Abbey Wood MOD site parking

10:00 on a weekday morning and the MOD Abbey Wood car parks are full. Really full not as in "I can create a space at the end of a row" but full as in "site security have blocked the entrance and are standing outside, possibly armed."

The non-motoring options to getting to the site are pretty limited

• firstbus buses 
• U1-U5 to UWE and then a walk
• Train to parkway and then a walk
• Train to abbey wood and then a walk
• Cycle along segregated paths

These might seem a lot, but they all involve effort, and they don't substitute for the presence of the A4174 ring road, the A38, which is dualled from the M4/M5 interchange all the way down to the ring road, and the M32 a short distance away. S Gloucs commuting is optimised for cars. Except the haven't provided enough parking, not since the MOD expanded their staff here from January 2010.

Fortunately, there is a bit of space round the corner. Up until December, this was an empty dual lane road leading to the ill-fated "tailspin housing estate", housing for the 21st century, and what's left of HP. Now it has found a new use. Overflow MOD parking.

For those people cycling to HP, this is beneficial as it turns the slow lane into a bike-only lane. Well, until the end of course when the cars turning left are now in the lane to your right.

For people trying to use the bike paths between abbey wood and UWE, not quite so good. The kerb dropoff they used to use is an invaluable parking space that saves the first person to grab it five minutes of walking. It is a premium location, and not double yellowed or anything to imply its use  for parking is somehow forbidden.

We are disappointed, therefore, to hear news that the S Gloucs. Parking Team/MOD police were on this road the very day these photos were taken, ticketing this Saab S904SLK and vehicles further up the hill, the ones parked on the roundabout. Do the parking officers not realise that once these commuters have driven into the area, there is nowhere else for them to go! They had no choice but to park here! They would have liked to use the MOD Abbey Wood Car Park B, but the traffic cones and enforcement staff forced them up this back road, adding time to the journey and now the risk of being ticketed. This is persecution of commuters in the cars-come-first part of the city.

Bristol Living Streets stealing our photos

We are shocked that one of those pro-pedestrian, pro-bicycle, anti-driving-kids-to-school web site has stolen our photographs to push their agenda.

Look, their coverage of Cotham Road RTCs, includes three of our documented "incidents".
We don't really resent their use of our photos, as they do link back to us -except they are pushing their agenda of road safety by demanding a zebra crossing between Rowan House Nursery and Cotham School.

They say this is needed because the Bristol Traffic dataset shows how dangerous the road is. Yes, we agree it's dangerous! But that's why schoolkids should not walk across it! The only safe way to cross the road is by car, and our data backs that up!

A zebra crossing between these schools would not only endanger schoolkids, it would be another anti-car activity that would show everyone how little the council cares about the needs of us, the commuters. First, they block up our rat-runs. Now they want to slow us down on the main roads.

Muller Roadworks

Here are the some roadworks on Muller Road, a key M32 access route. We have proposed widening this road in the past, by using up the under-exploited pavement and bits of greenery on the side -here some allotments.

Is this happening? Has the council seen reason, realised that a wider road would help traffic to get to and from the motorway, and so even boost bus journey times? Not a chance

This is the current end of the Farm Pub Path route. They are narrowing the road, adding some raised bike lane leading up to some light-controlled crossing that will slow down us, the tax paying economic backbone of the city, while the cyclists and pedestrians, the underpeople, pootle over.

Yet look at this pavement. There is perfectly enough room to the right of the pedestrian to fit bicycles. True, there are trees in the way at regular intervals -yet this has not been a barrier to on-pavement bike paths elsewhere in the city, coronation road in particular!

If a bike path with trees along the middle of it kept bicycles out of the way of into-city commuter traffic in South Bristol, there's no reason why it wouldn't work here as well.

2010 Bristol Traffic Antibicycle Awards: Gloucester/Zetland Road

We hinted recently that the Gloucester/Zetland Road junction would get more coverage. It is time. This is Bristol council's entry our 2010 Anti-bike awards, the ones that one of our commenters, maliknant, said of UWE's entry: "UWE has put in a tremendous effort here. If they don't win, the vote has definitely been rigged." Perhaps. This last minute entry could be the rigging by a transport department reluctant to be forgotten.

Here is a view of Gloucester Road: at 0:09 you can see the new bike stands that the Cycling City funding just put in. But that is not why this junction merits a mention. What merits a mention here is the new sign "signal priorities changed" stuck up by the lights. Yes, they have changed.

They have changed the junction priority from "getting cyclists across alive" to "getting cars through and so helping firstbus schedules". This is a major change, and one that only took a bit of signal reprogramming -software, rather than expensive infrastructure. The best bit, being just a software change, no need to announce this change in advance to any of the cyclist complainer groups -the cycle forum, the cycling campaign, whatever. They just got to sneak it in and present those tax dodgers with fait accompli.

First, watch the video.

Note how the cars turning right get a green light, and off they go. Either into the city, or turning right-then-left onto Cromwell Road, and off to St Andrews or East Bristol, perhaps even the M32. That option is the best rat-run route from Redland to the M32 of a weekday morning, after all.

Note how a few seconds after the cars get their green light, some tax-dodging cyclist sets off cycling over a pedestrian crossing, then veers away from the pavement, turning into the paths of the cars. He is lucky that nobody is in a rush to get to the M32, or his hi-viz top and helmet would be no use whatsoever. Just another statistic to show that cycling is dangerous, more proof that red-light jumping cyclists are the great problem of the city, more evidence the local police need to crack down on dangerous A38 cyclists. See that: something goes wrong -the cyclists gets the blame and people stay scared of it. Which is how it should be.

Only here's the best bit. The cyclist, this reckless fool, actually thinks that they are doing the right thing. Because they've just come off the Elton Road contraflow, the "safe cycling" route out of Bishopston, and have sat there, patiently, waiting for the crossing light to give them a green bicycle, a "go" light. They don't know they are being reckless, they are just naive enough to believe that waiting for a green cycle light means that it is safe for a bicycle to be on Bristol's streets. Wrong. They are not welcome. We in Bristol Traffic know that. The city's drivers know that. The Bristol council traffic department knows it too -and have set out to show the cyclists how dangerous their activity is, and how unwelcome they are. The fact that Bishopston is the target more-bums-on-bikes area for cycling city, and this junction something everyone cycling into the city centre would encounter, only makes the change that much richer, the irony more delicious. With a quick change of the signal priorities that didn't even get mentioned to the bike/pedestrian groups, the engineering team managed to push back on all the pro-cycling initiatives coming down from the councillors, from central government. One team -fighting back!

With this entry we now close our entries for the antibicycle awards. Three entries: UWE, Rolls-Royce and now this one Bristol Council Traffic Department. Before voting begins, we are getting some comments from the candidates and some final snaps. Please take the opportunity to nip down to the candidate sites and see what you think. Remember: as well as excellent chocolate croissants, The Bread Store does really good pizza dough.

We hope they avoid monty

Here in Cliftonwood, someone pins up notes telling off drivers for parking on the pavement. Someone who lives here must have an issue with it. We just hope they never go to Montpelier, as they'd explode in anger and resentment.

The first car looks like it's been here a couple of days, and sports a penalty ticket, presumably for the expired tax disk.

28-01-10 P286SFB

Please remove your car from the pavement and consider mothers with pushchairs

Facing this car is KN52WNT, which also has a couple of bits of paper. One listing the "traced" address of the vehicle, the other telling it off

Just because one moron blocks the footpath. Do you have to follow suit. What about mums with pushchairs wheelchair users and people with poor eyesight please think of someone else rather than just yourself. you selfish person

This is fascinating. What it tells us is that a bit of paveparking is so unusual in Cliftonwood that people are surprised by it -that they go to the effort of writing notes, of complaining. Wow.

Problems in the Village

As regular readers of this blog will know, we at Bristol Traffic campaign tirelessly for the travelling public.

A rival publication, the Bristol Evening Post, does the same. And today it has surpassed us by publishing a letter from a certain J W Hall of Stoke Bishop, who dares to point out the honest truth about parked cars in response to a proposal by SusWoT:

"Pushing two-way traffic into one side of the street will mean that people walking on the pavement on the west side will then be directly adjacent to a moving traffic flow, instead of being shielded from it by parked cars."

There, it's been said better than we ever could - parked cars save lives.

The letter also offers some comfort to cyclists as it goes on to state:

"It will also be worse for cyclists, since they will be confined into a narrower carriageway with the moving flow."

Bristol Traffic doubts that cyclists would care, as they usually use the pavement anyway, but it's nice to see BEP facilitating the debate when it comes to 'improving' our city.

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Here on Cotham Hill, outside the hospital. Seen them before. Previously they'd been positioned in such a way as to make it impossible for contraflowing bicycles to get round safely.

By driving all the way up the bike CN54EHH can close off the bike lane completely, so eliminate such risk in future.

It is through such considerate actions that everyone in the city can get round safely.

Incidentally, it is interesting to note how often Hampton House appears in our dataset. We shall have to discuss this with them some time. Congratulate them for the way their staff and those of delivery vehicles together resist the anti-car agenda of the city.