There won’t be many bookmakers left taking bets that Bristol will have an underground railway mass rapid transit system by the end of this decade - or even the end of the next decade. With the revelation that it could cost as much as £18 billion, the project seems dead in the water now.
When the Mayor of Bristol Marvin Rees went to the West of England Combined Authority and its regional metro mayor Dan Norris to get reports done looking into whether it was needed, feasible and expensive, three reports were produced.
Two of those reports said that yes, Bristol having a new rail network that connected the city like never before would be a great idea, and it would be possible, with enough serious backing from the Government and private investment. Those were the reports linked to by Mr Rees when he was last trumpeting the idea, and saying everyone should get behind it.
Read more: Bristol underground would cost £18bn, secret report reveals
There was a third report produced though, which hasn’t seen the light of day. It revealed that the cost of an underground for Bristol could end up being £18 billion, so it’s little wonder the mayor didn’t flag that one up to those interested.
They’ve all known about this report for months. It explains why, when asked if Bristol would ever get an underground system, metro mayor Dan Norris simply said ‘no’, earlier this week.
That sparked a frustrated and angry-sounding Marvin Rees to decry the ‘staggering lack of ambition’ in Bristol and the West of England generally, with his barbs aimed at Mr Norris and all those opposition councillors who’ve been queuing up since 2017 to mock the idea that Bristol could have an underground train line or three.
Back then, Mr Rees announced it as his big idea. He said it could take three years to develop and another seven years to build, and Bristolians could - he said in 2017 - be travelling on the Bristol Underground within 10 years.
We’re now close to the point where you can buy calendars for 2027 online. Some over-confident people are planning weddings for 2027. A child born today will still be in pre-school when we celebrate the New Year and greet 2027.
And yet in Bristol, the transport system is actually worse now than it was back in 2017. We’ve had Brexit and the Covid pandemic, and such a shortage of bus drivers that people actually tweet their surprise that a bus turns up, rather than their shock and fury when it doesn’t.
London is nice to visit for a day or a weekend, and one of the things that anyone from Bristol will be instantly jealous of is the incredible public transport system there. Anywhere in a city as huge as London is pretty easily accessible thanks to the Tube, and I challenge anyone to return from a visit to the capital and not wistfully long for the same here. Many a fantasy map has been drawn with a blue tube line connecting Withywood to Lockleaze passing through Ashton Gate and Clifton, and connecting at Bishopston with a red tube line from Southmead to Temple Meads. It’s the stuff of dreams.
Bristol is, the Mayor’s Office keeps reminding anyone still listening, the only ‘core city’ without a ‘mass rapid transit’. Manchester, Birmingham and Edinburgh have their trams. There are now 60 stations on an ever-expanding Metro underground system in Newcastle. Sheffield and Rotherham have a tram-train network that started in 1994. The MerseyRail network in Liverpool has four underground stations in the city centre.
The problem for Bristol is that, during the 1980s and 90s when many of these other cities were creating their mass rapid transit systems, Bristol’s local government was being carved up to create a seemingly never-ending territorial warfare.
It’s Bristol v Bath, Bristol v South Gloucestershire, Weston v the rest, the old Avon, the new unitary authorities, each out for their own interests. So when there’s something like the Avon rapid tram system proposed, someone somewhere didn’t like it, and it never goes anywhere.
Those people in Whitehall must think we’re a backwards basket case of a place. They gave us £220 million for Metrobus, but all that ended up being was some new buses, a separate junction and half a bus lane down the M32 and a white elephant flyover at Ashton Gate. Metrobus has made little difference to anything, and is far from the ‘mass rapid transit system’, the Mayor of Bristol so rightly identified the city as needing back in 2017.
The thought of having an underground system seems further into fantasy land than it ever did, however. It feels almost like trolling the people of Bristol to suggest that millions now and billions later should be spent on an underground system in a city that can’t even get enough bus drivers or buses on the road.
Perhaps there’s something in the psyche of Bristol that instantly mocked the idea, that instantly thought ‘it’ll never happen’, and that, somehow, shiny new things like an underground system aren’t for the likes of us.
When it was first announced back in 2017, this article put together a collection of the responses, and only covered about five per cent of them. While it was easy to find people who thought it was a great idea, it was virtually impossible to find anyone who thought it would actually happen.
Perhaps there’s an inferiority complex about Bristol that the city never actually thinks it can achieve anything. We're a punchdrunk journeyman boxer of a city, reeling from the beatings we took with failed projects like the Avon Supertram debacle, or white elephant broken promises like the £220 million Metrobus project. Perhaps we’ve been beaten into submission to think it’ll never happen, we can't do it, so why bother even trying?
Perhaps that’s why Marvin Rees has been a lightning rod for everyone who he describes as being in a ‘pit of negativity’ since he became mayor in 2016. He’s the man with the big ideas, talking up the city on a global stage, rubbing shoulders with the big international players, decrying a ‘staggering lack of ambition’ back home. Back in Bristol, the most common reaction to the idea of an underground now is ‘it’ll be nice to have a decent bus service first’.
The Mayor is on the ropes but still swinging, though. This third report is flawed, the council says. He and his team didn’t like the brief given at the start, and reject its findings now.
The report itself says that creating some kind of overground mass rapid transit network would cost between £1.5 billion and £1.8 billion, but doing it underground would be ten times as much.
Maybe the Mayor is right and it is still doable - for context, the new Elizabeth Line in London cost £19 billion. So even with a worst-case scenario from this ‘flawed’ report, Bristol could get a complete new underground system for less than it cost London to 26 miles of tunnels and only six new underground stations.
The key question here is, what is the alternative? Trams? More bus lanes? More commuter stations on the existing railway network? Given Bristol and its Metro Mayor are struggling to get enough buses on the road and drivers to drive them, you can understand why Marvin Rees is still shooting for the stars.
But then, actively going forward with another £15 million to investigate the possibility of having an underground rail network in Bristol - given the city's woeful existing public transport system - does sort of feel like an ugly man with no matches on Tinder for years, emailing Maya Jama for a date.
Read next:
- Bristol’s new underground rail network will see an extra £15m spent on the plans
- Calls for Bristol underground rethink in favour of trams and trolley cars
- Metro mayor's 'lack of ambition on Bristol underground is staggering' blasts Marvin Rees
- Bristol won't get an underground system, says WECA mayor
