Bath Traffic – a guest reflection by Caroline Kay

Caroline Kay has been CEO of Bath Preservation Trust since 2007, and is stepping down in a few weeks.

I drove into Bath on 12 April, the UK’s first day of travel, shopping and ‘liberation’ from lockdown restrictions. Sadly it was also the first time in a year that I have found myself in a stationary queue on the London Road when leaving the city at around 3.30pm.

So despite the profound changes we have all experienced in 2020 – which have included the extraordinary emptiness and silence of the locked-down city – it would be tempting to assume that all the historic problems of Bath’s traffic remain unchanged. But is this the case?

Bath’s traffic challenges can be summarised as the battle between the internal combustion engine on the one hand, and the medieval/Georgian city on the other. For nearly 100 years there have been plans to adapt the city to suit the car – most spectacularly with the ‘Buchanan Tunnel’, but with a long history of potential (Edgar Buildings) or actual (Rossiter Road) demolitions, all designed to put more cars through the city.

The adverse impact of traffic on the historic city is threefold: pollution, congestion and vibration. While we have become much more aware of air quality issues in recent years, the direction of travel on pollution is positive, as cars have become cleaner, the acceptance of taxing the more polluting vehicles more established, and eventually we will see the move to electric. The impact of vibration, especially from heavy vehicles, will only be properly addressed when large vehicles stop coming through the City. There is universal support for a continued ban on their use of Cleveland Bridge. An alternative strategic North-South route and the proposed M4 junction 18A to the west of City may help. We are left with congestion: even with electric vehicles, continuous queues of cars in our historic streets are an unattractive prospect.

I would recommend that everyone read the works of Sir Colin Buchanan. He writes with clarity and expertise and his great aperçu, from his 1957 book ‘Mixed Blessing: the Motor in Britain’ onwards, was that you could encourage cars, or you could protect the environment, but you couldn’t successfully do both. This thread of good sense runs through all his work in Bath, from the Conservation Plan to the Tunnel, but he was writing at a time when the car was probably the most visible sign of social mobility and personal advancement and its desirability was assumed.

Bath needs to decide. If the City wishes to protect its environment, it will need to discourage cars, car ownership and polluting vehicles. It will need to forget about new roads and ever bigger car parks in its immediate environs; we know that new roads just draw in more cars. (This all sounds good until it applies to oneself, as suggested by the squeals about the Clean Air Zone, or the likely response to increases in delivery charges to service our new online retail habits).  Crucially – and this is the hardest post-pandemic message – the country will need to restore confidence in, and invest in, public transport.

There is always a benefit in the long view. I never thought I might see in my lifetime the death of the internal combustion engine; but its decline, at least, now seems assured. A city with narrow streets and precious buildings is always going to be challenging for speed and convenience; so maybe we should look for quality and a slower pace instead, remember the silence and birdsong of lockdown, and find a way to get our traffic expectations to adapt to our World Heritage City rather than expecting the city to adapt to suit the car.