bristol bath railway path

City Cabinet - Hengrove Park, Non Traditional Public Transport, Incinerators and more

Submitted by JMB on Fri 14/Mar/2008

Non Traditional Public Transport

Earlier today, the Cabinet of Bristol City Council met to discuss municipal business (webcast available here).

Topics discussed included:

  • A call-in of the Municipal Waste Strategy. Uncertainty remains high about the economics of dealing with waste in the city, driven in part by the arbitrary imposition of Landfill Taxation combined with the mutually exclusive target of reducing carbon emmissions. The decision to take the big-ticket approach of building a large incinerator is still heavily influence by the promise of PFI money (see "Baiting the Hook")
  • "Improving Outcomes for Children through a commissioning Approach" which is local authority code for changing from in-house service provision to buying services on the open market. Not intrinsically a bad idea, but the proposed organisational changes look more like cargo cult management than the real thing.

6. It is proposed within CYPS to make a functional separation between an Enabler Core and a series of Business Units to deliver outcomes derived from CYPS Plan Priorities.

7. The Enabler Core will be the necessary economic minimum of person power, consistent with effective capacity, to specify, commission, manage and evaluate the delivery of improved outcomes for Bristol children and young people. The Enabler Core, as Commissioner, could commission services from other organisations (e.g., Extended Schools, the Voluntary Sector),where they are better placed to deliver.

I'll be damned If I know what that lot means, but it sounds expensive. We are reminded that "[t]he Council's Business Transformation Programme is under review with the assistance of consultants, KPMG." which fills me with a deep and abiding sense of dread.

  • The Cabinet discussed the Capital Programme, of which more to follow. Total costs over the next three years: £356,608,000.00
  • A bit of drilling down into the Transport Capital Programme also took place. Interestingly this lists work on the controversial plans to repurpose the Bristol-Bath Railway Path as starting in mid-2008. Total bill averages £11,131,000.00 every year for the next five years.
  • The Officer responsible for PTSD reported on "Non-Conventional Passenger Transport Review: Next Steps", of which an example is shown at the top of this article. You may be unsurprised to know that - as above - this is local authority code for changing from in-house service provision to buying services on the open market, with a few extra twists (PTSD call it "externalisation"). Although Bristol does not technically have a transport authority or a publicly-owned bus or train company, the authority does have a statutory duty to

"secure the provision of public passenger transport services as the council considers it appropriate to meet any public transport requirements otherwise not being met”.

This is taken to mean subsidising First Great Western to deliver economically unviable services on the grounds of "social need", along with a few other obligations like school buses, vehicles associated with day care centres and health care provision. This all costs £9,000,000 every year. If you fancy a laugh, read paragraph 25 - the Equalities Impact Assessment.

  • And last but not least, a discussion took place of the "Hengrove Park Phase 1 Delivery" a £28,100,000.00 capital programme, for which an extra £5,000,000 will be required from Bristolian tax payers (£2,500,000 beyond the previous budget, and £2,500.000 just in case). I'm still awaiting delivery of a long pole with which to touch the project documentation, but from a distance this is the one that gives me the most pause for thought. Hengrove is not a deprived area, but the neighbouring ward of Hartwood, Fillwood and Whitchurch Park (although not Knowle, interestingly) have issues.

The Council are the owner of the huge swathe of open land at Hengrove Park (around 750,000 square metres), and along with the South West Regional Development Agency, have been putting together a huge plan to monetise that asset. Phase 1 includes a Community Hospital (not quite a proper hospital), the Healthplex (a swimming pool), the South Bristol Skills Academy (not quite a further education college) and a European Headquarters for Australian share-register Computershare. You can see the document from this time last year proposing the land sale, at which the canny Ozzies indicated they were:

i. Identifying opportunities for alternative new or existing premises in the Bristol area. [OR]
ii. Considering moving the operation out of the Bristol area.

1400 jobs (60% residents of Bristol) are associated with the current Computershare Bedminister Down site making them one of the largest single employers in South Bristol so when it came to negotiations, of course it was the local council that blinked first. No doubt Computershare are happy with the deal they got, and good for them.

One of the other partners that doesn't get mentioned this time round is vinter/cider-maker Constellation. They also approached the council with a desire to "facilitate keeping the operation in Bristol", which resulted in a three-way deal in which they Constellation sold their land in Hengrove (Whitchurch Park) to SWRDA, and leased it back until development of Constellation's new site in Avonmouth was completed. The Council provided the financial indemnity, agreeing to cover SWRDA's debts if the deal unravelled. No doubt, as with Computershare, Constellation were delighted with their deal, and good for them: aggressive negotiation is the hallmark of a company making best use of its shareholders capital.

More to follow if I can drum up the enthusiasm to watch the full web-cast. I imagine there was a lot of Railway Path commentary in the public forum.

Bus Rapid Transit - The National Perspective

Submitted by JMB on Mon 10/Mar/2008

BRT-BB

If you have spent the last couple of months trapped in a well, you may be unaware that there is a great deal of disquiet in Bristol (and Bath) over plans to turn a section of the Bristol and Bath Railway path into a Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) route. The online petition opposing this plan now has almost nine thousand signatures.

BRTs are a compromise solution for mass transit, not quite a bus, and not quite a light rail system. There are a variety of different sub-types but in general the key attributes are:

  • A rubber-tyred self-propelling vehicle
  • A defined route that is exclusively a right-of-way for the BRT vehicle, or at least predominately separated from other traffic.

Or, in less technical terms, it's a posh bus that can drive on normal roads but also drive on a special concrete tray without having to sit in queues of traffic.

The proposals put forward by the West of England Development Partnership (WoE) are still at the pastel drawings stage, with a request for funding from central government due to be made in September 2008. Interestingly, the BRT page at WoE says "This page is currently being updated", and has said so for some time. (Some commentators reckon that decisions have already been made.)

Mass Transit vs Public Transport

I'm a big fan of mass transit, but I'm always rather sceptical of public transport. Sadly, it's very difficult to procure the former without it turning into the latter. Historically, without some sort of market signal to guide the builders of mass transit systems, there is a tendency to create hugely expensive bits of infrastructure with no real idea whether they are actually a sensible way to spend the money. One can make plans and forecasts from morning til night, but these projects are really a massive punt by politicians and civil servants, where the stake money is provided by the tax payer.

For example, consider the Jubilee Line Extension in London. This project has without question created wealth, but not for the people who paid for it. The total scheme cost somewhere in the region of £3.5 billion pounds after overspend, and a few years after it opened it was pretty clear that it had a positive effect on land prices (see the Transport Blog).

So taxpayers covered the building costs and the ongoing operations at risk, whereas local landowners received the capital gains while doing nothing. Not a bad deal for landlords.

BRT - The next big thing?

The plans for Bristol are to build a guided busway, which is certainly not a new concept. Have a look at the public documents at the website of the BRTuk lobbying organisation (membership only £275) and you'll find details of dozens of cities around the world with BRT routes. Ho Chi Minh City even has a BRT, which must surely be something for the Labour/LibDem faithful to shout about. (Feel free to pause for a quick chorus of the Internationale, guys).

Mind you, the Vietnamese measurements for the required space for two lanes of buses don't seem to leave much room for happy cyclists and walkers as per the West of England Partnership concept diagrams.

BRTMeasurements

Here in the UK, a comparable project that is closer to completion is the Cambridgeshire Guided Busway. Very similar in concept to the WoE plan, the Cambridge project has been built along the route of a disused railway, but in doing so did not encroach on an existing cycle path. In fact Sustrans, who have been extremely vocal in their opposition to the WoE plan, were a major supporter of the Cambridge concept:

Sustrans supports the guided bus project. Moreover, with its associated maintenance track it offers great potential benefits for cyclists and walkers. The route is expected to form part of the National Cycle Network and this is welcomed.

The maintenance track surface should be tarmac or equivalent throughout. There is a danger that were the surface to deteriorate, people would be tempted to walk or even cycle on the guideway. Access to the stops should focus on the public walking and cycling there. This necessitates a network of high-quality feeder paths to be constructed at the same time as the busway. More thought needs to be given to crossing details for cyclists, walkers and horse riders.

It would be desirable for the buses to employ hybrid drives to allow electric operation within the City area. Also, the buses should have the capability to carry cycles.

I'm told that a group from Bristol City Council are thinking about a fact-finding trip to have a look at the Cambridge system. The latest newsletter from Cambridge is available here. Latest update:

guide beams are being laid, [albeit] delayed due to bad weather, [...] trials of guided buses start in Spring 2008. The system is still scheduled to open Spring 2009.

I like seasonal deadlines for projects - "Spring" is much more forgiving than something specific like "March 1st" or "May 31st"

BRT - is it worth it?

Establishing whether constructing a new public transport project is a worthwhile exercise is not an easy process. The tools for estimating the benefits of such projects are computer models, passenger usage estimates and traffic planning. But, when advising clients on project management, I always remind them that a person’s confidence in their estimate of required work to complete a task is inversely proportional to their skill at estimation, an example of the Dunning-Kruger effect (from their seminal paper: Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1999, Vol. 77, No. 6. ] 121-1134)

Disregarding for a moment the arguments about carbon footprints and other spurious bits of anti-growth environmentalism, it would be marvellous if we could construct a a simple measure of the costs implicit in different forms of mass transit in a comparable form. There is a subsection of the transport planning discipline that deals with this, using concepts such as Generalised Cost, but I've not managed to find any such figures in the BRT proposals. You can use a measurement like TRANSIT CAPITAL INVESTMENT PER ROUTE MILE, but regrettably the data for such a calculation is only available after you've spent the cash and built the system.

When I don't have answers, I always like to use an adversarial process to find them. So what we need is a group who favour public transport but are prepared to give a strong critique of BRT. How about the Light Rail lobby? Many Bus Rapid Transit projects are built as an alternative to Light Rail. In the case of Cambridge and Bristol, both projects are effectively a repurposing of older rail systems. What do the Light Railistas have to say? Quite a lot, actually, and none of it flattering.

In Houston, Texas, a BRT project was axed in favour of light rail. The reason?

"[The Transport Authority] changed some of their ridership projection criteria to make these lines more favorable if we did them as rail."

Not exactly a smoking gun. But what about a more general survey?

"[Experience] does suggest, in light of experience with both LRT and so-called "BRT", is that theory-based ridership forecasting models, approved by a [Transport Authority] promoting "BRT", may not tell planners, decision makers, and the public the whole story."

What next for the Bristol & Bath Cycle Path

We've got two options in front of us. A utilitarian argument to spend a load of cash to build a bus service on the promise of improvements in local transport provision, or an aesthetic argument to maintain an attractive and popular public amenity.

For the moment, I shall remain sitting on the fence, despite the obvious discomfort that comes with that position. I'm still trying to find definitive answers for the following:

  1. How much will a BRT route really cost?
  2. What are the projected passenger numbers?
  3. What's the ultimate cost-per-mile of running the system? And if it's less that that of an automobile or a regular bus, should the project continue?

Note: if anyone can summarise the Joint Local Transport Plan for me, I'd really appreciate it. It's giving me a migraine.

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