Southville's runner problem

Things must be a bit quiet in the Cyclist/Pedestrian wars right now, so the Evening Post has had to concentrate on that other bubbling issue: runners running along pavements.

Mark1864 makes a comment "This is ironic for the EP. A bunch of pedestrians moving faster than other pedestrians are causing problems on the pavement." We think we know who this person is. And yes, it is funny. This is the best set of comments in the paper. Despite the best efforts to turn this into the usual cyclists on the pavement debate, it's mostly pedestrian vs faster moving pedestrian.

One constructive comment from bobob03 is "There are quite a lot of pavements that hardly get any use along the ring road between the M32 and Emersons Green ." Yes, we love the idea of a large group of runners driving from Southville to the A4174 ring-road for an evenings run, except for the small detail that on a weekday evening that drive will take about 45 minutes. Plus the fact that the A4174 ring road is about as exciting as spending an afternoon with an elderly relative who keeps forgetting who you are and repeating the same conversation, again and again.

Anyway, while we are smirking at the comments, we have a fear. These runner groups, who go along in big packs, talking to each other, may form a militant "Bristol Runners Association", who will then go on and demand things like the right to run along pavements in the city -0ur parking areas. Then they'll want zebra crossings retained, rather than pelican crossings, so they don't have to spend three minutes running on the spot waiting for the lights to change.

Better to nip this in the bud right now.