Hello flyer.
I read that report which the Post presented as a concession on the part of SBAE. I didn't read it that way at all. It seems to me that SBAE is still wholeheartedly pursuing its opposition but is trying to limit the damage if it ultimately fails by suggesting caps on passenger numbers.
That looks to me to be a win-near win situation for SBAE whatever happens.
I agree about the inadequacy of road access (there will never be rail access) and the little likelihood of much being done to improve it in the forseeable future at least.
A huge amount of public money has already been spent on the Greater Bristol Strategic Transport Study that has come up with a series of suggestions on the way Bristol area transport (road and rail) could be improved over the next two decades and access to the airport features prominently.
Their maps are very impressive, if nothing else, including one suggestion for a transport interchange at Worle by the M5 and main rail line giving, inter alia, cross-country access to BRS. One idea is a road from that area to the airport bypassing Banwell and Wrington. That's gone down like a lead balloon with the movers and shakers at Wrington as you can imagine, though Banwell people might find it more acceptable as their village is perpetually blighted by traffic congestion as it was in the 1950s when I used to pass through en route to school at Weston and they were promised a bypass then.
The obvious answer for BRS is a direct link to the M5 about three miles away but that does not appear in the GBSTS repertoire.
The South Bristol Ring Road would be of limited value although the first part, if it is ever built, seems now to have been reduced to two of the suggested routes between the A370 and A38. At least this would take airport-bound traffic approaching from The Portway (A4) away from much of traffic-clogged south-west Bristol.
The irony is that one of the main points of those who object to expansion are the unsatisfactory road systems leading to the airport, yet these same people are the first to object when new roads are proposed, saying they ruin the virgin countryside and are an emissions-creating blot on the landscape.
That's why I feel SBAE's idea of limiting passenger numbers until road access is improved to be a hollow one because they will be in the forefront objecting to any new road that is proposed.