It isn't enough -the freedom of freeways

Our main reason for a trip to the US was to learn from the road builders. Just as the cycling activists go to Denmark and the Netherlands, we, along with the West of England Partnership, head to America.

Look at this scene: flyovers and flyovers, heading into the distance. San Francisco

Up in the sky, from one freeway, another one above. So much choice, and that word, Freeway. Freedom. The American way.

From above, you can see wide city streets. What can you see from the M32? Eastville.

But it isn't enough. It's never enough. They built the roads, the people came, the economy grew. And the roads filled up.

What can be done to help the US -or UK economy. More roads. It's obvious really.

A roadbuilding program is never finished, never done. Yet in the UK we stick in a couple of flyovers and declare "Mission Accomplished". Only Glasgow recognises that the work is never done; that you need to keep planning motorways; more flyovers over the city; more bridges. We understand them.

We also see what the cycling troublemakers miss: the same thing applies to bicycle routes. Their adoption of "vehicular cycling", to cycle in our roads, means to surrender to our needs. Yes, they can get on our roads, while we sound our horn behind them, if we see them at all. But we drive the cars, going past them at 40 mph with six inches of clearance, saying "look how insane you'd have to be to cycle out there, it's really dangerous." They get out there, they have near-death experiences, they give up, drive, and the economy moves forward. It would only be by adopting a freeway-style program, one of cross-city routes, that they'd ever get anywhere. Yet in the big UK cities, nobody has noticed this. The only big in-city equivalent of a freeway for pedestrians and cyclists is of course the Bristol-Bath Railway Path, a flat, nearly uninterrupted route between the cities of the South West. Which is precisely why we and the WoEP want to put buses on it. Not only does it get buses off our roads, out of our way, it kills their dream: a walking and cycling version of a freeway.

The Flintstone House

There are some pretty weird buildings in St Werburgh's, but none of them have a decent view of a freeway, the way The Flintstone house does in California

This is why the house has an entry on wikipedia, but the odd houses in St Werburgh's don't: nobody sees them.

More biggerer and betterer.

Bristol is often referred to by many ex Londoners as being like a "little London". While we can appreciate the comparison we at Bristol Traffic know that with the proper building of new bigger wider roads to allow more cars into the city it won't be long before Bristol becomes bigger and better than London. Better because we won't leave our motorways unfinished on the outskirts of the city. Ours will penetrate right into the heart of the city centre creating a vibrant city environment that everywhere else in the world could only dream of. After all we already know that car drivers are the only people who ever spend money in cities and allowing anyone else to get in their way is a sure way to help businesses lose trade.

We have a good start already in the M32 but there's more work to be done if our vision of the future is to come to fruition.

Here as a reminder of why the plan must be seen through is a short film by a young man highlighting where London failed to match up to our vision.

Glasgow

Only last week were were criticising Bristol's town planners for a lack of vision in the 1970s, for a failure to regenerate the neglected inner city by building enough motorways through its core. We only have the M32. One city in Britain has had the vision, and stuck to it, turning their neglected victorian era housing and under-utilised parkland into motorways, so that wherever you walk round the city, you can hear the background hum of high speed motorway traffic. With this motorway through the heart of the city, we believe it is possible to drive from the M32 to the scottish highlands without having to stop for a red light or pedestrians.

Yes, we are talking about Glasgow, and unlike the Copenhagen Cycle Chic team, who think it is a nice place to cycle, as is Aberdeen, we know that Glasgow is our kind of city, as documented by our allies, At War With The Motorist, on their trip to Glasgow, premier city in Scotland.

We like best that the integrated advertisting on the phone-viewer brings up an advert for Robbie's Driving School, who will teach you how to drive round either city, Bristol or Glasgow, in Style.

Congratulations Glasgow, and come on Bristol, get your act together! How else can you solve this city's traffic problems?

M5 work

"Paul N" sends us this video of what the M5 was like on October 26 between Bristol and Cirencester.

As people say, where were the police? Yes, there was an accident up the road, but surely one or two could have been diverted to direct people to drive up the hard shoulder and then U-turn up the slip road? Without that, vehicles doing that -such as the skip lorry- are taking their lives into their own hands. We pay our taxes so that we can drive the wrong way up a motorway slip road safely!

Sunset over the M4

All those anti-car activists don't appreciate how good the sunset looks on the M4 westbound on a bank holiday weekend.

No pedestrian/cyclist friendly street in Bristol offers such a view

M32: the history

Out of the BBC archives comes a documentary showing how the hotwells bridges and M32 will improve the city. It's a lovely documentary, looking at the lovely scenery, and showing artists impressions of the beautiful flyover.

It was a different time in those days, a time of progress. A time when running a motorway was progress. Indeed, a time when the word "motorway" itself was new; the documentary uses "Autobahn" on the assumption that the audience will have heard of that word.