Bristol pipedream

Much as I love my home city of Bristol, in terms of public transport it is an almighty embarrassment. Our rail network within the city is next to non-existent, buses are expensive and unreliable and thanks to people like me who have to drive to get anywhere in order to do anything, we have daily gridlock on our roads. Not for us a light rail transit system, like the glorious trams enjoyed by so many towns and cities and certainly no underground. Then, Bristol mayor Marvin Rees announces we are going to have an overground/underground service and we all say, “Yeah, right.”

Now I like Mr Rees and if we have to have a mayor at all, I’d rather it was him instead of the chattering middle class Greens, the destructive Tories or the say-anything-for-votes Libs Dems. But this talk of Bristol having a metro system is utter nonsense.

Our West of England mayor – you can never have enough mayors, apparently – Dan Norris says his priority is to get a better bus service for West of England folk which sounds all well and good until you remember that our buses are run not as a public service but for profit. Buses are run for the benefit of shareholders and CEOs, not the poor bloody travelling public. And who is going to pay for this new metro service, currently estimated to cost a trifling £4 billion? Who on earth believes that the costs won’t at least quadruple by the time construction begins in circa 2050 (I am guessing a bit, here)?

My conclusion is that without dramatic changes in priorities from politicians, nothing will change and dreams of better public transport systems will remain pipe dreams. If buses, metros and trains are run for profit and not as public services operators will provide as little as they can get away by way of investment and services and maximise the bottom line. Public transport and privately run transport systems have contradictory outcomes.

In the years to come, governments will be dramatically cutting investment in public transport, and just about everything else, not increasing it. The best we will get is better, more expensive bus services.  Mayor Rees may have the vision but mayor Norris understands the reality.