As a result, the whole of Cotham is much quieter. By blocking the main route through the area, you can see that most traffic is through traffic, not local.
And interestingly, people walk on the street. It becomes somewhere pleasant to be, somewhere you can cycle without worrying about pulling out in front of the taxi or the oncoming bus.
It is a lovely place to visit. Enjoy it while it lasts. It looks like the traffic calming is moving South towards Horfield Road next.
Speaking as a local, I'm sceptical that Cotham Brow is temporarily a pleasant place to cycle given that - regardless of cars - it's still bloody steep.
ReplyDeleteYs, it still hurts. But
ReplyDelete-It's less steep than Nugent Hill and Nine-tree hill, which are the low-traffic alternatives to Cotham Hill.
-It's much less steep than Horfield and St Michael's hill, which are the other ways up from the centre.
-You don't need to be able to stamp on the pedals to pull out past the parked car and in front of the minicab in a hurry while you face down the oncoming bus.
If you get this summer's Bristol
Cycling Magazine you will see an article by me on "commuting by car". The followup, still to be written, is provisionally titled "cycling with a buggered knee". It will discuss the fact that once you lose the ability to go uphill without performing serious damage to internal knee structure, along with the ability to accellerate on the flat, means that your map of cyclable Bristol fundamentally changes. Getting up from the centre to the kingsdown escarpment is something you have to learn to avoid.