According to the 'Transportation Assessment' submitted with Squarepeg's Chocolate Factory application, the site is 'a unique opportunity to [sic] a development that is highly sustainable in transport terms'.
In fact, Greenbank is something far from 'unique' in Bristol: a transport black hole.
Yes, the cycle path runs past the site, but many people won't use it after dark, ruling it out for winter commutes.
Local buses are poor, and Stapleton Road train station is a bracing 10-15 minutes away. To describe the Severn Beach Line trains as 'frequent' (as the 'Transportation Assessment' does) is being somewhat frugal with the truth.
Faced with these options, most people are going to drive, making a bad local traffic situation worse. Royate Hill is prone to horrible snarl ups and the M32 clogged with commuters and Ikea shoppers.
Is it too much to ask for an honest assessment, rather than the usual meaningless hype about 'unique opportunities' and 'sustainability'?
There are good arguments for developing the chocolate factory site, but Squarepeg's 'greener than thou' bullshit makes me long to hand it over to crazed Easton hippies for intensive lentil farming.
For what it's worth, I'd like to see a development which leaves the railway path well alone, is as close to carbon neutral as possible, rewards car-free living, and provides larger properties for families and flat-sharers, not sterile one-bed bolt holes.
But given this is Bristol, not Freiburg or Rotterdam, that probably ain't going to happen.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
The name says it all. They intend to force the swollen square peg of their development into the innocent round hole of Greenbank, willingly or unwillingly. That is disgusting!
Less disturbingly perhaps, they might have called themselves Quart, as in "quart into a pint pot".
Squarepeg's megalomaniac development is far, far bigger than the Persimmon bid that local residents initially rejected.
Doh!
When you put it like that, Dona, it really IS disgusting!
Post a Comment