Broadmead

It plans for 2,500 more homes, as well as new student and co-living accommodation, offices, shops and leisure facilities in Bristol city centre.

These changes could see an extra 5,000 people living in an area where only 1,400 residents live now.
Our vision the Broadmead area is to create an inclusive, sustainable and re-connected place for everybody. A place of diverse retail with vibrant cultural facilities and a thriving evening economy, while at the same time being somewhere to call home.

With more people living in the city centre, we want to make more traffic free space for them. This includes improving streets, public transport, and active travel routes, as well as tackling air pollution and carbon emissions. To do this, we need to change the way transport is organised in the city centre.

Find out more about Bristol City Centre Development and Delivery Plan.

City centre improvement objectives

The focus of the wider city centre project is to improve how people travel across the city along key transport routes, making it easier to connect people to jobs and leisure opportunities, anticipating a growing population and supporting the city’s health and economic growth. 

The aim of the Broadmead scheme is to create pedestrian priority spaces and improve the transport network in preparation for the long-term development of the central area.

We are proposing creating more than 11 tennis courts of pedestrian priority space, adding 1.3km of new separated cycling routes, adding taxi ranks, and upgrading bus stops in the Broadmead area.

Plans include reducing traffic on The Horsefair and Penn Street. We would also change how traffic gets onto The Horsefair, closing access from Union Street and creating new access from Haymarket. This would be part of an interim phase before a longer-term revamp of the streets and public space.

In this initial phase the roads along The Horsefair and Penn Street would remain as they are, but we would remove bus stops and other street furniture that wouldn’t be needed if traffic along these roads has been reduced. We would add temporary seating and planting as well as work with local arts and cultural organisations on ideas of how to use the space created from closed parking spaces, taxi ranks and bus stops.

After Debenhams has been demolished and redeveloped and construction traffic has finished using the roads, another project would get underway to revamp the streets and public space. This would include high quality paving, landscaping, art installations and more.

We are planning to enhance the pedestrian and cyclist experience around and to Castle Park.

There would be new two-way cycle routes between St James Barton Roundabout and the Harbourside and between St James Barton Roundabout and Bristol Bridge, which includes removing traffic from Broadmead between Silver Street and Union Street.

Proposals include improving the area for pedestrians, including a new crossing at St James Barton Roundabout.  

There would be three new taxi ranks with high quality waiting areas, and we would move another taxi rank.

New disabled parking spaces would replace the ones we are closing on Union Street, The Horsefair, Penn Street and in Callowhill Court.

Union Street would be transformed into a pedestrian priority environment by removing bus stops and parking and freeing up space for pedestrians and cyclists. Bus services using this street would be reduced to just the new cross-city rapid transit route and the 1, 2 and 2a services northbound.

The number of buses and parking spaces on Wine Street and High Street would be reduced to enhance the pedestrian experience.  

To achieve the three new pedestrian priority areas – along The Horsefair, Penn Street, Union Street and Wine Street and High Street – we plan to re-route buses so they no longer travel along The Horsefair and Penn Street and remove all but a few bus services from High Street, Wine Street and Union Street.

Once all five city centre projects are completed, the new route through the city centre could be used by a high quality cross-city rapid transit route. This would travel between Long Ashton Park & Ride in the southeast and UWE’s Frenchay campus in the northwest of the city.