Having our say on transport

We have recently been involved in representing the interests of Chamber of Commerce members in a discussion being led by Bath and North East Somerset Council about how the transport network in the district can be de-carbonised.

It’s a noble aspiration, but it also needs to be tempered by a dose of common sense and an understanding about how people in rural areas actually run their lives.

There is a lot of talk about getting people in the City out of their motors and encourage them to walk, cycle or use public transport instead of taking relatively short car journeys, which might be possible for some who live there. But that’s much more difficult to apply to the Chew Valley where people have a huge variety of things to do, workers commute to sometimes lower paid jobs and our members need their vehicles as they criss cross the Valley doing their work, whether that’s delivering items or visiting clients.

We are seeing a gradual rise in the number of electric vehicles but they are still relatively expensive, we don’t know for sure how long batteries last and people remain concerned about not being able to charge them when they need to.

Just look at any of the roads running through the Valley and you will be struck by the ever increasing amount of traffic. Some of that will be generated by the number of new houses and rural businesses while a proportion may be using our area as a means of dodging the Clean Air Zones in Bristol and Bath. Those zones are certainly having an impact on contractors who often drive relatively old diesel vans and who face significant charges if they want to go into our closest city centres.

Over the years we have called for a bus link to help people get to the main arterial bus routes to Bristol, Bath and the Somer Valley but that never quite came to pass, although there is now the West Link service. However, that has had mixed reviews and can’t be relied upon to serve as a means of getting to and from work and achieving all the other things in between, on a daily basis.

None of this is to say members are against de-carbonising transport, far from it. However, discussions need to be based on the real world and we will continue to remind policy makers of what ours looks like.