Bristol City Council is pleased to say that detailed design work has been progressing for improvements to the Arnside Road area to make sure that it continues to meet the aspirations of the community, but also the requirements of the highways department, and is affordable. Please click on the link below to see images.
Street furniture and paving materials are now being considered. The buildings on Arnside, and indeed most of Southmead, are red brick, so we have taken this as our starting point and suggested bringing some red into other elements of the public realm to provide some all year round colour. Stainless steel street furniture is tough and needs minimal maintenance, which will help to ensure that the scheme stays looking good for longer. They include:
- paving materials – concrete slabs on foot ways
- tarmac on cycle route
- buff surfacing on speed table between the shops
- red brindle paving blocks on parking and loading bays
- silver grey granite kerbs
- stainless steel seats, bins and bollards
- red ‘Shiraz’ granite bench seats
- silver grey street lights to match the stainless steel street furniture
Arnside Road will have two lighting brackets, a higher one to illuminate the road and a lower rear light for the wide footways
Bristol City Council are committed to working with the community on the details of the public realm design of Arnside Road, but this is obviously difficult given the current crisis. We do want to keep design works progressing though so that the overall programme for the works is delayed as little as possible. To keep people in the loop and get some feedback we are showing images of how we think it could look, but there is still time to change this.
We have talked about working with residents to develop a text based artwork for the granite benches on Arnside. If you would like to be involved in this, or have ideas of others who would, as well as how we can make contact with them at the moment, please let us know.
There will be changes to parking on Arnside and Greystoke Avenue. We now have planning permission to create new waiting parking spaces along the edge of the Greystoke Strip to support the shopping area. These will be available before we start the main works on Arnside. Topsoil will be stripped from where the parking bays are being constructed and stored in low mounds on the Greystoke strip for reuse in the Arnside planting beds.
Construction work has been delayed slightly due to the current crisis. However, now the lockdown is lifting, Bristol City Council will be awarding the contract and agreeing the programme with the contractor. We hope that works will start on site in July 2020.
General parking will be removed from Arnside Road between the shops. More disabled parking, loading outside Iceland and 3 hour limited parking will be available nearest the shops. Unlimited parking spaces will be available on Greystoke Avenue. There will also be new speed tables on Arnside Road between the shops and on Greystoke Avenue accessing the car parking spaces to slow vehicles down and help pedestrians and cyclists.
These parking changes are subject to a legal process called Traffic Regulation Orders (TROs). The TROs have been delayed slightly by the crisis but will be formally advertised from 19th May to 11th June 2020. The notices will go up around Arnside shopping centre next week, and comments can be made direct to the Council in writing or via the Council website. Details of how to comment are on the notices. Assuming these are agreed the public realm improvement works will be tendered and would start on site about four months later, hopefully before Christmas 2020.
Southmead has clay soil and rain water quickly runs off to cause flooding issues downstream both locally and further into the city centre. Sustainable urban drainage (SuDs) ‘pods’, like the ones on Embleton Road, help to slow down that water as well as providing the opportunity for more planting in the local streets. Eight new SuDs pods will be constructed on Wigton Crescent, Lowther Road, Dunmail Road and Ravenglass Crescent as part of the regeneration project. As soon the lockdown ends we will be out to talk to the people who live nearest to them.
The trees on Arnside will also be planted using a new ‘Stockholm’ SuDs system that creates a big tank to store water below ground and also provides a good growing environment for the trees. This will be the first time this new technique has been trialled in Bristol so it will be exciting to see how it works on Arnside.
Please do get back to us with any comments – email lucy.empson@bristol.gov.uk
Click here to see all the images of the details described above
