Lockleaze Rail Station Campaign - Rob Dixon, local resident and chair of FoSBR

Lockleaze Rail Station Campaign.

I’m Rob Dixon. I’m a local resident and the chair of Bristol Rail Campaign (FoSBR). We campaign for better local rail services and more local stations. We want to see “more trains, more often, to more stations”. As part of this we want it to be easier to transfer between train and bus near stations with timetables at each and good signage between the two. At the moment we’re campaigning to make sure that Bristol City Council do this on Muller Road by the new Ashley Down station.

I cycle locally and to work, get the bus into town, get the train to Yate or Cardiff and have recently learned to drive as I work in a job that often takes me around South Gloucestershire. I was taking my folding bike on the bus but found it took too long.

People are right to moan when buses don’t turn up and that public transport could be cheaper. Buses are often late but how predictable is a car journey across Bristol? The problem is down to the same thing – the amount of traffic on our roads.

For me the key issue is about how easy is it to get to places I want to go. It’s OK if you want to go to places like Southmead Hospital, the city centre, UWE or other places on our local bus routes, but if you want to go somewhere else it’s much harder.

Buses in Bristol don’t always run often enough to make it easy to change buses and make a quick connecting journey. Or you have to go into town and out again. It’s simply not convenient (or it’s really difficult) to get to some places.

Although single tickets are now capped at £2 in Bristol, it’s still expensive if you’re buying several tickets or a day ticket, and if you want to use more than one bus company? Forget it!

This inconvenience stops people from using public transport. If you don’t have a car – and many people don’t, you are restricted in where you can work or visit. Have you ever tried to get to Avonmouth by bus from Lockleaze?!

This is important – it restricts the number of jobs that are open to some people.

Also important is that it means more people use cars than in similar size cities. This leads to traffic congestion and affects the quality of the air we breathe. The number of people with asthma and breathing problems is higher in areas near busier roads. It also means that many people feel unsafe cycling or walking. In places where the roads are busier, people are less likely to be outside or meet with their neighbours.

There are a few things that would help!

To make it easier to use the public transport network we have at the moment, we can use the Traveline website to plan journeys and there’s a useful website called bustimes.org that shows you a map of where the buses are as well as the timetables.

Another thing we can do right now is make journeys by bus to connect with local train services. Trains already run across Bristol every half hour to places including Avonmouth, Clifton, South Bristol and Yate. My girlfriend often gets the bus to Stapleton Road station and then a train to Weston. I’ve often got the bus down Gloucester Road and then a train to Avonmouth or Severn Beach or cycled to Filton and got the train to Yate.

In the long run one thing that would make travel much easier would be a station in Lockleaze, with access to Constable Road. As well as helping people in our area to get to more places it could also reduce levels of traffic and improve parking as people could use it to travel by train to Lockleaze and then bus to Southmead or walk to watch Rovers.

Local people have been calling for this for years. Our local councillors support it. Darren Jones MP described it as “a no brainer”. Marvin Rees, Mayor of Bristol, mentioned it in his election manifesto, and the council confirmed their support for it last autumn. However it doesn’t seem that any action has been taken to get funding for it and actually build it.

Dan Norris, our Metro Mayor, runs the West of England Combined Authority and is responsible for funding new transport projects. We would like him to commit to this and obtain funds to start it as quickly as possible. Residents can send a postcard to him to show their support.

Transport produces about a quarter of this country’s carbon emissions. Most of this is from private cars. Public transport produces less emissions per traveller, with trains producing less than buses.

If we’re going to avoid the kind of dangerous heat we’ve seen around Europe this summer, we all need to make fewer journeys by car and use public transport instead where we can. But if it’s not convenient – or seen as difficult, that makes it harder to do it. A new station would be an important part of the solution, giving people another option and making more journeys easier.

With all the new homes being built around Lockleaze we need more public transport options to avoid gridlock.

If there was a station at Lockleaze you could get to Avonmouth, South Bristol, the city centre or Yate quickly. People could get to work or visit places quickly, and to get to places by public transport where they can’t at the moment or it’s really difficult. It would give people other travel options. The trains don’t get caught in traffic so it could be quicker than by car and without the stress! And just as important, it could have an impact on people’s health by reducing the number of car journeys and resulting pollution.

For more information about the campaign, click here: fosbr.org.uk/a-station-for-lockleaze/