Issue - meetings

Heavy Goods Vehicles (HGVs) travelling through Bath have been a concern for many years, particularly along A4 London Road, over Cleveland Bridge and A36 Bathwick Street.  Local residents are concerned about the contribution made by HGVs to poor air quality, road safety issues, intimidation experienced by vulnerable road users and damage to the Bath World Heritage Site.

Cleveland Bridge is currently being repaired and a temporary Traffic Regulation Order restricting HGVs over 18 tonnes from using the bridge is in place. Once the refurbishment works are completed the temporary weight restriction will no longer apply and the route will continue to form part of Primary Route Network with unrestricted use. This report examines the options available to the Council to improve the traffic situation at Cleveland Bridge as well as improving air quality and safety throughout the city.

The Chair invited Councillor Manda Rigby to read out her statement.

Councillor Rigby read out the following statement:

‘Firstly, I’d like to thank the officers for their officers’ report, but more specifically, I think we owe them huge thanks for the exceptional way this work on the bridge has been done.

The Cleveland Bridge renovation is a very significant project for this Council. This is a 200-year-old bridge, never intended for this volume and weight of traffic, and the mitigations put in place in 1927 are also struggling to handle the wear and tear.

We are replacing degraded concrete, ensuring that the iron work is sound, and waterproofing to prevent any further damage caused by water ingress.

We aren’t at the end point yet, but despite: COVID cases, materials being delayed, and more work than anticipated once the scaffolding was up; we currently hope to reopen the bridge to cars, as well as pedestrians, cyclists and emergency vehicles, 3 months after it shut as planned, which would be an amazing achievement.

I can’t think of any other project of this scale, and on a Grade 2* listed structure, anywhere in the country that has come in anywhere near on time.

In the interim, we have been working hard on what to do next, and I’d like to share my thoughts on progress so far, and what I’d like to see happening next.

The current situation is that: on completion of the works, the weight limit which was in place prior to them will expire, and there will be no limits on the type of traffic which can use the bridge, unless we manage to get such a limit put on it.

This is because it forms part of the primary route network, therefore decisions about its usage are not in our hands.

Whilst appreciating the officer report in front of us tonight, which outlines several ways forwards, and understanding the rationale behind why it was written in this way, I think it does not go far enough. We need to be bolder in looking at absolutely all options in front of us.

One of the existing proposals is a strategic study with regional partners – where all the region’s authorities examine plans for cross region transport, specifically looking at the best way to get freight to and from the M4 to the Southern ports, and there may well be a plan for a different North South link proposed.

Work on this Western Gateway project is currently ongoing, but the amount of time this will take is counted in decades not years. We can't assume regional agreement will be reached and we can’t just wait for this to be the solution.

The people of Bath can’t wait another 10-15 years for relief from through traffic HGVs.

Because there is the rub. In order to change the status of the road and take it out of the Primary Route network, Wiltshire Council has to agree. Despite our best efforts, such agreement  ...  view the full minutes text for item 61