Lorry parking

The trouble with driveways is that they are rarely big enough to park your lorry.

The driver of this vehicle G596JYC was forced to park on the pavement, here on Alcove road, between the Railway Path and Eastville Park. This shows inadequate forward planning when these houses were built. Yes, they were built in a time when cars and driving down Fishponds Road to the city centre was part of the vision of the future, but nobody had thought that the household's motor vehicle collection would comprise three cars, one caravan and a small truck.

Progress!

As regular readers know, we regard any facility which permits slow pedestrians to cross the road safely as not just an inconvenience, but a needless burden on the NHS, because it keeps the frail alive

We are pleased to see that this one, on Fishponds road by Alcove Road, has been disabled. By not providing any promise that it will ever come back, or reason for the disabling, we hope pedestrians will be demoralised enough to consider driving instead.

The polis on fishponds road

Police van up on the zig-zags on Fishponds Road by Alcove Road

Could be a speed camera, van, perhaps?

On the lampost to the right of the picture is the forlorn looking incident-witnesses-wanted sign from May's Mercedes hit-and-run collision with a bike heading in the same direction as the police van is pointing. The authorities are apparently still looking for the blue Mercedes.

Watch for children

Here we are again in Alcove Road, , Fishponds, near where one of the recent hit-and-run incidents took place.

Today, we see that the ice cream van G984VFP has a sign on the back, "slow, watch for children"

This is to warn other vehicles about to park on the pavement that children may be running out of their houses to get to the ice cream van, so endangering your wing mirrors and paintwork.

Mercedes Hit and Run - Fishponds

While Bristol mourns the tragic loss of Troy Atkinson in the city centre, it is worth noting that the day before there was another hit and run involving a Mercedes, this time at the junction of Alcove Road and Fishponds Road.

According to the Evening Post

"A 40-year-old man was riding a black racing bike towards Bristol on Fridaywhen the incident happened.

At around 7.45pm, a blue Mercedes turned into Alcove Road and knocked him to the ground, causing him to suffer minor cuts and bruises."

We checked out Alcove Road to see if there were any blue mercs on the pavement. Not today. Two vans on the corner, providing a lovely bit of traffic calming by hiding all chances at seeing oncoming traffic.

And a car, WN56ULM, proudly sporting its "baby on board" sticker to let people know that this car has to park on the pavement to get its small child in and out the house.

Overall, not a nice place to walk or cycle, which is a shame, as it is one of the access points to the Railway Path.

It is probably a quirk of statistics that two hit and runs collisions involving Mercedes cars happen in the same week, but it is also worrying. It is nice to get onto the R.P. and enjoy the safe chaos of the evening traffic up and down the path.

Bristol Blue

It first showed up in our Entering Free Monty posting, now it is time to cover the issue in more detail.

Bristol Taxis are now required to have a standard colour, Blue. This will distinguish them from minicabs, which can retain their grubby beige colour.

Here are some of the new taxis, SH08UCV and SH58PHV, sighted in Alcove Road, Fishponds.

As you can see, they provide a uniform colour scheme for the pavement

And so make everything cheerier

When you compare it to the taxi across the road, W502PHY, the new colour scheme is a clear improvement.

Maybe it's broken down

This RAC van was up on the pavement by a corner off Fishpond's road all day, so presumably it broke down during some driving manoeuvre.

After all, such a widely-regarded motoring organisation wouldn't show such blatant disregard for the Highway Code unless something had gone wrong with their van .