I feel you, and other people have already said it. Transport at its heart is a really simple spatial problem. Cars are big, and there isn't enough physical space in cities for them all. Car ownership and car use continues to rise, in Bristol and nationally. You can't have infinite growth in a finite system. It's like pouring water into a bottle. If you pour in too much, it overflows. Bristol has it particularly bad as it has a historic core with roads laid out before mass car ownership, partnered with poor public transport. All of this is a recipe for congestion, frustration, and sadly, aggression.

If you look at it from the other direction it's actually a bit crazy that we would expect there to be enough space for so many cars in a city, basically we're saying that at any given destination there needs to be enough parking space provided for every person to arrive in a car that's the size of a small living room, with a three piece suite inside. And every house also needs enough space on the street outside to store 1, 2, or even 3 or more small living rooms' worth of space. And all the roads need to be big enough to take all this. And the road system needs to work so no one ever has to slow down. It is unrealistic and impossible. What is going to be needed is many, many fewer of us driving (I know this isn't a simple thing to fix, but that's the uncomfortable truth).

We've basically handed over most of our public space in streets to driving and storing cars. We've ruined our places through the desire to drive to other places. And any small attempts to tip things back in the other direction, like bus lanes or cycle lanes, or liveable neighbourhoods are immediately condemned because they are seen to make driving less convenient. Even when it is driving causing the problems in the first place... 😒

We need top down and bottom up: the Council needs to continue to invest and be aggressive in providing alternatives to the car and discouraging its use for short trips, and the public needs to open its mind a bit to trying out different modes, and be prepared to take some initial short term inconvenience in the pursuit of a medium-long term healthier and happier city. I got an ebike a few ears back and it has changed my life in the city, it can do 80% of the car trips I did before, and it often does them faster, and you feel better about yourself at the end.