Backwell bus lane to be reconsidered
It's after locals are in uproar.
A planned bus lane which caused “fear and anger” in a North Somerset village is set to be looked at again by the local council.
North Somerset Council plans to install a bus lane on the A370 as it goes west through Backwell. It is part of a host of bus lanes in the area funded by a major government grant — but now the council says it will be considering feedback from locals after a council scrutiny panel voted to call-in the plans.
Councillors warned that spending £2.2m on the 206 metre-long bus lane was a “waste of public funds.” At the meeting of the council’s corporate, assets, transport and environmental services scrutiny committee on May 27, Jeff Wells of Backwell Residents Association warned: “Lack of information for Backwell has created suspicion and a lot of fear and anger.”
The bus lane was proposed to run west along the A370 for 260 metres, up to the crossroads with Station Road/Dark Lane. It would mean moving the Bristol-bound Crossroads bus stop to the other side of the crossroads, and removing pavement guardrails. Mr Wells said removing the railings would be “extremely dangerous.”
Calling on the council to withdraw the plans, Michael Pryke (Clevedon Walton, Conservative) compared the bus lane to the Clevedon Seafront debacle “but with a much higher chance of fatalities.” He warned that plans to reduce the width of the lanes on the road to three metres to accommodate the new bus lane would “put cyclists’ lives at risk,” as it would not have enough space to overtake, and said it would cause queues.
He said: “The bus lane will not only make journeys slower for buses. It will slow down the economy of this major route. Vehicles would be waiting in queueing lanes and increase pollutants through the centre of the village while vehicles are idling. The scheme is prepared to put lives at risk, damage everything that works well, for a bus lane that will increase journey times at a huge financial cost to the public.”
But council officers said that the narrower road was considered safer for cyclists as it discourages car drivers from overtaking, and that the pavement guardrails which would be removed are not installed nowadays because they can cause a safety risk if people cross and are caught on the other side of them. Council cabinet member for highways and transport Hannah Young said: “I don’t believe that we can afford to let buses that people need just get stuck in traffic to a point where they become the last choice for everyone.”
The bus lane is expected to shave a minute off bus journeys times from Bristol to Weston-super-Mare. Meanwhile a GPS traffic light system, so that they can turn green when buses approach, would also be installed as part of the scheme and would cut journey times by 40 seconds in each direction. Ms Young said the Backwell bus lane was one of a host of measures along the route, aiming to make buses faster to protect their future.
Currently the X1 — North Somerset’s most used bus with 142,000 passengers a month — takes one hour and 40 minutes to get from Weston-super-Mare to Bristol during the morning rush hour peak. With one bus running every 15 minutes, Ms Young said this meant 14 buses had to be in use to run the service at the peak.
But if five minutes can be shaved off the round trip time along the A370 corridor, she said the route could be run with one fewer bus, saving the bus operator £300k a year. The bus is currently supported with public money but Ms Young said it was “on the verge” of being able to be financially sustainable from fares. She said: “What we face is a potential future where, if we don’t do something, … then we will find ourselves potentially with cuts to our bus services in North Somerset.”
Councillors on the committee voted 6-2 to support the call-in and ask the council to reconsider the plans. Mr Pryke said: “It was really good that the panel has seen fit for the residents of Backwell on this issue. The panel needs to continue to be open and fair when listening to residents on all matters.”
Ms Young said: “We’d like to be able to continue with some form of scheme that will improve the efficiency of the bus from Weston to Bristol and vice versa as this is critical to the financial sustainability of North Somerset’s bus services in future.
“But we will need to consider the feedback from the community in detail and come back to the community in due course having done so fully.”
The bus lanes are being funded by £47m of “bus service improvement plan” funding the council received from the government in 2022. The council paused the rollout of the bus lanes for seven months last year after a public outcry over several schemes.