Jubilation in Hampshire

There’s jubilation in south Hampshire this month as the government has confirmed it will fund the Gosport-Fareham BRT, with buses planned to operate at up to every five minutes. No dates, though. And, there’s a little matter of planning permission.

If you are one of the 70,000 people who live in the harbourside peninsular Hampshire town of Gosport, you’ll know of the inadequacies of the A32 spine road out. At peak it can be one long stop-start traffic jam. It obviously affects buses. Average car speeds can be as low as 7 mph through the peninsula.

In 2005, the government dashed proposals to convert the former railway track-bed between Gosport and Fareham to light rapid transit, also serving Portsmouth. )The railway closed to passenger traffic as early as 1953.)

LRT has morphed into BRT. Approval was finally given at the end of March. This will see the construction of a busway along the dead straight alignment from just south of Fareham town centre to some 1¾ miles short of Gosport Ferry.

Detractors say that converting just three miles of track-bed will make little difference to the 5½ miles between the two towns. They argue neither will it link with Gosport Ferry nor Fareham rail station.

This misses the point. The scheme will require an element of conventional town centre running at either end. More, the proposal cuts a useful swathe through the housing, industry and MOD land to the east of the conurbation. True, there is considerable housing development to the track-bed’s west but people are more likely to walk for a reliable, punctual, dedicated service than they would a standard bus. BRT may have an impact on the A32 but whatever it does, it certainly will improve the bus service greatly.

Understandably, those whose properties back on to the proposal need reassurance. The track-bed is reserved for walking and cycling and is rich in wildlife. Cycling needs protecting as the town is apparently the sixth in England in terms of the percentage of trips made by this mode. But, we doubt the track-bed is wide enough for both bus and bike.

The Wimborne Flyer emerges from Broadstone Way

Protesters might consider how much worse it could be. The peaceful haven that was the redundant Somerset-Dorset railway through Broadstone becomes the Broadstone Way relief road in the early 1990s. A BRT would’ve been far more pleasant (and buses now even use Broadstone Way, from June 2006, though it’s easy to see why it’s taken so long: unlike in Gosport, the relief road avoids all of Broadstone’s population).

Historic note: direct buses between Gosport & Fareham on the Provincial 1s and 2s formed the backbone of its network and have always been every 10 minutes, half via Criterion (now bingo, once a cinema) and half via Ann’s Hill Road. This continued at every 10 minutes in the early 1980s but also included the 3s via Elson & Criterion. First’s perpetuated this with its 82/3, retaining the 10 minute frequency, either via Ann’s Hill Road or Elson/Criterion.