Next time you hear that a local council has hiked the council tax to pay for “essential services” or that they are cutting back those essential services because of a shortage of funds, consider this little story.
Bristol City Council has been putting in a state of the art, or “showcase” bus route into the centre of the city. This is at a cost of £5 million although I hear a whisper that the final cost is rather closer to double that figure. That it isn’t particularly necessary is neither here nor there to the wastrels running this junket. There was a perfectly serviceable bus route in place before this expensive scheme caused traffic chaos as the contractors dug up the roads for months on end. However, it gets worse – as the route approaches Old Market, the once wide road has been narrowed by two traffic islands in the centre of the road (take a look at the image in the link above) with brand new bus stops. The idea being that buses now cross the traffic flow to the centre of the road and pass each other before rejoining the traffic flow from the right.
It is bad enough that this now creates an increased risk for pedestrians who have to cross the road to catch the bus where they did not before; bad enough that buses now have to rejoin the traffic flow from the right rather than the left; bad enough that the road has been narrowed unnecessarily; but worse, the incompetent fuckwits did not bother to measure the width of their buses – consequently, for the sake of checking their measurements, the lanes are too narrow for two buses to pass, so before this magnificent white elephant is even opened for use, the whole lot will now have dug up to make the lanes wide enough for the buses to use them. I do hope that the contractors will be fixing the problem at their own cost.
To suggest that the people responsible are incompetent wastrels would be an understatement – and the council tax payers of Bristol are paying for this fuck-up.