THE costs of making Overton Road traffic free have been hugely underestimated, councillors have been told.
Bristol City Council says the pedestrianisation scheme and another for Princess Victoria Street in Clifton will be 40 per cent higher than first thought.
City Hall bosses are asking the West of England Combined Authority for an additional £500,000 to carry out the two projects.
Weca originally allocated £204,000 for Overton Road and £550,000 to make permanent the Clifton traffic-free scheme that began during the pandemic.
The decision to increase the budget, rather than reducing the scale of the projects or dropping either of them altogether, was made by a top officer earlier this month.
A notice on the council’s website said the amount had gone up since July “because tenders have returned and are considerably more than we had estimated”.
It said: “This means we need to overwrite the previous decision and add a value of £499,524 to the initial decision via an officer executive decision.”
Asked to comment on the huge hike in costs, transport and connectivity policy committee chairman Cllr Ed Plowden (Green, Windmill Hill) said: “Delivering pedestrianisation schemes across the city allows us to create environments where walking, cycling and wheeling is made safer and easier, air pollution from traffic is reduced and local businesses can benefit from additional space and footfall.
“We have already delivered a number of successful schemes within Bristol including the pedestrianisation of the Old City and Cotham Hill, which was completed in December 2023 with the final elements of the project in place earlier this year.
“We are in the process of acquiring additional City Region Sustainable Transport Settlement (CRSTS) funding from the West of England Mayoral Combined Authority to complete the Princess Victoria Street and Overton Road schemes, which are both subject to approval of their full business cases.”
By Adam Postans, Local Democracy Reporting Service