Metrobus Enhanced Centre: west to east

Apparently the Metrobus project will bring wonderful cycling facilities to the city.

We await this with curiosity.

We do know that

• right now there is nothing
• there is nothing on the travelwest web site about how to get across alive on a bicycle
• the travelwest web site can't even get their "out of baldwin street for cars" map right.

Overall not a good sign.

Historically, the crossing which is blocked was a walk/cycle crossing where you could cycle randomly around until you made it over. This never actually glued up very well with baldwin street, on account of the railings and the oncoming traffic; you'd have to head over to the bit of the centre which was bus lane only, cycle over the ped crossings there, or go down the bus & bike bit of road the bus drivers felt were theirs. Or you stay on the ped/cycle inner bit, zig zag through people and children, creating the impression that cyclists were tax dodging criminals who cycled where they shouldn't. Yes, the evening post did an article on that topic a very long time ago.


So, we sent our expendable tax dodger to go west-east across the centre to see how things are today


Pretty awful at the start, mediocre in the middle, and just as bad as before at the end.

Awful at the start: well, what do you do? No signs, just a closed off crossing. Our tax dodger eventually went for the coned off lane in the middle and made their way to the new bit of the centre.


Mediocre at the middle. The one thing the Baldwin Street path gets right is: clearly delineated as a bike path. Tax dodgers stay on it, people don't walk down the middle (Except on friday nights, obviously), and people on the pavement don't have to worry about cyclists weaving through them because there's a f-obvious bike lane to use instead.

The new design has some faint tiles on the ground which may mean its a bike lane. Hard to tell. They don't currently join up with anything.

There's some new lights, possibly split into bike & ped, but with no cues, everyone just spread out. Watch out for the person nearly being hit by the turning bus: bit of a design flaw there, even if that's where the cyclists are meant to be.

Finally, at the end, just as bad as before. It does look like there might be some link off to the left, but again, it's been made out of artisanal tiles rather than useful roadbuilding materials, so who knows. You can avoid worrying about this by getting onto the bus zone, coming off it to get towards the Arnolfini.


Once you've actually crossed the centre, you can get down to the prince st bridge (walking), then on to bedminster. Why? Motaman is having a closing down sale! Bedminster's main shopping destination is being shut down as the building is being turned into flats! Gentrification is coming to Bemmy and it's not good.

FirstBus: don't make it a class thing: the M32 commuters would never forgive you

A PR group funded by FirstBus and other bus companies have just published a "Dodgy Dossier" on why their buses suck.

The Bristol "dead" post went for it, but chose to blame 20 MPH and RPZ zones, that is "max speed between queues" and "limit on number of vehicles that can park for free in the inner city".


In doing so they made a couple of mistakes

One: In their claim "bristol is the slowest" they forgot to say "except Reading, which the graph clearly shows is slower"


This is one of those things that the less mathematically inclined (i.e. the Brexit leadership) get wrong all the time. Smaller numbers mean "less", bigger numbers mean "more". According to the shiny graphs this PR agency made up, it takes longer to get round Reading. What's worse: you're in Reading.

Two: They missed the key scapegoats of the bus companies: the cyclists.




This issue has been picked up, along with the brazen attempt by a media relations group to appear vaguely independent.


As for the congestion, well, looking at this video from RedVee of the Centre, you can't blame the cycling infrastructure —none— for the multiple lanes of stationary traffic
.

What's causing this? The combination of (a) too many people trying to drive and (b) The Centre being ripped up for Metrobus. Does the bus marketing document note that? complain that "bus passengers are being held up by the millions being spent in the city for bus passengers?". No: they pick on the noisy ones who make lots of noise but don't get dedicated lanes down the M32.

And how do they do that: by calling out the cylists in London of being "wealthy" white men

What is less well-known, is how relatively affluent cyclists in London are compared with bus passengers. Transport for London describes the London cyclist as typically white, under 40, male with medium to high household income. [Further] A report by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine’s Transport & Health Group (LSHTM) in 2011 describes cycling in London as disproportionately an activity of white, affluent men. Only 1.5% of those living in households earning under £15,000 cycled compared with 2.2% of those living in households earning over £35,000’.

This is something the cyclist campaigners have torn into for being bogus —but we aren't here to argue that. What we are concerned about is that they are using "benefits wealthy white men" as an argument against a transport option.

For if we were to make a list of transport-related work going on in the city which would appear to disproportionally benefit the wealthy it comes down to: anything which makes it easier to get between the more well off parts of the region and their places of working, shopping and leisure.

Specifically

1. Metrobus to Bristol International Airport connections
2. Metrobus as a P&R alternative for most residents of North Somerset and S Gloucs.
3. The Managed Motorway work on the M4/M5
4. Bristol mainline train electrification

And. let's be honest: the entire M32. The people living down alongside the Frome River weren't wishing they had a flyover at bedroom window height: they believed the same bollocks that politicians always say "yes you will suffer, but it will be better in the long term", and so a motorway went in to aid the people from Clifton to head to London; to help the people who moved out of the city to live in the rural wastelands past the ring road and their ghettos of boredom around Emerson's Green. And the inner ring road work started, thankfully never completed: But notice which parts of the city came out worse. Not the bits with money.

We say to FirstBus —who also own FGW railway line—: don't make your war on cyclists a class one. Because that will call into question a lot of the infrastructure you are having built for you by local and national governments.

Gratuitous Abuse of a Bus Driver

One of our regular commentors -and the sole "outed" barge owner in our audience- YZ09AFD- is heard in this video abusing a bus driver down at the centre.

The harsh truth is that bit of the Centre is designed for buses. Not bicycles, or that one-way-at-a-time light at the end would have a bicycle bypass, or at least respond to waiting bicycles, bicycles whose owners then recklessly cycle through red lights.

It's not designed for pedestrians either, otherwise the ped crossing at the other end would actually do something useful.

It is for buses only, it radiates that fact, and the way they treat "DaveW" or anyone else selfish enough to cycle down it is entirely justified. We just wish there were more minicab firms in the city to keep these underpeople in their place.

Free parking in the Bristol City Centre

Reader "OJ" writes in:

Dear Bristol Traffic,


Thank goodness the menace of pavement cycling is finally getting the attention from the nationwide media it deserves.

These vehicles (LM11VNX and LS10KTN) have selflessly parked up in the best place to give live satellite feeds of people illegally cycling past.

Thank goodness for our broadcast media.

Stealing our Roadspace

While the cyclists are still loojking for examples of where the cycle city program stole roadspace from us, we and Cllr Gollop know the truth: even bike parking in the middle of the Centre is stealing space from us.

And that's without even getting us started on the whole roundabout/centre debate, let alone the need to re-instate the dual carriageway through Queen's Square. They took our ring road and gave us greenery. And is that bit up for sale so we can buy it and bring back the road, a group of motivated volunteer Road Builders? Fat chance.

[photo by Martin of Bristol Culture]

Trouble in the Centre

Proof, if needed, that pavement parking can be risky.

Luckily, the emergency services were on hand to rescue the police.

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!

Effective Propaganda

Contributor "O" says

I've been concerned about the way that the council have been using my taxes to produce cycling propaganda, with flags and banners up around the Harbourside. I am glad that the driver of WX54VZC has taken it into their hands to provide a counter-demonstration.

While cyclists are lobbying and agitating for more secure cycle parking, it is clear that you can just leave a 4x4 anywhere, without worrying about whether it will be there when you come back.

Broad Quay Signalling

A contribution from "dempster", along with some commentary. This is Broad Quay, where the council stole car, truck and even taxi access a few years back. Now it is for buses and cyclists. Our contributor raises a question about pedestrians.

"These lights have intrigued me for a while, as I have stood waiting at them on my bike, and watched as the green man turns red and then back to green again, without the lights for vehicles changing at all. I assumed this was a piece of radical anti-cycling infrastructure, lights that only turn green for motor vehicles. But the other day I waited there at the same time as an ambulance, and we both ended up skipping the lights as they never changed.


And then shortly after I took this photo, the bus in it skipped the lights. I don't think it waited long enough to work out that the lights would never turn green, presumably the driver knows this already. Although I'm sure I have seen it turn green for buses before.


So my two remaining questions are: What is it that triggers the lights to go green for vehicles? and What's the point of having a phase of the lights where it is red for both pedestrians and vehicles? Why not just leave the pedestrian lights on the green man? I suppose the answer to the second question is that we don't want pedestrians to feel like they can just cross roads willy-nilly. They need to learn to wait."

We think the reason is more subtle. Because the bus drivers know to ignore the signs, their sole purpose is to lure pedestrians out in front of buses. This reduces the number of pedestrians (good) and ensures that the bus schedules are always wrong (good). It also reinforces a fear of walking which helps the rest of the city's drivers.

A dream of the past

There's a lot of fuss going about Council plans to do things to "The centre", namely stop vehicles other than buses, taxis or bicycles getting to and from Baldwin Street.

Obviously, some people are against this, such as Robert Bull, presumably the Bob Bull of the Bristol and Somerset branch of the Association of British Drivers. Bob proposes an attractive roundabout with an attractive pedestrian crossing:

Cars need access east/west also from the south ie Baldwin street, perhaps a large traffic light controlled roundabout with attractive central area for pedestrians, wait a minute thats how it used to be

Revert to a roundabout with some attractive high level walkways for pedestrians, job done.

This is missing the point. There are no roundabouts so attractive that families pop down there for a quick picnic, nobody says "It's a sunny saturday, lets' go down to the Bearpit or the Lawrence Hill roundabout and have some sandwiches there while the kids play with a ball". There are no high-level walkways in the city that pedestrians find attractive. Nobody thinks "I will take my dog for a walk over the M32 pedestrian walkways as its more attractive than the bits of the downs that aren't used as zoo parking".

These commentators don't realise this as they do find the M32 and roundabouts attractive. These are the people who take their family on holiday up the M6, not to enjoy the lake district, but to enjoy the view from the Lancaster service station, the one with the restaurant overlooking the motorway. They do this in their beige Austin Allegro, while wearing drivers gloves and a special driving cap.

You see, those of us who have to get round the city know that bus lanes are hint, like no parking and no-entry signs. Important people can ignore them. We do! Because of that, while making more of the centre bus, taxi and bicycle only irritates us, it is only mildly inconvenient.

By pining for the old days of the roundabout, these people are fighting not just a losing battle, but an irrelevant one. And in doing so, they forget what the council really stole from us: the dual carriageway through Queen's Square to Redcliffe.

Who remembers the old days, when this was a busy, useful, dual carriageway joining up Templemeads and its flyover with the Centre? Always in use, always popular. And then one day it went away. For some years the road remained, in the park, but now even that is covered over.

We believe that the dual carriageway is still hidden under this grass, and that removing it and the parkland would return a valuable missing link to the inner city.

We don't care about bus-only signs, but the loss of a dual carriageway through heart of our city has left it crippled. Empty. Dead. Bring back what they stole from us!

Can buses park in bus lanes?

If you are one of those losers who actually buys a parking ticket for the city centre, you will see a warning on the back saying "people who park in bus lanes will get ticketed now", as the buses have CCTV and can photo cars for ticketing later. Whoever came up with the idea of these adverts must have thought "We want to communicate the news with people who park in the bus lanes, what better way than on council paper they get when they buy parking tickets?" Sadly, whoever thought that missed the point: one of the benefits of parking in bus lanes are that you don't have to buy parking tickets. It's cheaper, as well as more convenient.

Presumably they will have to come up with some alternate plan, such as issuing tickets. For now, warnings.

Question is, will it work? The first step would be for the council to collect a month's worth of parked car data (registration, timestamp, location), then try a month of adverts and no enforcement to look for changes, then try actual enforcement. We aren't going to help with the data collection, -not rigorously-, but having a suitably anonymised dataset would be interesting to play with, and we may help with the analysis.

For now though, a legal question. Here in Lewins Mead on a Saturday morning, the bus lane is blocked by a parked vehicle. Passing buses -you can see two here- are forced into the main traffic lane, and the bus picking up passengers behind the parked vehicle will be forced to wait for them to get past before it can pull out. This selflishly parked vehicle is impacting on bus timetables, as well as the flow rate of all motor traffic in the city: not only can the buses not use their lane, they take up space in the open lanes.

We have a question then. Is it legal for FirstBus to park buses in bus lanes? Because by doing so they are not only impacting their own schedule, they are impacting all other road user's schedules too?

bike/car conflict in the centre's bus lanes

Look at this video from one of contributors "AF". It got a mention on Crap Waltham Forest, but they don't know the background and were criticising it.

1. MM52SKJ is forced to use this bus lane, and has to swerve round a bicycle in the way, an action which that traffic island doesn't help.
   
2. The big problems here are the narrow-to-one bit of the bus lane, where two lanes of bus traffic comes in. The bike cuts up the car as it goes through here, stopping them from getting past until through the lights.
3. We don't see the cyclist looking round, if they had seen or heard the car they should have let it past.
   
4. The cyclists shouldn't whine about it as the thing that threatens them is not a car like this, it is the buses on the route. Indeed, the cyclist, AF, who took this photo ended up clipped by a bus on Jan 17 and is now apparently trying to get the local police stations to not turn him away and follow up the incident.
   

The real question is why bikes are here where they get in the way of buses, taxis, and cars? In a Q&A article in the local newspaper, the infamous James Carmichael, Highridge asked this very question:

Q. How does First intend to deal with the fact that it is currently obliged to share bus lanes with cyclists, leading to delays in bus services?

A. The definition of a bus lane is not ours, it is the city council, they put out traffic orders which say it can be used by taxis or cyclists.
We don't necessarily see cyclists as a problem.
The biggest problem is motorists or delivery vans parking in them.

Well, FirstBus are missing a point: shoppers and vans need to park, whereas cyclists could use different routes. Banning bicycles from this bit of the centre would reduce the danger to bikes and pedestrians, and improve bus schedules -while letting cars through.

This is important, and it something we will return to soon. The council has a proposal to make the centre even more bus and less car. We aren't actually against this, provided the council can keep the bikes out of the bus lanes, where they are needlessly endangering themselves.

A time of celebration

The nice thing about Xmas is that with less people about, you can celebrate empty streets and a chance to park in ASLs unimpeded.

Here in the city centre, tainted by the council's plans to put in a Bus Rapid Transit halt. Soon, the anti-car city will stop us being able to drive into these ASLs on red lights, by banning cars entirely.  Y874KHT have a right to be happy, a right to be proud: they are standing up to this oppression!

Nearby, at Stokes Croft, you can get your whole landrover into the ASL unimpeded. Some people may whine at this, but note how N805YND is stopped for the red light.

A bigger issue with both these vehicles is that they are eligible for replacement under the cash-for-old-cars scheme, yet they are still on the road? Do these people have no concern about the economic plight of car-importers?

The war on cars continues!

We'd seen signs of this last week, and now more proof comes in -this time from contributor "IW" that the council is continuing the same anti-car madness of its predecessors. Yes, In the centre of the city, the traffic island that provided the best free parking in the centre, with its car park area all safely marked out, is now blocked off.

Hopefully it is just temporary, a left over from some harbour event or something, or put in while BT need access to their manhole. If it does not, then we will have to write a stern letter to the Evening Post, complaining about this anti-car madness.

Hourbike hits BRS

In The Centre, there is now a stand for bicycles. At first glance, some more secure bike parking, but on a closer look, its less secure bike parking, but a way to rent a bike by the hour

There are instructions, apparently there are places in UWE and Bristol Parkway that join up too. That could make the short but not very exciting walk from Parkway to UWE easier.

In the town centre, there's not much you can do with it, not unless Templemeads and the bus station come into the story. Here in the centre, 3/4 of the roads have you endangered by car, bus, van and taxi, one bit is bus-only, but in that stretch the buses really don't think bikes should be there, and will pull out without looking.

The bikes are practical, some gearing, some luggage handling. QR saddles to adapt for customer height, though without the anti-theft cable to ensure the saddle will stay there overnight. Perhaps the width and styling of the saddle will discourage such thefts, for which the nearby watershed bike park area is infamous for.

Mr H is being somewhat critical of the process, but where it could be useful is if once you are registered, you are also entrusted with access to rental bikes in other places -London, Cardiff, Oxford, etc. That would mean when you visit one of these places, you can use a bike for the day.

No helmets, no high viz clothing, no discount aldi or lidl waterproof trousers. Users will be expected to bring those themselves. Or worse -go without!

Free Parking in the CPZ No. 2

Well, that didn't work.

I was hoping to be flooded with suggestions of where to park my Hummer for free in Bristol City centre. Not one comment. Rubbish. I'm beginning to suspect only cyclists and pedestrians read this blog.

Notwithstanding (a very English word - but strangely German), I have to say I'm immensely impressed with the efforts of the driver of Fiat WN08VDF to park for free most days in the centre.

Could it be the same 'Cloak of Invisibility' that seems to affect me at Start The Bus when I'm trying to get a beer? Dunno, but there are definitely places to leave your bit of metal without them being visible to the Enforcers (as the Park Street Traders know...).

Anyway, why not join in? You just need to brave the signage. (image to follow)

Free Parking in the CPZ

We all know about Bristol's prime free parking space - you just need to get there early to secure it.

But there are others - here's one of three or four at the old courts. Again, you need to get there early to nab it.

There are many others - we know some of them, but maybe you know of others.

Please feel free to comment. After all, with the help of this blog, we may be able to save the motorists of Bristol large amounts of money in these recession-hit times.

Bristol: not car friendly

The BBC has an article saying Bristol is one of the UK's least car-friendly city, with Edinburgh and London being worse.

London is obviously car unfriendly, as there is the C-zone and money and space wasted on Transport for London's offerings. Edinburgh has a vast resident parking zone and no motorways into the centre. Compare it with Glasgow, where most open space has been turned into motorway,and wherever you live you hear that soothing background hum of speeding cars. In Bristol, you have to live near the M32 or the portway to get that reassuring sound.

There article also picked up on how excessive car parking is in the centre. Yes, it is outrageous. People should boycott these garages, see how long they will charge excessive fees if everyone refuses to park there!

Of course, you do need somewhere else to park, which brings us back to the Prince Street Traffic island.


This place -a traffic island which has a designated, free, parking space is the symbol of a city's lost freedom. It's the one place in the centre where you are utterly free to park on the pavement, in the way of whiny pedestrians, stopping those criminal cyclists. One square of car friendliness in the middle of an anti-car city.

Which is where the bad news is. Today, while looking for somewhere to park our new 4X4 (bought on the scrappage scheme, lovely), we came across some officials standing over a car that had got here before us, holding open a printed map.

Apparently, this parking space should never have gone up here -it was put in by some consultant, and people are complaining. Not those whinging cyclists, always unhappy. No, it's BT, complaining that the parking space blocks access to their manhole cover, and hence telecoms operations in the the city. This is wrong. If they need to get there, they should just turn up early and occupy the space.

If the council do take this parking space away, it will symbolise the end of all chances of car-friendliness returning to the city. Still, unless they block it off with bollards, we will be able to retain our historic right to park there. Furthermore, the idea of unofficially painting up new parking spaces on roundabouts, traffic islands and pavement extensions is appealing. We can think of many places in the city where cars park entirely on the pavement often enough that they deserve legitimate parking bays to be painted there. And if the council won't recognise this, we will have to paint them ourselves!

Cumberland Road Detours

Cumberland road is closed -emergency repairs to keep it out the river. Good thing this happens before BRT routes go in on top of it.

We are fortunate here to have an ever-growing set of correspondents, and are grateful for some pics from "Q" of the consequences.

I've been vastly amused (I work down there) at the number of vehicles that have ignored the road closed signs, driven half way along it, and then had to turn around because it really was closed. Not a problem on a bicycle, though.

The cars are being diverted over Princes Street Bridge and then into the centre, which leads to a followon problem. How to get to the centre. Clearly the scale of the emergency is such that cars are being forced to use the buses only route, such as this car W932GSO appears to be doing

As our correspondent says

One knock-on effect, however, was that the traffic queue at the Marsh Street/Baldwin Street lights was slightly longer than usual, resulting in some interesting attempts by motorists to pretend to be cyclists instead and mix it with the busses on the centre. This chap was really given a hard time by First's Finest who really made him wait!.

Clearly these emergency roadworks on Cumberland Road, scheduled during a weekday, are a sign of how anti car Bristol is.

The traffic "island"

Passing by the Prince Street/Marsh Street roundabout, we can see that yes, that strange square in a traffic island really is there for cars.

There is enough room for pedestrians though, so maybe its worth leaving as is, though it does screw up lines of sight for turning vehicles somewhat.

Look, there is barely enough visibility to see someone cycling through a red light. Which must raise an interesting moral dilemma for all eight readers of the Evening post. Is it better for someone to cycle through a red light on the road, or to cycle along the pavement on the Centre?