Your say / Politics
‘Stuck in Bristol traffic? It’s the real-world consequence of playground politics’
In my part of north Bristol there are two main routes in and out of the city: the Portway on one side and Passage Road on the other. Both are currently being dug up by the council at a combined cost of around £30m.
£30m of our money to build bus and bike lanes that nobody asked for.
On Passage Road, the works have been going on for 18 months, with long queues, 20mph limits and a road surface that wouldn’t be out of place in a war zone. It won’t be finished until the end of this year at the earliest.
On the other side, there have been delays and restrictions on the Portway for months. As of this week, the main access route onto the Portway has been closed entirely until “early autumn”.
Given that this is being run by the council’s favourite contractor ETM, local cynics can be forgiven for pointing out that they haven’t said which year.
We’re now surrounded, with all direct routes to the motorway network blocked by roadworks and backed-up traffic rat-running all over the area.
Of course, this isn’t just our local issue. Across Bristol there are roadworks happening in Broadmead, Bedminster, Temple Way, Victoria Street and Stockwood to name a few.
It’s what the council calls, apparently with no trace of irony, “Bristol on the Move”.
Outside the city, the same is happening across South Gloucestershire, Bath and North-East Somerset.
Steve Smith continues to blame Dan Norris and Marvin Rees for roadworks across Bristol
On one level, it’s because of the way that the government funds roadworks. Dig a little deeper though, and it’s the real-world consequence of local politicians letting their egos and disagreements take precedence over the people who elected them.
The problem is something called CRSTS, the City Region Sustainable Transport Settlement. It’s around £540 million of government money funnelled through the West of England Combined Authority.
It can only be used for projects like bus and bike lanes (whether we want them or not) and all has to be spent in the next couple of years.
I’m sure most of us could think of other public services that could use that money. A reasonable response might have been, “No thanks, we don’t need £540 million of bus lanes. Maybe spend that on the NHS instead?”.
Unfortunately, Council officers don’t think like that. It would never occur to them to turn it down, so local Councils have scrambled to find projects to spend it on, creating the gridlock that we have now.
It didn’t have to be like this. Other combined authorities like the West Midlands or Greater Manchester do things differently.
They’re what government calls “enhanced” authorities, which means that they control their own budgets and decide for themselves how to spend it. Local politicians can tell voters what their priorities are, and voters can choose.
We in the West of England don’t get that choice.
That’s because our combined authority was in special measures from 2024-25. The former Mayor Dan Norris fell out spectacularly with just about everyone, most notably the Bristol mayor at the time Marvin (now Lord) Rees.
I sat on a committee at the time and saw first-hand the level of chaos and dysfunction that happened as a result of their disagreements. For a lot of the time they couldn’t even be in the same room, so decisions didn’t get made and eventually the government stepped in.
Things have now improved a great deal, but we’re still barred from being an enhanced authority because of it, and so we end up with the government telling us what to spend money on.
So next time you’re stuck in a queue watching nothing happen in pointless roadworks, thank Dan Norris and Marvin Rees.
This is an opinion piece by former Conservative Party councillor Steve Smith.
All photos: Molly Pipe
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