Prewar Bristol

A lot of newcomers ask us: "what was it like before the war began?", or "How was the city centre before it was ruined by the war?"

Well, the War on Motorists began over 25 years ago —and the city is still suffering under it. Before the war, you could drive from temple way over the rickety flyover, straight to the centre, then past the cathedral and out to the A4, with only a couple of traffic lights in your way. Not now.

Some of the history of pre-war Bristol is still there, if you know where to look. Redcliffe Way for example —have you noticed how wide it is? Or why the road from the Jacob's Wells Road roundabout to (what's left of) the Bristol library is wide, yet deserted. All distant memories of a city before the war.

Here, in our historical artifacts, we've found an A-Z map of Bristol from 1985, when the motorists were not yet under attack by a car-hating council.


Look at the subtle differences

1.  Castle Park is as it once was: parking. A large amount of its surface area was dedicated to medium to long stay parking for "Broadmead Shopping Precinct" —one of Britain's premier shopping areas. Now: stolen by greenery. And of course, there's a bike path. And look what happened to Broadmead —its decline is not a coincidence.
2. There's a road, "College Green", where now there is a park: "College Green". Newcomers just don't appreciate how wonderful it was to have a main road going past the cathedral entrance, between it and the council house —showing the council what mattered to Bristol: fast-moving cars. When Anchor Road was reworked in the early 1990s, it was designated the through road, and College Green taken from us; Dean Road becoming a cul-de-sac.  And of course, the park added a bike path. This was one of the first losses in the war —and possibly the greatest strategically. No longer did the council get to see a main road out their windows. And without that, they lost their way: they forgot what mattered.
3. Redcliffe Way goes all the way through to The Centre, via what is now known as "Queen's Square". That got captured by the tree-huggers at the turn of the century —who went out to plant trees to commemorate their victory. And of course, a bike path.
4. The infamous rickety flyover has gone. Nobody who has arrived in the last 15 years will ever appreciate the thrill of driving over that single lane flyover, wondering if today would be the day that it fell down. Stolen, replaced by a lights-controlled gyratory. And of course, a bike path.
5. Templemeads had a motorail terminal. Actually, this was news to us. Apparently you could drive onto a sleeper train and get to Scotland overnight. Of course, being able to drive up the M5, get stuck at Spaghetti Junction, crawl over Wolverhampton on the M6 and then eventually get to the A74 replaced that. And even now, with the M74 and new motorways round Glasgow, the speed enforcement on those motorways have made the journey worse.
6. The railway path doesn't exist. While they didn't steal our roads for that —they could have converted that old railway line into a new road, or at least extra parking. Instead: a route designed to encourage more law-breaking cyclists to come into the city.
7. The M32 ends at the "Allied Carpet and sex shops" junction, rather than the more convoluted "queue for Cabot Circus Parking" junction. Again, the addition of vast amounts of parking has made congestion worse on the M32. And, with more lights, pedestrian and cycle crossings.
8. Nine Tree hill is open to through traffic. This was the great partition of Kingsdown. Before then you could drive down Springfield road, cut through Ninetree Hill and make your way to Jamaica street —allowing you to get all the way from The Downs to the city centre without a traffic light. Not now —and by forcing everyone to drive down Whiteladies Road, St Michael's Hill or Arley Hill+ Cheltenham road, it only makes congestion worse. And again: there's a bike path on the roads they stole.
9. Prince Street Bridge. Two way, Closed to cars —possibly indefinitely.
10. Lots of the other little "P" areas have been taken away by offices and housing. And what have we got in exchange? Nothing but the multi-storey parking of The Galleries, the multi-storey parking of Cabot Circus, the underground parking at @Bristol and the vast amount of parking behind Temple meads. That's it.

You can see, then, the multipronged battles which we've been fighting —and losing— in the war on motorists. Those bits of red paint on the main roads aren't the real war, they are just the victory signs, the equivalent of unionist and nationalist kerb painting. No, the battles fought have been far more strategic

• The closure of the inner ring road, the replacement of College Green and Queen's Square's main roads with parkland and bike paths. And in doing so —increasing congestion on the remaining roads.
• The closure of important rat-runs, closures which partition whole parts of the city. And in doing so —increasing congestion on the remaining roads.
• The replacement of surface parking with multi-storey parking facilities. And in doing so: encouraging congestion.

This is what we are up against. And while it's easy to point to the current mayor and say "20 mph zones! RPZ zones!" and accuse him of conducting a war on motorists, those aren't the real war. Those are details in a conflict going back decades.

Secret College Green Parking

You've got to hand it to our city's authorities when promoting the city's tourist jewels! With visitors piling into the city recently for the marathon, it was important to showcase some of the city's treasures. Rather than waste time by having runners' families meandering on foot around College Green, the delightful Norman gate house and College Square behind, we managed to close College Square, turn it into a car park and have our visitors like CK03VPN actually DRIVE THROUGH the 12th. century monument in their cars. How imaginative is that??

And just in case you think these intrepid drivers might have been breaking the law - No! Thanks to the Fluorescent Jacket (Hazard Flasher Amendment) Act: 2005, all we need to do is station someone in a green jacket and lo! it's legal.

One nice detail for those of you not enamoured with the Lycra louts - the authorities built some temporary tarmac dropped kerbs for cars like CE05VAV to mount the pavement. These, you will be pleased to hear, were removed again immediately after the weekend so as to deter the cyclists from using this very tempting car-free route from Park Street to Harbourside.

(Photos and Text from "anon")

Tolerance

Contrary to public opinion and the comments pages of the Bristol Evening Post, it appears we are not a tolerant society.

Here we see a poor motorist occupying the cycle lane on College Green. With a flat tyre.

Notice how both he and the car V638HAA are effectively blocking the entire cycle lane, in both directions whilst the driver texts someone important. It seems he's not about to move out of the way for an intolerant cyclist that happens to be remonstrating with him for parking here.

This is obviously an inconsiderate cyclist. After all, he could easily have dismounted and walked his bike around the obstruction instead of making a fuss.

Luckily the cyclist eventually manages to squeeze past and calm returns. But only for so long.

In the half an hour that it takes to buy and learn to ride a fixed wheel bike on the pavement, the RAC van VN09GNN turned up to the rescue. Parked half on the cycle lane, and half on the zig-zags the driver is being very considerate to the drivers about to power up Park Street. But ignore that, cycling on pavements is wrong.

We don't approve of cycling on pavements, because we're not very tolerant. Yes cyclists may be able repair a flat tyre on the go, but changing a wheel on a car is a difficult and challenging process for a driver and requires the use of an Emergency Service.

So we had a word with all the cyclists trying get around the obstruction by cycling on the pavement.

We made them walk and be tolerant of pedestrians. We're drivers, and we have clout.