Council highway chiefs have been told again that the signage for one of the nation’s most lucrative bus gate should be improved, after a judge ruled against the council in another tribunal ruling.
And the judge at the tribunal said that even though the signage warning drivers of the upcoming bus gate on Cumberland Road is legal and adequate, the fact that so many drivers are still getting caught driving through it shows the warning signs should be improved.
The judge at the Traffic Penalty Tribunal said he was one of those adjudicators who previously had thrown out appeals by drivers challenging the signs, but had now changed his mind because of the sheer number of drivers still driving through it as they head east from the Cumberland Basin to Bedminster Bridge and Redcliffe.
The ruling, which was made in February, has led to renewed calls for Bristol City Council to do more to prevent drivers getting caught by the Cumberland Road bus gate, with the issue to be raised again at full council on Tuesday by a man who has made it his mission to challenge the bus gate for the past year or so.
Matt Sanders has been something of a one-man campaign against the bus gate, which the city council’s own figures revealed had almost certainly caught the most drivers of any bus gate camera in 2024. He has had his own signs made up, and been representing drivers who have received fines from the city council for driving through it, taking up their cases at the Traffic Penalty Tribunal, and getting a large number quashed.
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The most recent tribunal victory came in February, when Mr Sanders represented a man who had driven across Bristol for the first time in five years. He told the tribunal that he knew he could no longer travel across the city centre because of the Baldwin Street and Bristol Bridge bus gates, so instead decided to travel round from Hotwells.
He appealed, with Mr Sanders representing him, claiming that the signage was inadequate and he found he had no option to go through the bus gate, once he got onto Cumberland Road. The tribunal adjudicator said he had previously dismissed appeals by drivers claiming this, because there are signs along the road which advise motorists that, to avoid the bus gate ahead, they need to turn left and go around the block within Spike Island and go back the other way on Cumberland Road.
“It is the presence of those signs which has previously persuaded me that the signage scheme is adequate,” said Adjudicator Robinson, in his tribunal ruling. “Mr Sanders effectively poses the question that, if those signs are adequate, why is this bus gate still generating so many PCNs, even after the changed road surface colouration?
“I must look at the situation as a whole, and I am concerned that little use has been made of road markings diverting drivers towards the Council’s preferred alternative route. It is not for an adjudicator to advise the Council on exactly how to sign and mark a restriction. There are a number of possible measures that can be employed, such as directional arrows, wording on the road surface, broken white lines to delineate the route intended for the main traffic flow and so on. It is for the council, with its detailed local knowledge and expertise, to decide what specific measures should be put in place,” he added.
The last time Mr Sanders challenged Bristol City Council over the Cumberland Road bus gate, the man in charge of the city’s roads, Cllr Ed Plowden, said the number of appeals and tribunal rulings in the council’s favour showed that the signs were adequate and it was the drivers’ fault if they didn’t see them or carried on regardless.
“We’ve seen a significant drop off (in the number of drivers caught),” he said, at a meeting in November, as he played down the number of times the council had lost tribunal cases, pointing out that it had won many more.
“Out of 118 (appeals) that have gone to the Traffic Penalty Tribunal on this particular bus gate, we’ve lost 14. All of those have said that this is not a general finding, but this is a specific finding to a specific case,” he added.
However, the new ruling from one of the tribunal adjudicators who had previously thrown out a number of appeals, is a significant one, as it calls on the council to improve the signs even if they are legal, because of the number of drivers still getting caught.
“The council has doubtless also considered the decisions of adjudicators, including myself, that have previously found the signage arrangement to be adequate,” said Adjudicator Robinson. “However it is the correct approach to revisit previous decisions if an unusually large number of PCNs are still being generated by a particular location, compared to other bus gates with higher volumes of traffic in the city centre of Bristol,” he said.
Mr Sanders is asking councillors to think again about the bus gate at Tuesday’s full council meeting.
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