The Strategy is being produced for the West of England, by Officers from Bristol City Council, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire, who are working in partnership with SevernNet, a not for profit company operating in the Portbury, Avonmouth and Severnside area.

Over the last 10 years SevernNet have built links between businesses, the community and other stakeholders, and work with over 200 businesses and organisations.

We undertake engagement with stakeholders and the wider public to inform the direction of any Strategy document we produce. This takes place before we have any concrete idea of the shape the work will take, with the idea being that your views and comments help us to go in the right direction.

We will use responses from this initial engagement to inform the draft strategy. Once drafted, we will go out to public consultation.

We will then make further changes based on the feedback from the consultation, and will take the amended Strategy to our elected leaders to be singed off as Policy. At this stage the Strategy becomes a statutory document, which any transport plans for the future must be aligned with in principle.

A transport strategy is a policy document that sets out how a single local or combined authority aims to improve transport in a specific or wider region within their jurisdiction.

A Strategy is typically a high-level set of principles which provides the framework for future, more detailed plans to come forward for implementation.

The West of England Combined Authority has made a commitment in the recently published Joint Local Transport Plan 4 (JLTP4) to develop a joint strategy for movement for the area.

The Portbury, Avonmouth & Severnside Transport Strategy will align with the principles of the JLTP4, in balancing the requirement for distributing goods, with mitigating the adverse impact of vehicles and promoting sustainable modes of transport as the most attractive way to travel within the region.

Together the areas of Avonmouth and Severnside make up the Avonmouth & Severnside Enterprise Area (ASEA). Enterprise Areas are designated for businesses to locate to, encouraged by a range of incentives, such as tax breaks or business rates discounts.

Given the planned growth in the ASEA, it is vital we provide a range of transport options to ensure people can access jobs without reliance on private vehicles and congestion can be mitigated to help keep freight and services moving on our local and strategic transport networks.

The Royal Portbury Dock faces similar issues to the ASEA, with 24 hour shift patterns and suffers from poor connectivity to potential areas of employment within the region.

One of the aims of the Transport Strategy is to improve transport connections between areas of underemployment across the region to job opportunities in Portbury, Avonmouth & Severnside.

Historically, it has been challenging for people living in these communities to access the Portbury, Avonmouth & Severnside area. We aim to improve connectivity for these people in order to for them to access employment and education opportunities.

Yes! The responses we receive from the early engagement we are undertaking in early 2020 will inform the basis for the draft Strategy. Once produced, this will go out for public consultation, with feedback informing any changes we make.

The partnership approach we are taking with SevernNet means that businesses across the area are represented and can input during the process of producing the Strategy. The aim is to ensure we produce a Strategy that reflects the needs of both employers in the area, as well as those who currently face barriers in accessing employment because of a lack of transport options.

We are underway with the Transport Study, and the data from this will feed into the Transport Strategy development, running alongside it until the Transport Study is completed in May 2020.

When issues and opportunities have been identified we will begin to identifying measures; Summer 2020, when we will produce the draft Strategy for engagement and consultation; and Summer 2021, when we are looking at the Strategy being adopted.

The Transport Study is designed to inform the basis of the Transport Strategy, and will;

• Identify potential transport improvements that could be made to connect jobs in the area with areas of deprivation in the West of England.
• Identify best practice examples of improved commuter trips to out of town business locations by sustainable modes.
• Identify ways shift pattern workforces can be supported better by different transport options.
• Identify with key stakeholders in the area the transport issues and how they could be addressed.