A new town on the edge of Bristol is being planned
How the new public transport interchange at Bristol Airport will look(Image: Bristol Airport)
A mass transit system linking Bristol with Bristol Airport ‘absolutely is’ achievable and could ‘unlock opportunities for housing’ between the city and the airport.
That’s the view of new West of England metro mayor Helen Godwin, who said it was a ‘really exciting opportunity’ for the region.
Ms Godwin told Bristol Live that she is ‘confident the Government will be listening’ when she returns with a request for billions of pounds to add to the £752 million the West of England is to receive over the next few years for transport projects.
The Metro Mayor hinted that a project to solve the issue of how to properly connect Bristol Airport with the city of Bristol would also involve building potentially thousands of new homes in between South Bristol and the airport itself.
This week, council chiefs in North Somerset approved a major document setting out local plan policies for the next 15 years, which includes a proposal to build as many as 4,000 new homes on the edge of South Bristol around the Woodspring Golf Course, right next to the current A38 road that connects Bristol and the airport.
Speaking to Bristol Live, Ms Godwin would not commit to exactly how a mass transit link between the airport and the city could or would be achieved – whether it be a tram system, light rail, an underground or a connection with the existing mainline – but she said she wanted that link to happen, and wanted it to benefit South Bristol too.
“It absolutely should be possible,” she said. “If you look at it from a kind of holistic, economic region perspective, we’re the only airport, I think, in the country that doesn’t have a form of mass transit linking it back into its hub city,” she added.
“So that’s a really good reason to do something. There’s some really exciting opportunities that it could unlock around South Bristol and opportunities for South Bristol, but also opportunities for housing as well.
The A1 Bristol Airport bus(Image: Bristol Airport)
“Our mantra to Government is that we need to improve our transport infrastructure, but we also really want to help them with their housing targets. So if those two things can go together, then that’s great,” she said.
Ms Godwin said since her election in May, the relationship between the West of England Combined Authority and Bristol Airport had got better.
The previous metro mayor Dan Norris had formally opposed Bristol Airport’s expansion plans, but both Ms Godwin and the new North Somerset MP Sadik al-Hassan have both publicly backed the airport since being elected last month, after airport bosses revealed they wanted to expand again.
“The relationship with the airport is improving,” said Ms Godwin.
“There wasn’t such a strong relationship between the previous mayor and the airport. That’s not the case with me. We’re having conversations. It’s a really important part of our economic story. I don’t see any reason why we can’t aim to get there.”
The metro mayor said she was confident that the Government would fund a mass transit plan, despite the West of England region receiving the lowest amount of money for transport projects out of any city region.
She said the West of England ‘got what we asked for’ when the Government announced £752m for the West, while giving billions to cities like Manchester, Leeds and Nottingham. “So that was all the schemes that we had put together and that’s what we asked for, obviously, pre-my election,” she said.
(Image: PAUL GILLIS / Reach PLC)
“So we were comfortable with that number and we were happy to receive that number. The second thing is that if you break it down per population, we did get about the same as most of the other combined authorities. So there are a couple that got more for really significant projects.
“But Leeds, for example, West Yorkshire, got a lot of money for their mass transit system. But actually, per head, it works out pretty much the same as what we got. So I think that’s important to remember that,” she said.
“But this money is significant. So I know that as the mayor, I can’t go and spend this money and people in our region don’t see anything for it. That’s not going to wash, and understandably so, and that’s how it should be.
“So I’ve got to use this money really carefully, working with the other unitary authorities. But if that means that we can get to a really good place with a plan that then requires more investment for infrastructure, I feel confident that the government is going to be listening,” she added.
Connecting Bristol with its airport – how?
Exactly how logistically, the airport, which lies on the top of a hill at Lulsgate, will be connected with Bristol with a rapid transit system has been one of the questions that so far hasn’t been answered by generations of politicians and transport planners.
As any passenger who has been grounded or diverted because of the regular fog that lingers on top of the hill at Bristol Airport, it is the second highest major airport in the country. The western end of the runway is more than 190m above sea level and the site of the new transport hub and multi-storey car park is still 170m up.
That new transport hub is actually only two and a half miles as the crow flies to the nearest station – Nailsea & Backwell, on the mainline between Temple Meads and Taunton. But at that point, the railway line is 14m above sea level – meaning that any connection to the airport utilising the shortest distance to the existing rail network would have to climb more than 150m in just a few miles.
READ MORE: Travel guru Simon Calder names Bristol Airport as ‘worst-connected’ to its cityREAD MORE: Bristol Airport announces new even bigger expansion plan
The controversial plans to expand Bristol Airport’s capacity up to 12 million passengers a year included work to improve the existing A38 around the airport, but nothing more than that. Many local politicians have said that if the airport is to be allowed to expand again, it will have to include a mass transit solution to connect with the city.
At present, a series of airport buses run to Bath, Weston and Bristol but, as travel expert Simon Calder discovered when landing at Bristol Airport late one night, they are infrequent after a certain time, and the only option is waiting or getting a taxi, which can cost as much as £50 into the city centre.
The A1 airport bus runs to Temple Meads and Bristol’s main city centre bus station and travels on the A38 into Bristol via Highridge and Bedminster, skirting the edge of South Bristol communities like Withywood, Bishopsworth and Hartcliffe.
Woodspring Golf and Country Club could be developed to create a new village with 2,500 homes. Ordnance Survey-North Somerset Council
North Somerset Council ’s Local Plan now includes building what will effectively be a new town, or extension on to South Bristol, on the other side of the 2017 South Bristol Link Road, with land to the west of the A38 and just north of the Barrow Gurney reservoirs now being earmarked for housing.
The cheapest solution would be to somehow instigate a major widening of the existing A38 to enable it to take segregated trams or tram-like road buses, but the ambition from the metro mayor that a mass transit connection with Bristol Airport should also be an opportunity for South Bristol, could have to mean taking such a light rail or tram route around Dundry Hill and into areas like Knowle West, Hartcliffe and Withywood.
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