Park and Ride East of Bath
The B&NES district of CPRE is strongly opposed to a further Park and ride facility being introduced to the East of Bath. Our concerns are as follows:
Environmental concerns
Lambridge
CPRE believes that the benefits of a Park and Ride at Lambridge would be marginal and short term as weighed against considerable long term environmental damage. Recent discussions indicate that there have been second thoughts on the use of the Lambridge site, which is to be welcomed. However our broad concerns still remain and we will watch with interest how this develops.
For a temporary benefit of a very small reduction of cars on the London Road the rural setting of Bath would be changed forever. No amount of landscaping will change the fact that this Park and Ride, combined with the flood plain works and floodlit pitches, car park and club house proposed for the Bath Rugby Club on Bathampton Meadows would transform the rural setting of Bath. The surrounding villages would gradually merge with Bath.
Charmy Down
The alternative, Charmy Down option would in fact surburbanize an area of relative tranquillity within an area of outstanding natural beauty.
Park and Ride does not reduce traffic into the centre and periphery of Bath
A Park and Ride essentially provides additional car parking on the periphery of a town or city at a time when overall transport policy is to restrict parking as a way of reducing traffic. Unless the parking spaces in the centre are reduced by a similar number there will be little traffic reduction into the centre as those freed spaces will be taken by someone else; a congested equilibrium. You would also get increased car access to the periphery which can be ill afforded given that peak-time traffic already tails back down the A4 Batheaston bypass.
The concept of Park and Ride came into being in the 1970s in a transport policy environment when demand management and traffic reduction were not on the Agenda. Transport policy has moved on, yet there appears to be an irresistible urge to complete the ring of Park and Rides around Bath, even though this is a totally outdated policy in the current context of congestion charging, demand management and restrictive parking.
Public, Private or Sustainable Transport?
It is no longer reasonable to suggest that Bath’s economy is dependent on increasing car access, particularly when you consider that one bus, the X39, brings in more people to Bath than all the existing Park and Rides put together. The more sensible way is to encourage people to access Bath in different ways, by improving public transport and possibly having much smaller, more informal, visually non-intrusive Park and Rides further out on bus routes with fast and frequent services: as an example using existing underutilised car parks associated with sports grounds, pubs etc. Smaller investments that make the walking and cycling environment more attractive will maintain the very things that attract residents and tourists to Bath. There are a number of people who do already bicycle into Bath from the eastern settlements like Batheaston but there are considerable barriers which prevent people except for the most experienced cyclists from using their bikes.
An additional Park and Ride to the East of Bath makes car access easier; the reverse of the overall thrust of the local transport plan. Perhaps if it were practical to restrict use of the Park and Ride to people who live in a dispersed rural fashion or are without a door to door bus alternative there might be an argument to support it.
Relative cost
As it stands, Park and Rides can be used by anybody, often by the people who do have an alternative (encouraged by the current pricing system which makes it more attractive for people to use their car to the Park and Ride rather than the bus the whole way which further undermines public transport). In other words they perceive it as cheaper to use the P&R than use a bus for the whole journey, as they may discount the cost of using their cars to get to the P&R site.
Lessons from the Brislington Park and Ride
Before the Brislington Park and Ride was opened, the bus lane was put in and in its own right increased bus ridership by 22%: a very good result without the car park. Once the car park was built, Bristol City Council interviewed people using it and found that nearly half had previously either gone the whole journey by public transport or would not have made the journey. In other words, car usage had increased. There have been a lot of unintended consequences with Park and Ride, people diverting in their cars sometimes driving out from within a city, only to go back in. Studies have found that they can actually increase car mileage and they can shift the traffic problem to the periphery.
Our Conclusion
Times have changed, the transport policy context has changed and we have (or should have) learnt that we cannot build the bypass to bypass the bypass. If you increase road space it fills up and the same is true of parking. What are we going to do when the Lambridge Park and Ride fills up in a year or two, build a bigger car park? Bath of all places should be able to do better than this. In the words of the Inspector of the A46 Public Inquiry, a park and ride on this site would be ‘a resting place for 823 (sic) cars and numerous buses which, whatever its merits, will despoil the valley fringe, affront the Georgian buildings close by and be a grave offence to the eye from the other side of the valley’.