Clifton Park: one possibility

We borrowed Quercus's Land Rover to drive over to Clifton Park one morning, to see where excessive parking restrictions were endangering people.

Well, it's not by Clifton High, as the excessive restrictions at this end (the zebra crossing zig-zags and the school keep clear zone) are both in use for child dropoff. These restrictions therefore provide an important feature for important school run parents, and so should be retained.

Looking the other way, no, no parking restrictions at all. What were these road safety campaigners going on about?

Then a bit further down we saw it. Can you see here? Where there is enough space for a bicycle to go safely along without fear of being hit by a car. Exactly. Without Fear. We don't want that, as it only encourages them.


Real road safety campaigners would actually push for a zebra crossing here, as that crossing by the school is the only way to cross this wide and busy road. But we don't want that, it will take away more long-stay parking spots. Instead we are going to pretend that it's all about safety, when really it's about convenience.

On this, large double yellow lined road, only the car X411WCG is bold enough to assert their rights to park here, even before the excessive restrictions have been removed.

If people are prepared to park here, even when they will get ticketed and fined (at least on those three days a year when the rule is enforced), then that's enough to justify. As it isn't right next to a school, making it residential parking wouldn't remove any school run parking opportunities. If it makes it more hazardous to cycle round the back streets of Clifton, well, if we cared about that, we wouldn't be pushing for more parking -and the ward wouldn't have voted Barbara and Terry back in, would they?

In a cycling city, this space would be turned into a segregated cycle path, before anyone got used to the idea of parking here.

But while Bristol is a Cycling City, Clifton is not part of the city -it's older- and so exempt from any of these changes.