iBikeRide.com

Please sign the e-petition and help save the Bristol to Bath railway path.
go to
http://epetitions.bristol.gov.uk/petition.php?id=161

then please forward this mail to others. You do not have to live in the bristol area to sign it.

In case you haven't heard why......
The Bristol to Bath railway path is under threat. The West of England Partnership, composed of local councillors, plan to use it for a rapid transit bus route from Emersons Green to Ashton Vale, one of four in the scheme. The Bath end of the path is under similar threat.
This is the most popular cycleroute in the UK with 2.4 million journeys per year and increasing – it needs widening, not narrowing. The timing of the bus route plan is particularly ironic at a time when Sustrans have just won £50 million for cycling improvements nationwide!
It is a busy commuter route for cyclists and at weekends is popular with families and less confident cyclists.
Although a narrow corridor for cyclists is planned, installation of the bus route will require using most of the path width for an ugly concrete track and consequent removal of all vegetation, destroying the path as a pleasant, green, quiet and 'fume free' multiuse facility….diesel buses will destroy that.
The path, sometimes called a 'linear park' is also used extensively by local people for journeys on foot to school, to walk the dog, to allotments and other local amenities. People with disability vehicles use it. It will not be possible to maintain this diversity of use on a narrow, fenced in path beside a bus track.
In addition, many of the paths crossing it will be removed (or 'rationalised' as the documents we have obtained put it). These paths _link_ up communities whereas this bus track will segregate them, like the M32 does to St Werburghs and Easton.
We don't oppose bus rapid transit schemes in principle but it should use roadspace, not space allocated to the most vulnerable and least powerful groups - pedestrians, cyclists and children.
We need to stop this proposal now.

Signed!

Matt, thanks for bringing this to our attention.

Signed.