Bristol Clean Air Zone fines to help pay to repaint faded white lines across city's roads

Last year Tory councillors warned that the lack of road markings can be dangerous

Faded white lines across roads in Bristol will be repainted en masse this summer as maintenance budgets have been increased. Income from the Clean Air Zone will partly be spent on increasing Bristol City Council’s budget for road maintenance.

For the next three years, £200,000 extra will be allocated for repainting white lines on roads. Councillors were updated on plans to maintain the city’s roads during a meeting of the transport policy committee on Thursday, March 20.

Green Councillor Ed Plowden, chair of the transport committee, said: “Recently we’ve upped the resources put into re-lining. We’re going to see that really hitting the ground soon when the weather improves and we’re able to do more.”

White lines have faded from many roads in Bristol, causing confusion over where lanes are and who has priority. For example, the lines on the Bedminster Bridges roundabout are very faded, and the slip road coming off Brunel Way joining the main road at the end of Coronation Road has a very faint give-way line that is often missed by drivers.

Shaun Taylor, head of highways, added: “There’s two additional crews on the network. We’ve allocated £200,000 to increase the funding on reinstatement of lining across the city, from CAZ funding. That’s a big increase to try and address the issues which have been highlighted by a number of councillors to me about the lining condition across the network.

“We can’t line in the winter and there’s grit that causes us problems in cold weather and rain. As we come into the summer I have been putting more pressure on contractors to make sure that we actually increase the crews even further.

“So as our surfacing programme hits, we’re not taking the resources doing the maintenance work, into resurfacing. We’re actually putting more resources in to try and accelerate it across the board.”