Bristol City Centre Transport Changes consultation 2024

Introduction

Bristol city centre is set to change in the coming years, with major new housing developments and leisure and retail facilities planned. This will help the city tackle its housing crisis and sustain the vitality of the central area.

To prepare for around 5,000 more people living in and travelling around Broadmead, we are proposing changes to transform some of our public spaces and surrounding roads to make the city centre more welcoming and people-friendly.

These changes would improve walking, wheeling and cycling routes, benefit existing bus services, and support our long-term goal to create a segregated rapid transit route from the southwest to the northeast of the city.

We are at the early stage of designing the plans and need your views to make sure we get it right.

Overview of the proposals

In this consultation, we are proposing changes in five areas:

1. Broadmead area

2. Bedminster Bridges

3. Redcliffe Roundabout

4. Temple Way

5. Bond Street

Five areas in which city centre transport changes are proposed

Proposals to change public spaces in the Broadmead area include:

• pedestrianising The Horsefair and Penn Street, with access for emergency vehicles, and deliveries for businesses allowed at set times when the streets are less busy
• removing most of the traffic from Union Street
• introducing more landscaping, seating and art space

Proposals to bus routes and bus infrastructure include:

• changes to road layouts that will make it possible to operate a rapid transit route running in both directions via Union Street and The Haymarket
• changing the routes some buses take through the city centre to avoid the pedestrianised streets
• removing buses that have terminated and stand empty for long periods of time from pedestrian and shopping areas
• adding bus priority measures, including bus gates and bus lanes across the five areas
• moving bus stop locations

Proposals to make walking, wheeling and cycling safer and easier across all five areas include: 

• creating more than 3.5km of new segregated cycle routes and joining up gaps in the cycle network
• pedestrianising streets, reducing traffic and changing road layouts
• widening pavements
• upgrading road crossings

The proposals are described in more detail in the survey. Read more about why these proposed changes are needed.

While this survey has lots of detail about the proposed changes to the city centre, for more background, detail and artist’s impressions and 3D designs of how the changes could look, visit Bristol City Centre Transport Changes project page on the West website.

The Bristol city centre transport changes programme is being funded by the government as part of the City Region Sustainable Transport Settlement, which is administered by the West of England Combined Authority.

What happens next?

This consultation is the first step in a three-year project to transform Bristol city centre. Once the responses to the survey have been analysed, we will publish a report that summarises the feedback. This will inform how the plans for the project are progressed and what changes are needed. We may need to consult you about more detailed plans in future.

There are other projects - some led by the council, some by developers - which we may ask you about in the future.