Aberystwyth Road, Bishopston

Time to catch up with the Aberystwyth Faction's proposals for an improved Gloucester Road -one that makes the bus lane tidal and so adds short-stay parking in the opposite direction.

We have now heard from the councillor behind the petition:

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: David Willingham <David.Willingham@bristol.gov.uk>
Date: 17 December 2013 13:48
Subject: RE: Gloucester Road Parking Changes

  The petition neither mentions nor proposes making any changes to bus or cycle lanes as that is not what it is asking the council to change. 

  If you visit Gloucester Road, then you will find that there are various parking bays that could be brought into use to allow the traders to benefit from more passing trade during the peaks, without having a detrimental effect on cyclist safety.

  As a local cyclist who uses the Gloucester Road, I have no intention of trying to make it more dangerous for cyclists, and if done carefully and in the right locations, I believe the proposed change would make it possible to share the limited road space a little more efficiently.

  If the council do decide to act on this petition, then they would be required to perform a highways safety audit of any locations they intend to change, as well as statutory consultation on any changes, so all road users, local residents or traders could have their say.

Regards,

David
--
Cllr Dr David Willingham
Liberal Democrat Councillor for Bishopston ward

So there you go: it's about sharing the limited road space a little more efficiently.

If you look at the petition, it does call out the recessed parking bays outside  288 Gloucester Road -the original Maplins site -these changes are non-controversial and likely to be unopposed, except perhaps matched by some demands for bike parking alongside.

What is a flash point is going to be the sentence "Furthermore we call upon Bristol City Council to implement "tidal" parking on Gloucester Road,". Because its goals, "Parking on the inbound carriageway during the evening peak" means "no bus or bike lane inbound in the evening rush hour", while "Parking on the outbound carriageway during the morning peak." means the same in opposite direction.

This is where the controversy lies. What is being proposed here implies no bus lane to-and-from the North Fringe commute, which means

1. No bike lane for anyone heading to the north fringe
2. No bus lane for anyone trying to get the Wessex red busses. These are the ones used to get to and from UWE -and if the students can't go by bus or bike, that leaves car. We don't want that. They don't pay enough taxes to deserve any tarmac.
3. Anyone commuting by car up the north fringe is now going to get held up by congestion on the A38. As that's something that wasn't covered in the C4 documentary: what it was like to drive down Gloucester Road before the showcase routes were launched. It was much, much, worse. The buses would have to stop in your lane to let passengers on and off, and if there was a bus heading north stuck behind a minicab with its hazards  on near the minicab office, your road would block as the two buses would never be able to pass each other. Gloucester Road was only viable as a driving commute option on those days that the council was actually enforcing parking. Which is something you wouldn't know on the commute until you were committed. 

See that? No matter how you get to the North Fringe, car, bus or even bicycle, the showcase bus route benefits. We don't expect the motoring advocate groups to realise that, as Bob Bull of portishead, official spokesman of the ABD in the evening post, is too busy complaining about his journey along the portway to appreciate how the bus lane helps commuting by car.

We do fear that the bus companies will pick up on this -as will UWE. And the cyclists, well they are the all-powerful-cycle-lobby.

Gloucester Road is going to be flash point there.

• Statistics imply that Gloucester Road has the highest number of reporting cycling incidents. -if you add Cheltenham Road to the figures, the A38 stands out as either the busiest cycling route in the city, or one of the more hazardous. Notable is that the Railway Path, which has the highest use, doesn't appear on the list at all.
• Bristol Cycling Campaign's followups on police involvement in any of these incidents imply the outcome is "not interested". This has the potential to be an issue in its own right.
• Even the mountain bikers are getting involved in this. Because while they are happy doing things like the red bits on the Super Nova trail, they at least know if they do get it wrong, they won't have somebody on the phone drive straight over them.
• A lot of the North Fringe employers have Bicycle User Groups with group mailing lists -easily organised, and capable of co-opting driving colleagues into the battle.
• The cyclists have more influence in the national press.

Putting it together, the shops may think that a review of the bus lane and a tidal system may get wide support -after their success in ensuring they retain their commuter parking in the RPZ-, but they are potentially getting into trouble. How are they going to react if cycling campaigners start handing out leaflets saying "email your councillor" to cyclists waiting at junctions on gloucester road? Can they take the trade of cyclists for granted -or are they going to have to deal with people coming into the shops, creating queues at peak hours, then when they get to the counter announcing they won't shop there as the shopkeepers are endangering their lives.

This is going to one to watch.

As for now, at the time of writing (16:02, Wednesday December 18), the petitions stand at

• Cyclists for a better bike lane: 135
• Aberystwyth: 73.

That's gone in a week from about 62-63 each -the cycling petition doubling, the shopkeeper's going by ten. This should be a warning sign to the councillors: they run a risk of making more enemies than friends here.

The Aberystwyth Faction: short stay parking matters more than life

This is just a first post on what is going to brew up into the next story to keep the Evening Post readers suitably outraged. Remember: we covered it first.

Regular readers may recall our coverage of a recent channel4 documentary, one that showed how the council was enforcing the parking restrictions in the showcase bus route at peak hours -and worse than that, by doing it with CCTV, ensuring that people really really didn't stop there, rather than "stop for 10 minutes -no harm done" stopping.

Well, now it's got national coverage, it's going to blow up

The "more parking" campaigners did manage to hold off the rollout of resident parking zones nearby, so ensuring that the parking areas will be available for staff and other commuters -leaving a remaining problem: where do shoppers go?

The answer is obvious: the bus and bike lanes.

Hence a petition: Fairer parking on Gloucester Road.

This is The Aberystwyth Faction's petition

We call upon Bristol City Council to remove peak parking restrictions from all parking bays that do not cause obstruction to traffic lanes of Gloucester Road, 

...
Furthermore we call upon Bristol City Council to implement "tidal" parking on Gloucester Road, and to permit the following:
•Parking on the inbound carriageway during the evening peak.
•Parking on the outbound carriageway during the morning peak.

This is pretty significant as if they get their way, it means that the bike lanes will be dead, and the bus lanes will only work for people heading towards town in the morning, away in the evening.

Which means that anyone trying to cycle in the opposite direction, say to school, or even to work on the North Fringe -and get there alive, are stuffed.

The right to park outside a shop is more important than the rights of others to live

In the other corner, just warming up, are the people who mistakenly believe that their right to live is more important than allowing people to get a bag of chips without having to park round the corner and walk 100 paces.

Their petition: Petition: Uninterrupted Cycle Lane on both sides along entire Gloucester Road

This is going to go head to head -two pressure groups, seeing who can be the loudest. Those demanding that Gloucester Road becomes like Aberystwyth: free range parking, or those who don't want the cycling clock pushed backwards -but instead want the bike lane expanded and enforced.

It's going to get exciting!

Secret Whiteladies road GBBN parking

We are happy to declare the whiteladies road showcase bus route a success.

Before, parking here on whiteladies road was forbidden, because it had zig-zags. Now it is somewhere you can park during rush hour.

This is because the parking restrictions are not live until the signs go up-until then buses and cyclists get to go down the single lane, while we can park there all day.
 
Apparently this enlightened state of affairs will last another month or two.

Keeping Tesco Safe

Here one weekday morning, the police are ensuring that Tesco is safe.

Especially from people on bicycles, who will have to past further out on the road.

This will make the customers feel less threatened -even during the hours that the bike/bus lane is active.

Tesco Stokes Croft: A consultation

We're reproducing a message sent out today, in order to prevent any misunderstandings if our email became public through other channels, just like that recent incident involving "Quercus", twitter and a naked man on a unicycle. First, we need to make clear that we do not in any way support the use of bicycles or public transport in the city. We are, however, concerned that the delivery and shopping processes of the Cheltenham Road Tesco Mini-mart are making it impossible for us to drive down the bus lane then swing left into Ashley Road, so avoiding the bearpit roundabout while heading out of town on the M32. Furthermore, the congestion caused by buses trying to swing back into the single-lane traffic is creating tailbacks as far as the Gloucester Road/Zetland Road junction, which makes nipping into Booze express harder. We couldn't come out and say this as it would make us appear shallow and self centred, so instead we pretended to have unified interests with the people that Jeremy Clarkson only this week denounced as anti-capitalist subversives.

Here is the letter

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Bristol Traffic
Date: 21 June 2011 15:17
Subject: Express Cheltenham Road, Bristol
To: expressqueries@uk.tesco.com


It appears that you are looking for feedback w.r.t the Tesco Express, Cheltenham Road, Bristol, the one that recently became nationally famous due its unfortunate history of catching fire late at night.

The Bristol Traffic Project wishes to provide some feedback about the newly re-opened mini-mart.

In case you are unaware, we are a web-based community project to build a defensible dataset on who drives, parks, cycles and walks badly round Bristol. Our stokes croft coverage dates back to 2008, and so forms one of the largest dataset on road usage in the area. As a result, the search terms "Tesco Stokes Croft" invariably lists one of our articles in the first page of responses, despite the recent national and international media coverage.

One conclusion of our three year dataset is that the number of people cycling along Cheltenham Road is increasing. This is something which the council believes is a good thing, which is why the Cycling City program deliberately set out to encourage people in Bishopston, further up the A38, to cycle to work -down Cheltenham Road. For this reason, the Greater Bristol Bus Network offers a mandatory bus lane during some parts of the day; this ends outside Tesco Cheltenham Road, where a non-mandatory cycle path begins. While historically the bus lane only ever existed on those rare days that Bristol Parking Services enforced the rule, the roll-out of in-bus camera and CCTV enforcement of lane-blocking legislation means that compliance is now higher, except amongst those entities that are prepared to view the penalty as an operational expense.

Within the last ten weekdays of the supermarket being "live", community contributions show that

• There is invariably a large HGV blocking the end of the bus lane and the beginning of the bus lane between 10:00 and 10:30
• While unloading is not permitted before 10:00, if the HGV arrives early, it merely parks in the bike/bus lanes and awaits 10:00
• Security vehicles visiting the shop have been parked there at 09:15, and contributed to an apparent collapse of the entire inbound bike lane
• Evening shoppers parking outside the mini-mart block the bus lane and create congestion on the inbound route to the city before 18:00. In comparison, our historical dataset shows that at this time of day the congestion only existed on the outbound route [1, 2].
  

Accordingly we can conclude that:

1. The official Tesco deliveries, while scheduled for 10:00-10:30, render the bike lane inoperable for a minimum of 30 minutes out of every working day. This bike lane being, as mentioned, the primary cycle route into the city from north Bristol.
2. This official blocking of the bus lane impacts bus schedules, inconveniences passengers across the city, and may even lead to financial penalties to FirstBus.
3. Other organisations with an apparent relationship with Tesco (e.g. G4S) are prepared to block the bus lane during its operational hours, and therefore presumably view parking tickets as an OPEX. This reduces the availability of the bus and bike lane even further.
4. Customers engaged in a park-and-shop process are prepared to short-stay park in the bus/bike lane through out the day, so rendering it unusable to buses, cyclists, and anyone coming down of Arley Hill who wants to nip down the bus lane before turning left on Ashley Road towards the M32.
5. Customers engaged in a park-and-shop process are prepared to short-stay park outside the shop during the evening bus-lane hour, so creating congestion that runs as far back as Zetland Road and so has a negative impact on all road journeys.

Overall, then, the combination of scheduled Tesco deliveries, possibly scheduled visits by partner organisations, and short-stay parking by customers has effectively rendered this bus and bike lane unusable to anyone in a bus, bicycle, motorcycle or taxi, or anyone simply prepared to nip up the left lane to get to St Pauls, an action to which a blind eye has historically been turned.

Given the role of the road and the fact that the loss of this lane is leading to congestion morning and evening, we consider this outcome unacceptable.

We would recommend some actions to mitigate this. Sadly very few actions spring to mind other than the closure of the mini-mart.

• Your cost model is built around an optimised supply chain that uses the same vehicles for delivering to Tesco Express outlets as other Tesco sites, so the HGVs could only be eliminated by the adoption of a new city-friendly supply chain.
• Your cost model does not include the external costs of the impact on the journey times of non-customers, or other externalies such as the increases in their fuel use and pollution.
• Passing motorists popping in to shop may have been explicitly or implicitly included in the business model of the shop. It may be possible to enforce a "do not sell to people who park in the bus/bike lane" policy by refusing them entry, however this will not help customer loyalty.
• It is hard for you to enforce policy on how your strategic partners such as G4S arrive and park outside your premises.

What is possible is for the local council to act in such a way as to mitigate such issues, independent of any of your actions:

1. Use the CCTV camera at the junction of Cheltenham Road and Arley Hill to enforce the existing bus lane parking rules. This does not require any legal process and could be rolled out almost immediately.
2. Use existing the CCTV camera to enforce the 15 minute loading/unload time limit. Again, no legislation necessary.
3. Uprate the cycle lane from "optional" to mandatory, so earning all vehicles which park there a £120 fine.
4. Enforce the then-extended cycle lane driving/parking rules using the same CCTV camera
5. Increase the physical presence of Bristol Parking Services staff, so offering more of a visual deterrent before 10:00 and after 16:30.

Being a data-gathering exercise we shall be using the FoI process to track the number of parking tickets issued in this area, so see if it correlates with the increase of delivery and customer parking which our data implies is happening. We shall also encouraging our existing community base to collect more photographs of the situation, which we shall then place online along with the vehicle registration numbers, and so help build up a better dataset of who chooses to block this invaluable facility, and when.

Please thank your staff, partners and customers for their participation in our experiment.

The Bristol Traffic Team.

---------- Forwarded message ----------

As stated, do not interpret this as some form of subversive activity. It is just that the tailbacks prevent us getting down and parking on the pavement outside Ritas or sprinting over to the M32. We are, as people should recall, a data gathering and analysis project, so we welcome documentary evidence from everyone on this issue, even people engaged in un-British activities like walking, cycling, and getting on a bus as opposed to standing there hoping that one will turn up. The threat of using FoI information to collect ticketing statistics is real, and we enjoy the irony of having the CCTV camera put in "for the mini-mart's own protection" being used to ticket people parking in the bus lane during its hours of liveness. Expect updates in future

Tesco's plans to Walthamize the cycling city in the back.

We are impressed. Every day that one of the team members has been down to Cheltenham Road this week, there's been a vehicle or two outside Tesco. What was once one of the showcase "cycle city" and "Greater Bristol Bus Network" routes has been returned to the tax paying driver -and as vans and lorries pay more road tax, they deserve to use it first.

"Slug" sends a couple of Pics from 09:15 on Friday 17 June showing a security van outside tesco,

And right outside the credit union, another lorry, MX07GJV

As slug says " It can be very dangerous for a cyclist to cycle in the cycle lane because it is to the left of traffic turning left. So the lorry driver out of concern for the potential danger that inexperienced cyclists are putting themselves in, decided to park on the double yellow lines ... ignoring the no unloading sign.

Behind the vehicle you can see all the way to the security van that is also parked on the cycle lane -and in between the lane is completely empty! Mission accomplished! no cyclists Left Hooked at Ashley junction this morning.

Interestingly, we have a different video of the same stretch of road from someone else taken about ten minutes later. This video is interesting because it is from the perspective of one of the tax-dodgers, someone who is trying to get across the city "after 9am because the roads are quieter." See that? These people have deliberately chosen to commute outside "the rush hour" because they prefer it. But that reduction in road traffic creates an illusion of safety -and encourages more of such behaviour.

At 0:03 there's another cyclist on Freemantle Road -heading towards the university or Clifton, then our underemployed camera-enabled tax-avoider descends Nugent Hill, an option forbidden to cars, especially since they put that island in at the bottom to stop right turns, a feature few motorists have managed to deal with. Our troublemaker negotiates that island by abusing the contraflow bike lane on Arley Hill, then flips into the left lane to undertake the stationary traffic to wait for a green light.

While waiting we see important people in cars and taxis, some public transport users, and unimportant pedestrians, and another cyclist at 1:58 crossing over to the contraflow. Because The A38 here, it could unify or divide the city. The council wanted to make it a showcase for the cycle city program, encouraging people from Bishopston (out of town; to the left) to head into the city centre, down this very road!

That is something we need to stop, which is why we are grateful for Tesco and its support. Because as well as unifying the cyclists, it could divide them. It and Muller road are the two roads that anyone cycling around north Bristol has to encounter, and if we can only roll back any pro-cycling "enhancements" there, then we can discourage anyone not just from cycling on these main roads, but even get across them.

That is why it is so essential to fight them on the streets, and why the Tesco delivery process is helping transform this road, and hence the whole of north Bristol.

At 2:14 you can see the bicycle head in to town. Although they think they have a lane to themselves, at 2:22 you can see their mistake -the security van has moved on since 09:15, but another delivery van has taken its place. Then at 2:34, a car half on the pavement, half on the bike lane. That bike lane is considered unsafe anyway, which is why they and the next lorry are blocking it. What's changed since the photos earlier is that the lorry seems to be deciding to pull out now; it's flipped its indicators on. The tax dodger goes past, and at 2:47 you can see another paveparked van; a 2:49 a similar car. All it takes is one or two vehicles doing this, all the time, every day, and people will be discouraged not just from commuting along this road by bicycle, but across it.

At 3:04 our troublemaker does a U-turn and heads out of town, showing that the bike lane there is in its usual state: short stay parking for shop customers and staff. This bike lane has been reclaimed!

At 3:36, they are now waiting to turn right towards montpelier, where you can see that the row of vehicles blocking the left lane do actually turn it into a bikes-only lane, albeit because nobody actually wants to turn left. Anyone turning left will have to swing over from the right hand lane, which might be a surprise to anyone cycling down it, of which we can see a couple at 3:50.

Then, finally, at 3:54, our errant tax dodger turns right, and then left into Montpelier, where they can feel slightly safer.

You see that? How the quiet bits of the city, Cotham and Montpelier, can be made cycling unfriendly not by adding any anti-cycling infrastructure, but by making it unpleasant to cross the roads between them. We don't need to ask the council for special anti-bicycle features, the way they do in Waltham Forest, all we need to do is park our delivery vans where we want on the roads the cyclist have to cross. It only takes a couple of HGVs to set an example, and once it's begun, every else will copy. What was a bike lane has become a parking area, not just to achieve the tactical goal: park outside our destination, but to achieve a strategic one: to knife the cycling city dream in the back.

Whose streets? Ours! For parking in whenever we want!

Tesco Walthamises Cheltenham Road

As we stated many months ago, a new Tesco mini-mart would finally give us a reason to park along Cheltenham Road.

What we hadn't expected was how rapidly it would transit from a boring, functional bus lane and bike lane into a short stay shopping street. Tesco have brought the high street back again!

Notice here, on Thursday June 17, 10:18 am how the delivery staff have placed some warning signs out. At first we thought they were to warn cyclists not to go straight into the back of the lorry, and were a bit worried that Tesco may be starting to care.

A closer look reveals the real isse. Because the lorry has a loader that drops to ground level, they don't want any shopper to park their car on the double yellow lines too close to the back of the lorry. They are concerned about the customers, not the passing underpeople.

Here's a video of the same scene

Notice how you can just make out the bike lane underneath the lorry as it raises the floor.

Many of the troublemakers have complained that Tesco moved in to the area to profit from a road going upmarket. Untrue. Tesco moved in there because it wasn't upmarket enough, because people walked and cycled round, even though it was a main road with plenty of room for lorries and parking.

Tesco moved in to the area to save Stokes Croft from itself!

Tesco Stokes Croft: did FirstBus torch it?

There are lots of theories about who torched the new Stokes Croft Tesco

1. Some squatters made petrol bombs and tried to torch the mini-mart in a protest against supermarkets.
2. Lots of drunk people reacting to the police blocking their road home.
3. A group of hardend "black hat" anarchists secretly infiltrated the city, created a riot and then retreated to a nearby pub, returning two weeks later to the Anarchist Bookfair to buy the Banksy memorial posters and then resell them on eBay.
4. An active service unit of Stokes Croft street food vendors torched it as any supermarket outlet selling chicken only five days past its best-before date would raise expectations excessively amongst their existing customer base.

We have a new one: Firstbus did it. Watch this video, taken before 18:00 on a weekday, to see why.

See how the vehicles coming from Bath Buildings only have time for the front two to pull out on red before the cars coming down from Arley Hill get out and block the junction. Then Cheltenham Road gets the green light, and all vehicles heading into the city get held up -including two FirstBus buses. What is happening?

The answer is, out of camera, a parked car is blocking the bus lane. This stops buses from getting through, and it stops any car coming off Arley Hill and heading left towards Ashley Road and the M32 nipping in to it and heading off to the motorway without being blocked in the tailback stemming from the bearpit.

This holds up cars, but for the buses it is worse: it holds up the entire schedule, on which they can pay financial penalties.

This then, is who has the most to lose from a Tesco on Cheltenham Road: FirstBus management, whose company will pay fines caused by short-stay shoppers parking in their bus lane, and whose bonuses and stock options will be threatened. These people had far more to lose than Slix or Ritas, far more to gain than the anarchists could make from reselling Banksy prints. This is why we believe that the police should study their CCTV camera footage for the signs of any FirstBus bus going down this road after 11pm. Normally all FirstBus buses would be in bed by then, so any bus going down the road is clearly full of FirstBus operatives, planning to create a riot, destroy a supermarket, and so avoid penalties for late bus schedules.

Breaking news! The Polis at the tesco parking area!

A quick trip in our van at 09:59 shows the delivery van YR59YUD happily ensconced in the bus lane, waiting to deliver to tesco.

We say waiting, because apparently as long as they don't start unloading until 10:00, it's OK. This actually makes sense. Anyone who is trying to use public transport or cycle at that time of day are clearly low-income people whose time is effectively worthless, according to the D of Motoring spreadsheets.

What is more interesting is later the same day, now at 18:37, we spot the "Mighty Banana" van of Stokes Croft, now parked outside Tesco. Has someone driven up from the Croft to get their weekly shop in?

Possibly, but they would have found their way blocked by a large group of strangely dressed people. That said, anyone driving up from the croft wouldn't find this unusual, or interfere with their daily shop.

What could, however, would be the police enforcement of parking rules. And here is where we saw something so shocking we almost dropped the mobile phone from our steering wheel hand (the other hand is for gear changes and the horn). Yes, a policeman actually went up to the van to note its registration number. We were in shock. This could destroy Bristol as we know it. Watch the video.

You see that? Panic over. It turns out that the "Mighty Banana" Van, W878MDC, is actually Chris Chalkey's van, and the police are only doing it for a laugh. In the voiceover you can hear Cllr Jon Rogers -whom we suspect of not being in the Waltham Forest Faction of the LibDem council- explaining this and why it's all a setup. Chris see's what's happening, starts waving his masonic hand-waves at the police and all is well. Masonic Handwaves, incidentally, are the van drivers' version of the Masonic Handshake -make the secret wave to any traffic police and they'll let you past.

False alarm: panic over. There's no problem with parking in the mornings, no problem in the evenings either. We were worried there, but at least everyone has come to their senses and realised that if there's one group of people in the city not to mess with, it's us van drivers. Those videos of people shouting "whose streets? Our streets?" wouldn't stand a chance against a roadblock of us going "whose short-stay parking areas? your bike lanes!"

Cheltenham Road Parking issues

Now that the police have gone, the bikes and bus lanes have returned to their key role in the city: providing parking.

Here we see the outside of Uplands Mobile Multimedia, vendor of sound systems for cars.

Only customers and staff can park on its driveways, hence the large warning of 7x24 wheel clamping, £125 pound unclamping fee. If only we'd voted for the SNP, such things would be illegal, and we'd get free parking at the BRI. As it is, you can get clamped on private land. What to do.

Well, the shop provides a nice answere underneath:

PARKING
NOTICE
Parking in the
BUS LANE
`is permitted'
between
10am-4pm
Monday-Friday
&
All day Saturday
Your co-operation
is appreciated
THANK YOU

Technically that's wrong, as parking permitted all day sunday too, and after about 6:30pm weekdays. And if you are really important, you can park in it whenever you want.

What's interesting here is the "your co-operation is appreciated" phrase. Who do they want to co-operate? It's not the people parking -they don't need to co-operate. No, it must be the bus drivers, the cyclists, and the council, who must be kept an eye on in case they ever want to extend the bus lane hours to the whole day so as to help people on bicycles and public transport.

Bus lanes: not even buses use them

Disappointing scenes here of not even a bus using the bus lane on Whiteladies Road

The video shows this is not a one off event, as taxis drive down our lane, the taxpayers lane, too.

If it wasn't for the Mercedes M88RKW parking there, this lane would be completely wasted.

Bus lanes: there for the taking

A lot of our fellow warrior-motorists complain that bus lanes have taken up away a lot of the road capacity of our cities. Far from it!

They have only taken away road capacity from those drivers too timid to use the bus lanes!

Look how here on a weekday evening on Cheltenham Road, the showcase bus lane provides a fast alternative to a congested private vehicle lane -for anyone bold enough to get in and use it!

If there's only one complaint, the moment the bus lane ends, someone in a 4X4 has half parked up on the pavement, so forcing us to swerve back in to the main traffic route.

This is insensitive parking that fails to take into account the needs of fellow motorists.

Whiteladies Road: a weekday dataset

Our last trip down Whiteladies road shows that on a weekend, yes, pedestrian shoppers did hold up through traffic. This implied that yes, the FirstBus/Showcase bus route plans to reduce pedestrian crossing options may benefit their schedules, but we were worried about the impact on us cars getting out from side roads.

This video is different as it's a visit by our expendable cyclist on a weekday morning, down the bus lane from Oakfield Road, and through the Triangle as far as University Road, where they head off. Commentary first, analysis later.

At 0:24 FH56CVV switches lanes early, but as everyone else in the RH lane who isn't turning right also goes left, they are forced to give way to the vehicles in front of them anyway.

From 0:29 to 0:40, a bike lane that even waltham forest would be proud of. Its worn-out nature hints that it's popular with larger vehicles, while the trees keep it bumpy.

At 04:40 A9VNG is in the ASL, but we suspect that it was in there when the lights change. Why the suspicion? One car in the pedestrian area and one in front in the yellow hatched "only enter when clear to exit" area stopping cross traffic from St Pauls Road and Tyndall's Park Road getting across. Incidentally, Tyndall's Park road (on the left) here is no left turn, St Paul's (on the right, into Clifton) is no right turn, so all congestion coming up from the Triangle is Whiteladies Road traffic. Note also this junction provides no time for pedestrians to cross when the traffic isn't actually allowed to drive -if only all major junctions in the city were like this, congestion would be much improved. The BBC offices are on the left, incidentally.

Following the cyclist who is commuting without helmet, body-armour or hi-viz clothing, we eventually discover what is holding up WL-road traffic, it's the "triangle" gyratory system, which our tax-dodger hits at 1:43. The underlying problem is that Whiteladies Road traffic is forced to give way to traffic coming from the right, which initially means traffic from Clifton. Further on, at 2:17 we get held up by traffic all coming into the city from the A4 or the Hotwells's Bridges and then up Jacob's Wells road.

There are four lanes here, one for parking, one turning right at the next junction, and two straight on, but that leftmost one is lost even to vans ignoring bus-lane signs, not just by the police car at 2:41 but by the taxi-rank at 2:53.

WN59UDP is held up by these taxis forcing them to wait with all the in-town traffic, so as soon as they can they cut left in front of the bicycle, through the pedestrians and up University Road -only to find that the Biffa refuse collection lorry is in the way and ignoring the important traffic being held up. Finally passing that, they can sprint up to Woodland Road, where as you recall the Evening Post was campaigning against two paid parking spaces going away, which we felt was overreacting as nobody parks their except arts students, and their tuition fee increases will eliminate that luxury.

However, today we can see that the paid parking area is also popular for parental dropoff outside Bristol Grammar School -and it actually makes for a nice, low-chaos dropoff area. Admittedly, there isn't enough of this short-stay parking right in front of the school, forcing some parents to stop in the double yellow lined areas, but the alternative would be parking on the other side of this (one-way) street, forcing the children to cross the road. Would you want your children to cross a busy road like this? Exactly. Parking on the double yellow lines outside the school entrance is the only safe place to drop your kids off and be sure they get to school alive.

Now, returning to the Whiteladies Road issue, what does the bus plan proposal change on this stretch? The Oakfield Road crossing will be moved further away from the road, so making it less useful to pedestrians trying to walk from Cotham to Clifton or bag. Plus one point. But, this makes it harder for cars to get out or over from these roads, so minus one point.

Heading in to town, the right hand turn to Clifton will be removed for all but buses. This will turn Oakfield road into the primary rat-run option, but as we've seen, the moving of the zebra crossing makes it trickier. What they aren't doing is extending the bus lane any further south, and they are leaving that toy bike lane in there. We say toy as its so half hearted that no rational cyclist will think they are welcome -what with the faded paint and tree roots, but its very presence implies that some people in the city do welcome cyclists. No, better to remove it and put a cyclists dismount sign up.

Entering the triangle is more informative. Congestion is caused here by traffic joining the road from other places (Clifton, Jacob's Wells Road), and whatever is slowing them down on their final journey. There are no pedestrian-only lights or zebra crossings to play with, so there's little that can be done to make pedestrians feel less welcome, no tricks to make the schedule more accurate.

And that's the key problem. The goals of the showcase route are faster bus journey times and a more predictable schedule. Removing and moving zebra crossings will only help with this out of hours, on weekends and midday, because on a weekday morning the problem is more fundamental: Erlang's Laws. Congestion is a result of the ingress rate of a queue being higher than the egress rate. The reason vehicles can't leave whiteladies road isn't that there are vast numbers of people struggling to turn up Cotham Hill (more on that another day), or any of the side roads, it is because the merging of multiple queues at the triangle creates a bottleneck which having one lane dedicated to bus stops and a taxi rank doesn't do much to help.

And do we care about mid-day firstbus schedules? No -and neither should anyone else. People using the bus at weekend and mid-day weekdays are either people who can't afford a car, people with bus passes, or people who have made some ideological decision to take a bus: passengers FirstBus can take for granted. If they want to make money, they need to get the commuter traffic, and quite frankly, changes to pedestrian crossings aren't going to do it. They may help us car commuters by reducing the number of pedestrians and cyclists, but given our dataset implies that the Whiteladies Road congestion is due to problems in the city centre, those crossing changes aren't going to help buses or our cars on whiteladies road at peak hours, which is when it matters to us as well as FirstBus.

Sorry FirstBus, but whatever datasets you have on congestion problems on Whiteladies Road, they were clearly collected by FirstBus or Council staff during their working hours, rather than during am or pm rush hours. This is the only explanation why your proposals don't just do nothing for us drivers while making pedestrians and cyclists suffer, they don't appear to help buses either.

That's the irony there. This proposal has already got the cycling campaign saying "oppose this it's anti-pedestrian and anti-cyclist", it's also anti-car, but we think it manages to be bus-neutral at the same time. That takes skill, that does.

The proposed Whiteladies Road Showcase Route

There's been lots of coverage of Whiteladies Road on this site recently. Why? Bristol Traffic is not a news outlet: it is a documentary, and we were collecting defensible "before" data. The "before" being "Before the Whiteladies Road Greater Bristol Bus Network proposals go through". There is a consultation in progress, they even have a shop for it, here, the one marked "To let" with the shutters up.

What is proposed?

1. Bus lanes on the inbound direction in the mornings, (the far side in the photo below), and on the outbound direction of an evening.
2. Restricted parking.
3. Changes to the pelican and zebra crossings at Whiteladies Gate
4. Removal of the Right turn from Whiteladies Road to St Pauls Road -except for buses.
5. Lots of other changes up by the downs.

Currently the parking areas provide excellent commuter parking, but they force shoppers to park on double yellow-lined traffic island areas, as that is the only area left for important people to park like the sports car T4LLO.

The traffic islands make it safer to cross the road once you've just parked your car V259MOV alongside one of them.

All will change. More details to follow.

We are not yet ready to denounce this as another war-on-motorist development, as our research hints to us that pedestrians will suffer the most and cyclists will find what is given with the bus lane is taken with changes to crossings. For some reason the council hasn't come out and spelt all this out, though as it is something that would get us motorists behind the plan, they are missing an opportunity there.

Incidentally, these pictures were taken out of peak hours, hence the lack of vehicles. One point we would like to emphasise is that if you are going to make decisions on how to improve bus schedules and rush hour traffic, then you should collect data at that time of day, go to the site between 08:00-09:00 or 17:00-18:00, otherwise you will be lulled into a naive state of optimism where you think that shoppers and motorists all happily dance around the city waving flowers and being nice to each other.

This is why we are delighted to see that the cycle campaigners are being invited to visit the site between 11:00 and 16:00 on a weekday, when, apart from the school/student traffic after 15:30, there is limited conflict. It gives us hope that the war on motorists really is over, and the council is on our side by giving the cycle campaigners an unrealistic world view.

-----Original Message-----
From: Francis Mann
Sent: 19 October 2010 15:28
Subject: Greater Bristol Bus Network: Whiteladies Rd (Have your say in the cycle infrastructure review)

Dear All,

Bristol City Council would like to invite you to take part in the 'cycle infrastructure review' of the above proposals. As you may be aware Bristol City Council's Public Transport team have recently started the informal consultation process for the proposed Greater Bristol Bus Network on Whiteladies Road.

The Cycling City team have recently appointed an independent consultant to  facilitate the cycle infrastructure review of the route and we're pleased to welcome Camden Consultancy on board for the process. Camden Consultancy started off the first cycle infrastructure reviews in the country and have since then conducted hundreds of these reviews for cycle stakeholders and local authorities both in London and elsewhere.

This is a great opportunity to have you say and obtain improvements for  cyclists along the corridor, as well as having unrestricted access to the project team for these proposals. We are proposing a site meeting with stakeholders at the start of November likely dates are Thursday 4th or 11th November to coincide with the informal public consultation process. Our preference is for 11th as all officers can currently make this date, we would look to have the inception meeting from 11am onwards, followed by a site visit after lunch, before finishing at 4pm when it starts to get dark.

Please could we have expressions of interest and availability by next Tuesday 26th November. As the GBBN project team unfortunately missed the last Bike Forum, everyone who attends the forum is welcome to come along and view detailed plans of the proposals before the inception meeting and site visit, we will let you know the final date for this as soon as we have confirmed it.

Any queries please let us know.

Kind regards

Helmetless

It's 16:15 on a weekday and there are bicycles here on Gloucester Road. Look you can see one waiting to walk over the pedestrian crossing, and another going to the bike lane. Two pedestrians are stopping to talk just past the car parked over the dropped kerb. Nobody, walking or cycling, is wearing a helmet.

Further in towards town, again, two more cyclists, helmetless. They may be entering a bus/bike lane which is valid from 16:00 onwards, but that is no excuse. All the cars heading in to town are forced to use that bus lane to get past the turning Porsche blocking their lane.

Even further in, you can see a number of vehicles parked here, fifteen minutes into the operating hours of this, a showcase bus lane.

These cyclists using it do not have helmets and do not have insurance. If any of them were to hit a car parked in the bus lane, who would pay for the damage?

Police Harass taxis in Broadmead

Following our posting on taxis in Union Street/Nelson Street, in which we showed that the sign allowing bicycles and taxis only was outdated, we have some sad news from the local police.

Someone took our photographs, and notified the bit of the council that licenses taxis, who then acted on the complaints. According to a letter which was forwarded to us:

Police and PCSO's monitored the road yesterday afternoon and fixed penalty notices were issued to City Council licensed drivers and to other motorists.

Further operations of this nature are envisaged, as these vehicles are in violation of the Driving Order.

The web site goes into more detail, saying that people got ticketed simply for driving down a road somewhere where they shouldn't.

This is mindless anticar persecution. Yes, if you look at the video one or two taxis appear to ignore the restriction on taxis, but as they are allowed on most other bus lanes, why not this one?

Bristol's Biggest Bike ride

People are probably expecting us to criticise the council for blocking off the A4 portway on a Sunday on their "Bristol's Biggest Bike Ride" event to let families cycle down it. No need for us to do that, the Evening Post article comments where people point out that "the spattering (I'm not sure that's a very PC description) of cyclists on all the commuter routes, is like having to continually watch out for potholes or missing manhole covers", and the letters page have done that already, while we all praise the fact that the taxi driver who killed a cycling commuter on the A370 -a death now officially described accidental- could have been any of us pulling onto the A370 after negotiating the Barrow Gurney traffic calming mess.

We aren't going to join in because we don't actually mind the cyclists being given one day out of 365 where the whole family can get their helmets and ikea-branded hi-viz stuff out. One day. Some of us even took part.

We aren't even going to complain about the kids cycling on the pavement in the centre, as they are technically allowed to do this. Traffic was held up by marching bands anyway.

No, our main issue is parking. If the council is going to organise a ride for the family, somewhere where everyone can safely cycle round for a Sunday ride, why start and finish it from somewhere where there is no adequate parking? It's not as if the families are going to cycle there -are you mad? No, we have to drive, it's the only safe thing to do, then why is the only place to park your Mercedes the bus lane outside Explore-at-Bristol?

Come on Bristol council, if you are going to organise a bike ride, at least give us some decent parking at it!

Datamining the taxis on Union Street

There's an NYT article on analysing GPS data feeds from taxis to build up a model of traffic flow and congestion.It's interesting but flawed. It only measures the routing options taxis take, which can be constrained by anti-taxi signage, such as as the "buses and bicycles only" bit of Nelson Street, leading to Union Street.

The continued presence of traffic lights here not only holds up buses and bicycles, it holds up taxis too.

Such as Taxi 107, SD06HSC photographed on Saturday March 18 2010 at 14:57.

Or taxi #686,  WV57FRU, seen on Saturday March 18 2010 at 14:57.

Or indeed,  taxi # 711, R329YON , seen on Saturday March 18 2010 at 14:57.

Because the taxis also need to make use of this road, the traffic lights should be adjusted to increase the scheduling time on this lane rather than just assuming one bus every minute. With this taxi flow rate, three vehicles every minute, the entire fleet of Bristol's taxicabs (at least 711, we would guess), would pass through this junction every four hours. The traffic lights do nothing but hold up taxis driving down the buses-only lane.

There: congestion analysis, no need for city wide GPS-instrumented taxis. Which is good for the taxi drivers, as it may log them doing things they aren't meant to.

Stokes Croft Tesco: finally a use for the bus lane

This web site is in favour of the new Tescos, our biggest complaint is that without an easy way to drive from Kingsdown to Arley or Ninetree Hills, many of the customers will be forced to walk.

Why do we support it? Because otherwise the bike lanes of Cheltenham Road, and the showcase bus lane is wasted. Further down, in Stokes Croft, the bike lane is used as a staff and customer parking area, and everyone is happy. Once something better than a bike shop opens further up the A38, the same uses will apply.

Even before the event, it happens. Here we see the bailiffs coming to evict the protesters with their van CP59PFV, accompanied by the police. And you can already see -finally the outbound lane is benefiting the city.

On the inbound side there is one car, but someone else has been forced onto the pavement by the troublemakers. Once Tesco put in their HGV loading process, that pavement space will go, but with the HGV discouraging bicycles, you will be able to park along here without fear of damage to your wingmirrors.

All across the city, the sole use of these red lanes is for short stay delivery, be it by target express delivery WP03OWV

Or citylink van VA57YNT

This is the city we want, and those squatters are standing in the way! That and the no-entry signs on Nugent and Marlborough Hills. And the blocked off bits at the end of Ninetree Hill and Springfield Lane.

At last, a reason to park on Cheltenham Road!

Tesco are offering to improve this part of the city, by giving passing traffic a reason to pull over and shop. This particular stretch of Cheltenham Road lacks such amenites at present, so it is underused.

Some people are resisting this, with a web site and a local government petition, which already has over 650 signatures. Yet look at this road. Wasted.

The road is actually two lanes wide here, and so it would be possible for HGVs to pull over and unload food supplies throughout the day. We know this as on this weekday there is a lorry doing just that further up the road. Nobody is inconvenienced.

The bike lane and bus lane would provide short stay parking for visitors. We know this, as on this weekday there is a van S89LHY doing just that. Nobody is inconvenienced.

As with the rest of Stokes Croft, the double-yellow lined bike and bus lanes will provide short stay parking for revenue-earning customers, instead of enabling through traffic on bicycles, who will not bring any money to Tesco at all.

We note that as this path is downstream of the newly enhanced Zetland Road junction, the changes made there to prevent bicycles riding inbound from Bishopston will reduce conflict in this stretch of the road, so ensure that a new mini-supermarket will not lead to an increase in accident statistics.