'On yer bike!'

A Bristol councillor counsels a resident to eat cake

Image by turguthatipa from Pixabay

In December 2024 Wendy from East Bristol submitted a statement to a Bristol City Council full council meeting. It was rejected on the grounds that it was a complaint regarding a specific councillor and so not relevant to full council.

In order to bring her complaint to light I am here drawing attention to her issue. Please judge for yourselves whether the councillor in question was doing a good job or not.

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I was recently made party to some email correspondence between Wendy, a 62 year old female resident of Redfield, and her councillor, Jenny Bartle. It is an exchange which demonstrates how completely out of touch some councillors are with those they are elected to represent.

Wendy begins with a description of how she has three jobs, two of which she already walks to, and the third, which is in the evenings, requiring a car journey because there is no bus service and she cannot ride a bike. She describes how much longer this journey will take her once the bus gate on Pile Marsh is active, i.e. the ANPR surveillance cameras are switched on, and how her already very busy life (she cares for both her husband and her elderly parents) will become more difficult and stressful.

Councillor Bartle’s response is to advise Wendy to drive via St Phillips Causeway, to which Wendy replies that her experience of unpredictable early evening traffic on this route has ruled this out for her as a viable alternative to using the uncongested route via Pile Marsh and Blackswarth Road, which involves “no queuing, no stress, less time”. If she drives via the Causeway she is in traffic much longer, uses more fuel, contributes to pollution and in effect adds to everyone’s stress, which makes no sense.

She explains patiently that her impression is that councillors really do not understand the actual situation for many residents.

She urges her to

listen to the community and not accept everything that looks good on paper actually is.

Councillor Bartle responds:

Our position on the scheme is that the reason you are so stressed is because there are too many cars in Bristol. If it’s the case that major thoroughfares are unusable by residents trying to get to work, that’s a problem.

Sigh!

The actual reason Wendy is so stressed is not because there are too many cars in Bristol or that any “major thoroughfare” is “unusable”, but because she currently has an easy journey to work, which the council’s actions are going to make much more difficult. If you block off certain roads it will make many journeys much longer, because you are creating an effect on traffic flow that is worse than a congested road.

Failing to understand this, Bartle then continues regardless:

We are pushing forward several solutions to reduce car usage, de-clog roads and get Bristol moving, including more busses, better cycling infrastructure, and this traffic scheme. I’m really sorry that your car journey may take longer, but a sustained effort to reduce car usage across the city is needed or in a few more years it will take an extra 20 minutes to get to work using your current route.

This last assertion is made without providing any evidence: she has plucked a figure out of the air and is saying that Wendy will need to cope with a 20 minute longer journey now or otherwise in a few years she’ll have to cope with a 20 minute longer journey…

I am further not convinced the councillor is really sorry, because her next sentence is:

The best suggestion I have is that you look into learning how to cycle (and possibly get an electric bike, as you can now get these for a few £hundred and you absolutely whizz past the cars!), as this will take a predictable amount of time, and it is possible to go on quieter roads for most of the route.

She has told a 62 year old woman, whose level of physical ability she knows nothing about, and who needs three jobs to get by in life as well as caring for three vulnerable relatives, that the best advice she can think of is that she should quite literally get on her bike, and, why not, during times when the cost of living is shooting up, just spend a few hundred pounds on an electric one.

Bartle ends with:

I wish I could say for certain that a new bus is going to be put in, but I’m not sure what is going on with that at the moment – which I am both sorry and embarrassed about, as I have been insisting on more busses for months now to no success.

It appears that the power of insistence councillors possess works well if it is for closing roads, but they are helpless in the face of trying to improve public transport services, which is indeed very sad to hear.

Councillor Bartle’s attitude towards Wendy implies a lack of empathy from a position of political power that is psychologically akin to Marie-Antoinette suggesting the peasants should eat cake if they don’t have any bread.

Bristol’s residents deserve better than this.