News / Transport
Mayor’s office want road reopened to cars to provide ‘most direct route’ for drivers
A Freedom of Information request reveals that the decision to reopen University Road to motor vehicles came directly from the mayor’s office.
“We have been instructed by the Mayor’s office to re-open University Road,” wrote an employee of Bristol City Council whose name has been redacted in the FOI documents.
“It is not an officer decision (but you didn’t hear that from me).”
In an email reply to the officer, an unnamed member of University of Bristol staff said that “it’s a shame that this road is to be re-opened at the bottom”.
They are not the only people who think that it is a shame, with an official council document also saying that proposals to reopen the road to motor vehicles to the detriment of more vulnerable road users including pedestrians “is not in line/in accordance with current local and national policy/traffic hierarchy”.
The change to reopen University Road where it joins Queen’s Road is subject to a traffic regulation order consultation.
Plans are for University Road to become one-way northbound from its junction with Queen’s Road – photo: Martin Booth
A mayor’s office spokesperson explained the situation.
They said: “A short stretch of University Road was closed during the pandemic. As people movement returned to former levels, the road’s operation was reviewed and the administration decided to reopen the rest of the road.
“The small partial closure meant diverting drivers along a longer route, via two other roads to join the northern part of University Road, rather than taking the most direct route.
“University Road is a key route linking west and central Bristol to Gloucester Road and north Bristol, that has become more important to the resilience of the network with the administration’s pedestrianisation of Cotham Hill, changes to the traffic network at St Michael’s Hill, and the introduction of the Clean Air Zone.”
Main photo: Martin Booth
Read next:
- Road set to be reopened to cars despite reservations
- ‘The mayor’s office’s decision-making process seems to have broken all seven principles of public life’
- A&E patients to be granted Clean Air Zone exemptions in three-month trial
- Cotham Hill pedestrianisation praised by Active Travel
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