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THE
B R I S TO L MAGAZINE
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The future is bright
I
’m not running for election as Mayor this year, you’ll be sad to learn, but if I were I would focus my campaign on the city’s everworsening transport chaos. Where I live, good people of Bristol, new houses and flats pop up seemingly overnight – like so many breezeblock mushrooms. In many ways this is fantastic. More people in a neighbourhood generally means more shops, pubs, cafes and so on. But more people also tends to mean more traffic, which slows everyone’s journey down while increasing their stress levels. Since the tram system was scrapped during World War Two and the regional train network given a severe trim in the 1960s, the main solution mooted for this seemingly insoluble problem has been the bus. Or Bertie, as every bus was known in the days when our family life revolved around Thomas the Tank Engine and friends. All helicopters were likewise Harolds, as were (by association) the winged sycamore seeds that fell from the sky magically each autumn, but I digress… There are now a bewildering number of different Berties buzzing about the place, some of which you need to buy tickets in advance for – why?! – and others you don’t. All have one major flaw, which is this: most of us don’t live and/or work next to a bus stop. So every journey involves walking, waiting around and generally wasting time, and who’s going to do that voluntarily if they have a nice cosy car to crawl around the city in? Bear with me, good people of Bristol… Hear me out… Because the future, I am happy to say, is much brighter. So bright, in fact, that we may all – as the song suggests – be forced to wear dark glasses against the glare. My plan, my scheme, my Wizard Wheeze will give everyone the freedom to travel where they like, when they like. It will cut congestion faster than a cockerpoo can down a stolen pain au chocolat. It will be cheap. AND it will – if local investors and manufacturers are quick on the uptake – create work for people to do. People of Bristol, I give you the Nifty Electric Vehicle. What, you say, you mean like one of those scooters you see standing around with green or red lights glowing weirdly in the dusk? Or like the mobility scooters that were always parked (in the days before Covid) outside certain Bedminster pubs, with a little dog standing guard? Or like… the milk float that used to wake us up at 5am every morning when we used to have milk delivered? Yes, yes and yes again. All of the above, and more. NEVs will be available in all shapes and sizes. There will be lightweight vans for deliveries, and then two-person vehicles like a Smart car but lighter and, well, niftier, in which commuters will be able to travel comfortably to work. And smaller, extremely nifty versions: an array, in fact, of scooters and skateboards and dodgemtype mini-cars. Once people realise that traditional cars are big and boring there will be a flowering of imaginatively designed NEVs – buggies modelled on moon vehicles or pirate ships, scooters that resemble gondolas, you name it! Looking further into the future we will obviously be flying everywhere in our pedal-powered kite-planes, but for now let’s focus on getting those old gas-guzzlers off the roads, and replacing them with something less wasteful and more fun. For too long we’ve been thinking big about transport, when the solution lies in thinking small. Don’t worry about all the Berties – they can be parked up somewhere and converted into cheap-and-cheerful accommodation for anyone who needs it. Parking ticket machines can be upcycled into charging points. Traffic noise and petrol fumes will be things of the past, like steam engines and smog. And, no, there won’t be a unicorn in sight (except for the unicorn-themed electric buggies parked outside the nursery schools). The future, as I said, is bright. The future’s electric. ■
14 THE BRISTOL MAGAZINE
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APRIL 2021
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No 197
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