Network Representative for South West Region
The Old Forge . Kingston Bridge . Clevedon
Somerset . BS21 6TX
tel 01934 838624 mobile 07810 85175
email sjkinsella@...
CTC is the UK's national cycling organisation working to promote cycling and to protect cyclists' interests.

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