Bristol Underground?

[Crispy]

Bristol underground rail 'within 10 years'



Quite where the money's going to come from I don't know (rumours of Rees going begging to China), but you can't call this unambitious!

 

[kalidarkone]

We were suppose to have trams about 15 years ago!!

 

[hash tag]

I thought Bristol was quite Rocky and hilly with a considerable river/sea/docks...itll be fun building that.

 

[High Voltage]

Yeah! Sure.

 

[kalidarkone]

It would be great to have, no doubt, but I can't help but feel that there are other priorities such as PROVIDING AFFORDABLE HOUSING. The level of homelessness has dramatically increased in the last 3 years and Bristol has twice the average amount of homelessness nationally.
I'm losing faith in Marvin all he has done is shut lots of libraries, cut lots of services and that's OK as long as there is a St Pauls carnival next year! He may have a plan, it might be that if the services are cut for a year or two it will mean more money after that, but unlikely and in the meanwhile the cuts will mean having to spend more money in more acute services such as health so in the end the cuts cost more.

 

[butchersapron]

Rees seems to be obsessed with arranging a big legacy project with his name attached to it (see also the proposal to knock down the swing bridge and demolish cumberland basin) rather than dealing with any of the stuff that kali mentions. In fact, not just ignoring that stuff but making it worse. I think he has his eyes very firmly on getting his name safe in bristol's history. He had a lot of good will at the start but if people i talk too are anything to go by he's rapidly using it up.

edit; oh yeah, the way he attempts to shut down criticism is disgusting - trying to get the bristolian done under racial or terrorism laws whilst facilitating the spreading of rumours about them throughout the council for example.

 

[hash tag]

Lots of librarys are shutting everywhere, it's not just a Bristol thing.

 

[butchersapron]

Oh that's ok then.

 

[hash tag]

Well not really, it's shit, but just saying like
fwiw my other half is a librarian, so its an issue which is very close to home.

 

[Bahnhof Strasse]

It's just symptomatic of the cuntish way the whole country is being run; no money for shit people need to live, or to make their lives pleasant, but limitless funds to bribe fruitloop bigots in NI, bomb brown people left right & centre and so on. *angry* - anyway, transport forum.

 

[kebabking]

When I was at school - a time so long ago that a numbering system to give it a date doesn't exist - they were talking about a light railway from Yate, Thornbury and Charfield into Bristol.

Eleventy hundred years later, not a nano-meter of track has been laid.

Much as Bristol needs more public transport - and housing - I fear that my reaction is the eyebrow of cynicism rapidly meeting the hairline of disbelief...

 

[Dogsauce]

Bristol is somewhere where an underground would be handy, as the main station is nowhere near the shops or a lot of workplaces. Plus there are a few hills that might deter non-mental cyclists. Getting about by car or bus is pretty shit, not helped by monopolising bus companies - those bastards First Bus started out running overpriced services in North Somerset before taking over the world - at the time known as Badgerline, or 'Bodgerline' to most passengers.

There used to be a line through the docks from Temple Meads through to the Portishead line at the Cumberland basin that went a lot closer to the city centre but a good chunk of the route has been lost, some of it relatively recently (the blue bridge by Temple Meads was part of this route, only taken down about 10-15 years ago). Stuff like this does need to be planned and protected from development even if it doesn't appear for thirty years - it's what London has done and how things like Crossrail are able to be built, because they don't let bastards build shitty flats on the potential tracked.

 

[Geri]

There used to be a line through the docks from Temple Meads through to the Portishead line at the Cumberland basin that went a lot closer to the city centre but a good chunk of the route has been lost, some of it relatively recently (the blue bridge by Temple Meads was part of this route, only taken down about 10-15 years ago). Stuff like this does need to be planned and protected from development even if it doesn't appear for thirty years - it's what London has done and how things like Crossrail are able to be built, because they don't let bastards build shitty flats on the potential tracked.

The line has been reopened for freight for quite a while (it branches off at Pill to the Portbury docks now) and is due to be relaid all the way into Portishead and reopened for passengers. The planned opening is 2020.

I'm not quite sure of the exact route past Bower Ashton.

 

[davesgcr]

Well I did get Filton Abbey Wood rebuilt with new junctions etc , carefully designed for access to the Henbury area etc. 4 tracking down the bank towards Temple Meads is in hand - and thee ought to be better heavy rail services within the next few years.

Shame the tram scheme never took off - bitter infighting between the local authorities in nothing happening bar some consultants making a lot of money for essentially zilch.

 

[kebabking]

What gets on people's tits is that the line still exists to Tytherington Quarry, which would work as a park and rail from Thornbury etc.. but there's still nothing.

Lots of people from Dursley and WUE use Cam & Dursley, and even some from Thornbury - which is a bit silly, driving 10 miles north in order to get a train south..

 

[davesgcr]

What gets on people's tits is that the line still exists to Tytherington Quarry, which would work as a park and rail from Thornbury etc.. but there's still nothing.

Lots of people from Dursley and WUE use Cam & Dursley, and even some from Thornbury - which is a bit silly, driving 10 miles north in order to get a train south..

We looked at that in the ATOC Connecting Communties report - a bit harder than you think - not helped by the likely station site being redeveloped.....

 

[Dogsauce]

The line has been reopened for freight for quite a while (it branches off at Pill to the Portbury docks now) and is due to be relaid all the way into Portishead and reopened for passengers. The planned opening is 2020.

I'm not quite sure of the exact route past Bower Ashton.

It goes up to Ashton and joins the main line near South Liberty Lane, calling at Parson Street and bedminster before temple meads. A shame it can't go through the docks, but the bit after the industrial museum has been built over. Also a shame it doesn't quite go all the way to Portishead, it stops about 700m short of the high street (old station used to be where the petrol station is) because Network Rail won't let them put a level crossing in across the access road to the new houses at the marina. They chopped through the line assuming they could put a crossing in if the line ever reopens but NR won't allow new crossings. A long way to the shops, so it's not going to bring people into the town, it'll just be commuters.

 

[Geri]

I can't wait for it to happen. I grew up in Pill but the line was long closed by then, we used to walk through Ham Green tunnel and it was very creepy. Would love to go through on a train.

 

[Slo-mo]

Underground rail is insanely expensive. There has to be a better alternative such as trams?

 

[xenon]

This is never gonna happen. Look at the mess over a metro bus, which isn't even electric. Months and months to put in a few new bus stops and adjust some roads. It would take years to dig up the city and everything would come to a stand still.

 

[kalidarkone]

Underground rail is insanely expensive. There has to be a better alternative such as trams?

We were promised trams over a decade ago!

 

[Dogsauce]

Underground rail is insanely expensive. There has to be a better alternative such as trams?

It's cheap enough for London to have been building lines more or less continuously for the last century. Trams have to work around other traffic in places so can't offer the same reliability unless completely segregated.

 

[Crispy]

Rennes, a smaller city than Bristol, built a brand new metro line for €500m and that's including elevated sections, cut and cover and bored tunnels.

VAL Mini-Metro Line - Railway Technology

 

[Dogsauce]

I sometimes think the state should just have teams of salaried tunnellers and OHLE engineers working continuously on the rail/metro network, moving from one project to another, directed by central planning, taking the schemes and contracts out of the equation. There's enough work to do and I'm sure it'd be more efficient this way.

 

[Dogsauce]

Rennes, a smaller city than Bristol, built a brand new metro line for €500m and that's including elevated sections, cut and cover and bored tunnels.

VAL Mini-Metro Line - Railway Technology

Uses side contact, like the docklands line. The DLR was very cheap when it was first built with quite a few smart ideas.

Don't think you'd get away with calling something a 'mini metro' in this country for another few decades mind.