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Protest ride today at Bristol's dangerous M5/A38 junction

South Glos Council accused of ignoring DfT & own policies in roundabout redesign

Bristol and South Gloucestershire cyclists are staging a protest ride at 4pm this afternoon at the junction of the A38 and M5 where ten cyclists have been injured in the last seven years, to try to get South Gloucestershire council to provide for cyclists.

The council plans to rebuild the junction to accommodate the projected increase in traffic from new local developments, but local and national cycling groups say the planned changes will make it more dangerous.

Safety at the A38/M5 junction is particularly important because, as CTC Right to Ride spokesman Richard Burton said in an email to the People's Cycling Front of South Gloucestershire: "This is a very important junction for cyclists, with alternatives requiring a detour of four or five miles."

In a statement Burton added: “The council ignored its own policies, government guidance, the consultation, a petition and our MP. We apologise in advance for any inconvenience to other road users, but this is entirely the council’s responsibility. We aren’t asking for anything radical or bizarre, we just want the council to follow its own policies.”

Campaigners claim that the relevant council policies say that cyclists and pedestrians should have been considered at every stage in the planning and design process, but this did not happen. They also allege safety audit did not follow Department for Transport guidelines.

A spokesman for the Bristol Cycling Campaign said: “The safety audit guidelines are explicit about including pedestrians and cyclists, but the audit doesn’t mention them even once. This is gross incompetence and if any pedestrian or cyclist is injured or heaven forbid, killed, we will hold the council liable. The injury figures are bad enough, but they are very much an underestimate and the real figure is many times more.”

Campaigners say that many of the new roads in the new developments do not follow council policies, including Hayes Way, which was constructed during the council’s participation in the Cycling City project, but has no facilities for cyclists.

Mr Burton said: “We can’t understand why we have to raise petitions and have protest rides to try to get the council to follow its own policies and government guidance, and after 18 years of council failures, we call on the government to hold an inquiry to find out why this council fails so badly so often.”

The ride starts from the Aztec West roundabout at 4pm today, October 24.

 

John has been writing about bikes and cycling for over 30 years since discovering that people were mug enough to pay him for it rather than expecting him to do an honest day's work.

He was heavily involved in the mountain bike boom of the late 1980s as a racer, team manager and race promoter, and that led to writing for Mountain Biking UK magazine shortly after its inception. He got the gig by phoning up the editor and telling him the magazine was rubbish and he could do better. Rather than telling him to get lost, MBUK editor Tym Manley called John’s bluff and the rest is history.

Since then he has worked on MTB Pro magazine and was editor of Maximum Mountain Bike and Australian Mountain Bike magazines, before switching to the web in 2000 to work for CyclingNews.com. Along with road.cc founder Tony Farrelly, John was on the launch team for BikeRadar.com and subsequently became editor in chief of Future Publishing’s group of cycling magazines and websites, including Cycling Plus, MBUK, What Mountain Bike and Procycling.

John has also written for Cyclist magazine, edited the BikeMagic website and was founding editor of TotalWomensCycling.com before handing over to someone far more representative of the site's main audience.

He joined road.cc in 2013. He lives in Cambridge where the lack of hills is more than made up for by the headwinds.

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7 comments

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pikeamus | 9 years ago
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Gah! If I'd heard about this earlier I might have been able to plan getting away from work early into my schedule. Sadly I'm only hearing about this now because someone in the office sent an email round warning of possible increased delays for all the drivers on their way home. Best of luck to any that go - I hope the rain doesn't scare everyone off.

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Trev22085 | 9 years ago
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How will this help anything? It will drive a deeper wedge between cyclists and car drivers by causing more traffic at this already busy junction. Only 10 injuries in 7 years for such a heavily used road is pretty good by my standards.

On a separate note I wish I could get away from work before 4 to go bike riding...

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Paul_C replied to Trev22085 | 9 years ago
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tom22085 wrote:

How will this help anything? It will drive a deeper wedge between cyclists and car drivers by causing more traffic at this already busy junction. Only 10 injuries in 7 years for such a heavily used road is pretty good by my standards.

On a separate note I wish I could get away from work before 4 to go bike riding...

only 10 injuries in seven years? That could be because very few people actually dare to use it as it's so hostile.

The Dutch would have designed proper cycle paths into that junction, not cr@ppy painted lines or shared use paths.

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mrmo replied to Paul_C | 9 years ago
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Paul_C wrote:

only 10 injuries in seven years? That could be because very few people actually dare to use it as it's so hostile.

And how many near misses? Do we need to kill people before the roads are made safer, actually don't answer, the answer is yes

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burtthebike replied to Trev22085 | 9 years ago
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tom22085 wrote:

How will this help anything? It will drive a deeper wedge between cyclists and car drivers by causing more traffic at this already busy junction. Only 10 injuries in 7 years for such a heavily used road is pretty good by my standards.

On a separate note I wish I could get away from work before 4 to go bike riding...

Which part of SGlos council do you work for?

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rasalati | 9 years ago
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Just to be clear: there IS a shared path around this roundabout - it just requires you to cross a slip road without a pedestrian crossing. It's much safer to stay on the road and go with the flow of traffic rather than trying to cross it.

The developments aren't really making the road layout any worse for cyclists, they're just not making it better.

Personally I've never had any problems at this junction, but I'm a confident cyclist that will take the centre of the lane. I can definitely understand parents with children not being too keen on either option available to them for getting around the roundabout.

I would think that it could be improved by simply adding a controlled crossing to each slip road. The lights to stop traffic are already there (on the roundabout and A38), you just need a button to request priority.

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Paul_C | 9 years ago
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this is a critical junction with a ridiculous detour around it caused by the fact that there are no bridges over or underpasses for light traffic, only large roundabouts which feed on and off the M5... large numbers of people living in Almondsbury and the other small towns/villages north of the M5 have no easy cycling access to Bristol...

http://goo.gl/maps/fKMPz

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