Thank you!

Blocks of flats in Brabazon

Townhouses in Brabazon

CONCLUSION: Overall, there are some good things happening in Brabazon. The new station will be successful, and the bus integration is streets ahead of most new developments. However, there are some serious missed opportunities that undermine the overall pretty good design. 10/10

Building in Brabazon

… public transport has only been accessible via a 15-minute walk along a dual carriageway, despite a good-quality bus passing right by the site. Current residents will have built habits around driving and are now harder to tempt out of their cars. 9/?

New road under construction

New housing under construction

THE UGLY: The houses that are already occupied are currently all 100% car-dependent. While I’m glad the Metrobus has made it in now, it still stops too far from the occupied houses. And because no temporary stop was provided on the main road over the last 3 years that the m4 has existed… 8/?

Cars blocking the pavement

The parking design hasn’t been thought through well enough either. Most of the houses have garages but there’s then not enough space off-street to park without blocking the pavement, so that’s exactly what has happened. 7/?

Floating bus stop

Different floating bus stop

Similarly, the floating bus stops at the new western Metrobus stop are pretty bad. The islands are way too narrow, even when there’s clearly space to push to cycle lanes further back. There are no shelters there even though the other stop (which is further from the occupied houses) has them. 6/?

Cycle lane becoming a shared path

Cycle lane by the side of a main road

THE BAD: Unfortunately, the cycle provision is poor. There are cycle lanes on the main street but they’re pretty much decorative. They give up completely at major junctions and the new cycleway along the A38 to link Brabazon into Bristol’s cycle network is very poor. 5/?

Bench with ‘Brabazon’ logo on it

Green space with benches and plants.

There are also benches. Everywhere! And they say ‘Brabazon’ on them, they’re pretty neat. There’s even a street where half of the width is taken up by benches and green space. 4/?

New houses

Row of new houses with trees in front

New block of flags with balconies

Curved row of terraced townhouses

Secondly, the architecture is genuinely a cut above what you normally see in a new development. No boring boxes - the houses have interesting shapes and the brickwork is very solid. There’s also loads of greenery around them and good use of continuous pavements and traffic calming. 3/?

Bus stop with queue-jump lane

Wide road with bus lanes in each direction

Road with double yellow lines on either side

Metrobus ticket machine (iPoint)

THE GOOD: Firstly, the bus provision is pretty solid. The main road is wide with bus lanes most of the way along, and there’s a neat bus gate with signal priority to let buses jump the queue at the eastern end by the A38. No parking on the major roads so nothing to block buses either. 2/?

Grey and blue double decker bus on route m4 in the Brabazon development.

The main road through the brand new Brabazon development finally opened this week with metrobus services now routed through part of the site. I went to have a look around today to see if it’s good or not. The answer… a bit of both. 1/?

Went on a wander today to see the progress on Bristol’s new cycle lane/pavement widening scheme between Temple Meads and the City Centre. Lots of work done, some sections are looking pretty finished! Plus, some Dutch kerbs - a first for Bristol? Never seen any here before myself.

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The Equality & Human Rights commission is doing a consultation about how it interprets the Supreme Court ruling on Gender and Sex

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Incredible track maintenance/monitoring vehicle from 1944(!) in Plzeň this morning. Shame that 20th Century engineering works announced at short notice forced us onto a bus at this point! Still, a well-managed operation, so I can’t complain.

Exploring the gorgeous city of Regensburg today. This bridge is 12th Century, somehow! Interesting to note that the top set of stones on the parapet (plus the surface paving) have been newly replaced. Definitely wouldn’t fly in the U.K.!

I guess Central makes more sense, nothing east of Germany is Western Europe though imo. Either way, the point is the same.

I’m not surprised, I guess… I knew in theory that it existed here. It’s just a little weird to see something I associate strongly with Britain turning up several hundred miles away, especially when most of Eastern Europe doesn’t have many British brands.

A delightfully odd bit of Czech railway infrastructure - for some reason, the track has been plain-lined to take it further away from the platform. Also, the disconnected track has newish concrete sleepers while the extant track has older wooden ones!

Fascinating to see older Czech apartment blocks closer into the cities, and the clear lineage through to the later Soviet housing you see further out.

Olomouc is, it turns out, a gorgeous little city. With some crazy tram infrastructure, including a full grand union and multiple in-use tram/train flat crossings!

Presumably in a bid to out-woke the rest of Europe’s trams, Olomouc has tram tracks surrounded not by grass but by wildflowers. Also: bonus Actually Good cycle infrastructure.

Sadly they do not, from what I’ve heard.

Czech Tesco is such an uncanny valley… why does this exist??

Broke: putting grass around your tram tracks.

Woke: surrounding your tram line in a green tunnel of shady trees.

Ahhh, this must be where the Czechs practice the ancient sport of Tram Jumping.

I love concrete… here we have the Charleroi metro, over a main road, over a railway.

No prizes for guessing - it’s the weird tram system! The abandoned line actually seems to be getting revamped now!

I’m sure nobody on this website of all places will know why I’m here

It turns out Calatrava has done two Belgian stations (I get why this one isn’t as famous, it’s not quite as fancy)

They have bendy natural gas buses in France?? (And boulangeries, of course, but the bendy gas buses are cooler)