The Bristol Cycling Campaign is putting together a proposal to City Hall for a segregated loop around the city centre. The Inner Loop Cycleway will link the new and established radial routes and help cyclists safely negotiate the ‘tarmac collar’ of the city’s motor traffic dominated Inner Ring Road. There’s a map and key here.

The proposed route will be designed to the Dutch standard, sections of it already exist through earlier developments. What follows is a summary of our proposal.

THE ROUTE

 Centre – Queen Square – Brunel Mile – Temple Way – Bond St – St James Barton – Silver St (or Bridewell St) – Nelson St – Quay St.

Western extension: Marlborough St – Upper Maudlin St – Perry Rd – Park Row – Triangle – Jacobs Wells Rd – Anchor Rd.

BARRIERS

Bristol has made good progress with its Cycle Greenways radiating out from the inner city towards the outer suburbs and the countryside – the first and still the most successful being the Bristol & Bath railway path. There are now half a dozen such radial leisure and commuter Greenways, all shared by cyclists and pedestrians. These are paralleled by additional signed cycle routes following approximately the main motor traffic roads. In addition, most of Bristol’s radial main roads have partial cycle lanes as a result especially of the Greater Bristol Bus Network programme.

These routes however, are not tied together as they approach, enter and cross the city centre. This crucial and focal gap in the cycleway and cycle route network presents itself as a problem in at least two ways. The city’s cycle routes are not perceived by the public as offering a network – rather, a set of isolated one-off routes. The city centre and its approaches are perceived by aspirant cyclists as a hazard, given the heavy traffic and factually poor record of incidents involving injury.

Arguably, the locus of the problem is not the city centre itself – which has a number of quiet routes and an increasing number of contraflow cycle lanes on one-way streets. Worse is the difficulty of connecting between cycleways and of crossing the Inner Ring Road. Particularly difficult for cyclists are the main river bridges and high-capacity roads including Temple Way, Bond St, Lewen’s Mead and the Centre itself. The approaches to Clifton and the Triangle experience similar problems.