Better texting data: only 1 driver in 100 does it

Our morning surveys show that about 1 in 5 drivers stopped at a light is texing or phoning. Pretty damning -but there could be selection bias. The lights stop the drivers who aren't aggressive -possibly because they are on the phone. And its one route, morning only.

More data is needed.

Here then is a short video of the route from Ashton Court to Clifton, initially showing a line of stationary traffic on the A369 (Portishead and M5 Gordano Services exit), heading down to town. Ignore them: our dataset is the line of vehicles heading to the junction from the Clifton Suspension Bridge. It's great for a survey: a row of stationary vehicles, easy to measure from the other side of the road, and because of the toll, many people have their window down.

Count the cars, and see if you can spot the one texting



For the inattentive, it's the Audi 1:88, where both driver and passenger are tapping away on their smartphones. That's the car with the custom number plate RJZ1066, to show how important they really are.

Sadly, even though they are important, they are stuck behind 70+ other vehicles driven by people who also think that they are important, so the Audi driver has to text ahead and perhaps add updates on facebook. It is selfish commuters who are holding up the important people from getting home from Clifton.

What's important is that the new data shows that the claims that 1 driver in 5 is texting at lights is clearly false -at least here, on a weekday evening.

A solution for the M32?

Sorry, no picture, but an interesting possible solution to the ghastly M32 car park which stabs at the heart of Bristol. Just as the River Frome was encased in concrete to make way for the car, why not encase the M32?. Those clever Germans are way ahead again....

http://www.treehugger.com/urban-design/german-autobahn-covered-giant-public-park.html

Oh, hang on. I just woke up. This is Britain, land of half measures and transport f**k ups. Darn!!.

Cotham Hill Summit Problems

The final question about the showcase bus route proposals is will the removal of a zebra crossing at the bottom of Cotham Hill and a dedicated turning lane help school run parents turning off at Cotham Hill?

Not if this video of a weekday morning is consistent. There's a jam all the way up the hill from Oakfield Road.

Sometimes there is less of a jam, and then parents can safely pull over onto the bike lane without their fear of their children being hit by a cyclist as they drop them off at one of the local schools (St Peter and Paul's RC is the closest), then carry on to the parent's final destination without any detour.

This is safe, provided the cyclists don't interfere. Today you can see that our secretly-instrumented tax-dodger swerved out of the bike lane, into the tax-payer's lane, forcing the car W153KDA to pull out aggressively to avoid being stuck behind them.

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.

A Failed Experiment?

The editor of Bristol's favourite anti-cycling Daily Mail owned tabloid must be dismayed. An experimental attempt at increasing the length of the traffic jams in Union St seems to have failed. A week after these lights were turned off, they're back on. Frankly, here at Bristol traffic blog, we're also dismayed. What about the rights of drivers over those lazy pedestrians and cyclists who aren't economically successful enough to own and run a car?. They aren't contributing anything to our economy, lazy spongers. We'd like to see all traffic lights in Bristol turned off permanently, so we can all drive to our favourite jams a bit quicker!.

We should all complain to the Association of British Nutters (see Links) who stand up for the rights of poor harassed drivers.

Ring Road problems

Anyone who says that a southern ring road will solve traffic problems never goes to the Northern half of the A4174 on a weekday.

This is the MOD car park approach to the A4174, not even the RR proper, yet the road is blocked by cars

Here they are stuck, waiting to get onto the ring road. What is wrong? Don't know. When will it be fixed? Don't know. The BMW to the far right of the pic knows a sneaky solution, an "exit strategy" that works. Too bad the MOD don't have viable exit strategies for other problems, like wars in Afghanistan.

Looking north to the roundabout you can see the BMW way ahead in the left lane. Instead of trying to turn right at the car park exit roundabout, it went left as far as the abbey wood nursery, did a U-turn there where the lane separation goes away, and snuck up the left hand lane for vehicles heading west. The congestion is mostly for vehicles heading east towards the M32.

Whatever happened, it spreads. Here is Muller Road, fifteen minutes later. Same thing: no movement of motors towards the M32.

South Gloucs. council needs to recognise the problem and widen the A4174, while Bristol Council needs to listen to us, and widen Muller Road. Cut down the trees, take away the unused pavement. Job done.

One for all

Chaos on Barrow Road leading to St Philips Causeway yesterday. One lane was closed on the cycle path due to a sign on the cycle path informing everyone that one lane was closed on the cycle path.


This in turn, caused mayhem on the road as motorists slowed to "rubberneck", each doing their duty as fine upstanding (or in this case reclining) citizens checking that cyclists didn't stray on to the adjacent pedestrian designated side of the shared pavement as those mischevious villains are so often inclined to do. Pictured above is one such cyclist. We won't tell you if she actually encroached on the pedestrian area. I think you can judge for yourself by the look in her cycling induced rage crazed eyes and the flare of her nostrils as she snorts the air for pedestrians to plow down, what happened next. Excuse the blur in the photo, but as is typcal of lunatic cyclists in these situations, she was travelling at speeds well in excess of five miles per hour at the time.


EDIT: Word just in from our man in the Bristol Traffic helicopter that the sign was in fact to inform drivers that the road was down to one lane and not there for cyclists at all.

We have to say that we breathed a sigh of relief when we heard this news. After all the sign pictured looks very much like one intended for use on the roads, paid for by road using drivers. Why should cyclists benefit from it? At the same time we welcome the well chosen placement of the sign giving drivers and cyclists a level playing field. If the road is reduced by a lane then so should the cycle path. It's only fair and just desserts for those cyclists who are always banging on about being equal to motorists.

Extra EDIT: More news just in from our man on the Bristol Traffic Segway that similar signs were placed on numerous surrounding pavements throughout the Barton Hill and St Philips area, giving pedestrians their fair share of obstacles too, some covering nearly the whole width of the pavement.

All in all a good day spent sending out exactly the right message to those misguided tax dodgers who choose to walk and cycle. If anything's going to undermine their disillusioned beliefs that they're doing the right thing then it's schemes such as this. We believe it will be also be of great effect deterring those who are considering getting involved in the seedy underworld of treachery and hooliganism that is cycling. Well done to all involved.

Muller Road: 20K cars/day

One of the interesting facts to come out of Josh Hart's Bristol street study is that 20,000 cars per day go along it. Morning and evening it is congested going to and from the M32; cars coming from Lockleaze cut through garage-alleys to spend less time stuck at the Shaldon Road junction

And so get into the queue leading up to the M32 that much faster.


It's a tough road to walk or cycle across; you need to wait at the lights and factor in to the light schedule the fact that cars coming off the m-way are slow to react to red lights. In the Bristol Cycling Campaign, the Muller Road/Shaldon Road junction is viewed as positively lethal, the fact that 'safe route to school' improvements made it even more dangerous should have been a warning sign about threat that a "cycle city" bid could present.

One thing that Josh's study didn't do is ask where do these cars go to? Where are they coming from? Assuming they are coming into the city on the M32, not using the ring road exit but pulling off before getting stuck in the traffic jams by the M32 junctions further into town, these cars are heading to North West bristol, but not the North Fringe. So where do they go?

Bristol to get a Congestion Charge

It may not have hit the Evening Post yet, but the civil engineering press knows: Bristol is bidding for congestion charging.

Which, given that it has serious congestion problems, makes sense. Not only does it make walking and cycling more cost effective, it lowers the cost advantage that driving has over FirstBus (of course, value fares and an effective public transport system could also do this) and makes the cost of driving into town more tangible than a weekly fill-up or yearly service+MOT+insurance. It also penalises people who use the car, rather than just own one but leave it outside their house on weekdays. And, if we follow London's lead, the charge can be made worse for group G cars and less for hybrid/zero pollution cars. More subtly, London doesn't (currently) offer a resident's discount on a Group G car, so if you live in the C-zone, you get to pay 25 quid a day for driving your Porsche in to the city where you get to unwind your hedge-fund's exposure to the US. It is this daily fee that has really killed the group-G resale value in the south east, and so deflate demand across the whole country.

But:

1. It requires the city to roll-out a ring of ANPR number-plate monitoring cameras and record every journey into and out of the city; data they will retain for up to five years.
2. There's a fairly complex billing system that needs to be run, one that takes up a lot of the fees.
3. Where will the rest of the money go? To FirstBus, probably. Which is so very, very wrong. At least in London, you know that Transport for London is trying to help you.
4. Hybrid cars still take up space and cause congestion. So why should they get a free ride? Surely they should still be charged something?

So: a fee that is focused on those people who drive round the city. with a fairly complex billing scheme to make it all work. we shall see. An alternative option would be to enforce parking rules in the city as it stands, so reducing the parking spaces by 50%, and therefore discouraging vehicle use without so much of an infrastructure behind it.

(photo: van trying to get round lorry blocking picton street unloading and various cars parked on yellow lines).

Picton Street Congestion

This is why, even though white-vans are the hard-men of urban parking, down in Picton Street even they get as far onto the pavement as they can.

Here we see a very large truck trying to work out how to get through, while a gas-powered fork lift truck nimbly cuts through the gap.