Are Bristol City Council and Sustrans taking the piss?

Bristol City Council in partnership with Sustrans are running the Big Bristol Travel Challenge from 1-31 July. The aim of this exercise is to try to get people to walk (or jog/run), cycle and use public transport instead of driving. My first thought on seeing this was that given the dire state of the pavements and roads in Bristol, walking and cycling are challenges every sodding day of the year! As for public transport in the city, to be blunt, it's crap.

This initiative is a gimmick, pure and simple. If Bristol City Council are genuinely serious about encouraging more people to walk and cycle, they need to dip their hands in their pockets and spend some serious money on making sure that walking and cycling around Bristol are attractive and safe options. A combination of broken, uneven pavements, pedestrian subways that flood after heavy rain and potholed roads, mean that walking and cycling around the city are unattractive and often, unsafe options.

As for the public transport options, they're pretty dire to be honest. The bus service, long noted for its unreliability, is being hit with cuts. Ones that have life limiting, adverse consequences for those who rely on buses to get around. As for a local rail service that would be an attractive option for people deciding to leave their cars at home, suffice to say that when it comes to Bristol, it's most emphatically not! As you can see from the maps below, the axing of many lines in and around Bristol as a result of the Beeching cuts in the early 1960s left the region with an inadequate rail network to serve the population. Whole swathes of Bristol are not covered by a train service. Getting a train instead of driving is simply not an option for many people.

Yes, I'm aware that a number of new stations are in the pipeline and that GWR have made timetable alternations that have increased the frequency of trains on some lines. All welcome and long overdue improvements, but when set against the scale of the task of halving car use across Bristol by 2030 to meet net zero carbon targets, they'll barely scratch the surface: An impossible target? 23.3.23. If anyone at Bristol City Council or Sustrans thinks that spluttering two coach diesel multiple units trundling around what's left of the rail network around the city are going to make any significant contribution towards reducing car use, they're deluded.

So, with a pedestrian and cycling infrastructure that leaves a lot to be desired plus a public transport network that's far from adequate, what are the public supposed to make of the Big Bristol Travel Challenge? Judging by the comments after the post promoting this gimmick on the Bristol City Council Facebook page, the general sentiment is one of derision. Deservedly so in my opinion. The public aren't mugs. They can see that the pedestrian and cycling infrastructure is poor and they know that public transport in Bristol is crap. So when gimmicks such as the Big Bristol Travel Challenge come along, they're quite right to conclude that Bristol City Council and Sustrans are taking the piss!