News / eastville
Gridlock at retail park traps drivers for ‘three hours’
Drivers have told how they were trapped in traffic for up to three hours trying to leave an east Bristol car park.
Shoppers trying to exit Eastgate Retail Park on Saturday afternoon say they were confined to their cars for hours in huge queues.
One motorist went to Adsa Living on his way home from dropping his daughter off at an activity in Keynsham. Tom Stubbs, a filmmaker who lives in Eastville, spent two hours trying to escape the gridlock for what is normally a five minute drive.
“I’m never going drive in there again,” Tom told Bristol24/7.
“I actually live very near to the retail park, but my daughter who was with me needed to get a present for her friends as there was a party later.”
“I was trying to put people off from entering before they went down the aisle so they could veer off and turn around – but there was no way of warning anyone.”
Others were trapped in the car park for more than three hours:
Historically, cars are often brought to standstill at the site in Eastville due major shops Tesco, Ikea and retail park each having separate car parks, as well as its proximity to the M32.
It is thought that the design of the car parks are the root of the problem, with each parking row feeding into one lane and then combining with the retail park which has lower priority.
“It was a philosophical penny-dropping moment for me,” continued Tom.
“Large cars just aren’t the way forward, and even electric cars aren’t either. The site was totally permeable for walkers and cyclists, but the physical size of the cars just creates mayhem.”
Main photo: Tom Stubbs
Read next:
- ‘The dominance of car culture needs to be challanged’
- How would you improve under the M32?
- Woman killed on motorway slip road
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