Bristol City Council drops plans to pedestrianise St Mark's Road in Easton
Watch Max Walsh's report from St Marks Road:
Bristol City Council has dropped plans to pedestrianise a popular road after businesses said it would force them to close.
St Marks Road in Easton was recently crowned the best street in the UK.
A petition was launched to oppose plans to pedestrianise it, but another group of campaigners came up with a counter-petition, stressing the need to stop cars from cluttering the narrow high street.
Bristol City Council held a survey and has confirmed the pedestrianisation of the road will not go ahead.
St Marks Road, which is lined with shops, restaurants and community facilities, was named the best in the UK at the 2020 Urbanism Awards.
It is home to the Easton Jamia Masjid and also hosts the annual Grand Iftar street party, uniting thousands of people to mark the end of Ramadan.
Rashid Majothi owns the popular Bristol Sweetmart on the street and says that pedestrianisation would have forced him to relocate the business:
"It would have been devastating to have to leave this area, this community. You've got a mosque, you've got a church here, you've got a pub and we all complement each other."
The proposal to close the road at one end and make it access-only came after the government made funding available for councils to improve active travel like walking and cycling.
More than 500 people responding to the proposal commented specifically about the potential for pedestrianisation.
The council said of those, 120 expressed support but a further 257 objected, with the remainder making alternative suggestions such as partial closures.
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