Hundreds of millions needs to be spent in the next two yearsRoadworks on the A4018 near Henbury, Bristol, are causing traffic disruption as the council works to install bus lanes(Image: Bristol Live)

Traffic in Bristol could be seized up by roadworks on “everything, everywhere, all at once” over the next two years.

Time is quickly running out to spend hundreds of millions of pounds upgrading the city’s transport network with several huge projects happening simultaneously.

The West of England region was given over half a billion pounds by the government to upgrade its transport infrastructure, but told all the cash must be spent in just five years.

Bristol’s share of this was around £200 million, which is funding a raft of ambitious projects due to be rolled out.

The City Region Sustainable Transport Settlement was awarded in April 2022, with a whopping £540 million for Bristol, South Gloucestershire, Bath and North East Somerset. The deadline to spend this money is March 2027, when any unspent cash will be taken back by the government.

Due to these tight timescales, and the length of time that planning major transport upgrades needs, several huge roadworks will take over major junctions in Bristol over the next couple of years. Councillors on the transport policy committee raised their concerns on Thursday, May 15.

Green Councillor Ed Plowden, chair of the transport committee, said: “I think the single biggest risk in the next couple of years is the extent of the roadworks and the duration of them, because we’re having to do everything, everywhere, all at once. We really need to get on top of this.

“I’ve seen the Gantt chart of Gantt charts (a project management tool for charting timelines) that officers are putting together, and it does highlight the really sensitive areas. In some places we can get on and won’t have a massive impact, and in other areas it will. They’re looking to either sequence those together or very much apart, depending on the nature of their sensitivity.”

Projects paid for by this huge pot of money — that can’t be spent on day-to-day services like collecting bins — include installing bus lanes on Bond Street and the Redcliffe roundabout, building over one kilometre of new bike paths, and the East Bristol Liveable Neighbourhood. Transport bosses hope that getting around the city will be much easier once they’re complete.

Some schemes are expected to impact the road network more than others. In particular, the works on the Bedminster Bridges roundabout will be “quite impactful”.

This will turn the two bridges into a signal-controlled junction instead of a roundabout, with one bridge for cars and the other for bikes and buses.

But the roundabout is a key crossing point from South Bristol to the rest of the city, and traffic already snarls up there. Closing the bridges during the roadworks will cause traffic to divert over to the nearby Bath Road Bridges roundabout, where traffic is already heavily congested.

Labour Cllr Tim Rippington added: “We have a major concern about all these works at the moment, and that’s the impact they’re all going to have on the city because of the tight timescales they’ve got to be delivered in. It’s really something that’s worrying us about the city seizing up in the next year or so, because there’s so much work.

“I’m wondering if we can have a report setting out how we intend to sequence and deal with all these roadworks — so that we can see that sufficient work is going in to making sure that we don’t end up with a city that seizes up and people literally can’t get around, because we’ve got four different schemes happening at the same time that basically cause gridlock.”

Transport bosses at the council are discussing with the West of England Combined Authority on ways to mitigate the impacts of the upcoming roadworks, which could include putting on extra park-and-ride bus services. But the council is still waiting on the details and timelines of all the projects, from the contractors who are bidding to carry out the works.

Before the general election, Labour campaigned on reforming how local councils are funded, promising to be less obstinate than the former Conservative government.

Often, councils have to spend ages bidding for pots of money, without being certain of a payout. Now in government, Labour is sticking to the strict March 2027 deadline, but “hasn’t ruled out” a possible extension.

Green Cllr Rob Bryher said: “The CRSTS deadline is incredibly challenging, and that could be moved. It could be moved by the UK government and made later. We’re trying to get as much as we possibly can out of that pot of money, and trying to get it done in time.”

Cllr Plowden added: “We’ve had the [Green] MP for this area, Carla Denyer, ask a number of questions about this and get some rather vague answers. But they haven’t ruled it out yet.”