Cotham Brow Row XM08XMJ

The tax-dodger's rights group, Bristol Cycling Campaign, are campaigning against pinch points.

We actually agree with them. Yes, we do love to see new junction improvements adding gratuitous pinch points, such as on the top of Jacob's Wells Road -because that stops the cyclists sneaking up the inside and avoiding in queueing.

But at the same time, we suffer when we have to wait behind a cyclist that is blocking the way. Or, if we go past when there is plenty of room, we still have to deal with abuse.

Look at this video of Cotham Brow. It's a quieter Cotham Brow than normal -roadworks have isolated it from Gloucester Road at the bottom. Having less traffic, it should be better to drive up, as you don't have to negotiate a narrow route with oncoming vehicles. Yet all it takes is one selfish cyclist to get in the way and you are stuck going up a hill at under 10 mph.

Pinch points make this worse, by removing opportunities to pass.

Here in the video, one of the cyclists has dismounted and is pushing their bike up the 8-9% gradient hill, so allowing important people past. Yet the one with the camera does not -and they have the audacity to be abusive (swearing!) at the important people in the volvo XM08XMJ. Do you think the woman in the passenger seat wants to hear language like that? To see her face on you tube? We think not.



What is annoying is that the pinch point is entirely gratuitous. It's on a zebra crossing. They could take away the island and it would still be a zebra crossing. Even if in theory the island would let two-way traffic have to stop less often, it's too narrow a road for two-way traffic further down the hill, so entirely moot.

All this traffic island does is introduce conflict at a point where it is not needed. Removing it would not only benefit pedestrians and cyclists, it would help us driving by stopping us being held up by tax-dodging and abusive troublemakers.

In this video, the tax-dodging and abusive troublemaker actually adds insult to insult, by turning left down Freemantle Road, then left again to descent Nugent Hill at speed, then joining Arley Hill to get to Montpelier.

That means that they had no justification for going up the hill and getting in the way of the Volvo, they climbed up Cotham Brow at 8-9 mph purely to aggravate people in a hurry. Then, by bypassing the cars in the Arley Hill queue, they go on to aggravate people who have been waiting patiently.

Finally, they descended Nugent Hill at about 28 mph -even though you can clearly see lots of schoolchildren walking to school -families forced to walk as an anti-car council blocked up all the secret routes from Cheltenham Road to Kingsdown. The fact that they can get up to such dangerous speeds on a weekday morning shows how the removal of commuter parking actually endangers schoolchildren. Before the RPZ rollout, every road would have someone driving around looking for a space to park, every junction have someone pulling out as they went round the block again. These people performed the valuable role of traffic calming cyclists, who couldn't descend a hill like this without worrying about vehicles coming out of side roads. Now, with the exception of the one at the bottom, they don't have to do that.
Whereas before the cyclist was selfish by going up a hill at under 10 mph, now they are being selfish and dangerous by descending above 20 mph. There is no speed on our streets where they are safe -they are unwelcome at any speed!

Feedback and the implications for SITA S788NNK

Our coverage of one truck driver giving the pedestrians the abuse they deserve has proved very poplar. We know this as Youtube sent us an email saying "your video might be eligible for the YouTube Partnership Programme, which allows you to make money from playbacks of your video.", which implies more than eight people saw it.

We also got many comments on the video, some of which were sadly negative towards us. luckyeightball said

the only crime here is decent hard working blokes trying to earn a honest living, get pin pointed by some p**ck who walks around filming people, i bet he takes the videos home and masterbates in his garden shed to the thought of knowing he's caused someone grievance, probably lives with his mum too, gimp

Bristol Traffic is a team project, everyone in the city participates. Those of us who work in the Bristol sex industry supply chain don't need to sneak off to the garden shed as we have discounted "access" to the professionals who provide their services down in Stokes Croft. As we are regulars we even get rebates when things don't work as expected. Plus the wifi doesn't get to the shed.

Humpski2817 said

If I was this driver I would go to you tube and quote their Privacy Complaint Guidelines as I am quite sure you do not have permission to use his image and as the say in the account policies "let us know if videos or comments on the site violate your privacy or sense of safety."

We've discussed this before. You have to give up some expectations of privacy on the streets. Public Place = public. Private place = private. It's an interesting issue though, with Google Streetview being the cutting edge. To launch that service in Germany, they've had to remove the houses and gardens from the view, which means that street views have entire houses missing, so limiting their value. We are glad therefore for your awareness of these issues, though feel you have some more learning on this topic before your statements come off as well-informed. But it's a start.

The most insightful comment came from SuperJonah2010

"i personely believe as a hgv driver that bristol is a hard town to be in.and that the actions of the guy with the cammera are intimidating and the driver would of seen him as a threat!as he said he chased him down the road in his own posting!i would of thought about my load and is that guy pulling a knife or a gun out of his rucksack!it happend to be a camera!my actions would have been the same if not alot worse!what planet is the idiot who posted this video on!"

That really explains some of the issues HGV drivers have in the city. Our taxi driver acquaintances fear late night customers to the edges of the city, bus drivers are scared to stop on Crow Lane (update: plans to sell of the greenery may make it safer). What we hadn't realised up until now was that HGV drivers are scared of pedestrians.

Up until now we viewed them as a hazard. Admittedly, mostly to cyclists, but such incidents close off busy roads for hours, even to vans, - and parked cars. And, because they have better negotiating power in narrow roads, we aren't that fond of HGVs . But we hadn't realised that they were scared of pedestrians! That changes the whole view of things. They must be terrified of doing any of the "shared space" roads like Cotham Hill or Picton Street. Anyone walking down the middle of the road may suddenly get out a firearm or knife and hijack your load! This continuous fear of pedestrians must make the entire city a stressful place to do deliveries -far better to stay in Avonmouth where you don't see people walking around, and if you do, you can call the police and report them.

This fear of highway robbery must also trigger the use of classic military tactics, the key ones being: keep moving and take the high ground.

We can see an example of this at the bottom of Cotham Brow, looking towards the Arches. Our white van is stuck at the lights. We aren't worried about anyone stealing our load as we'll just report to the police that someone else has stolen a "Edmond and Cheggers Inflatable Doll Party Pack" and they'll drive up the A38 following the laughter on the pedestrians until they find the culprits. The Nisa Today lorry was facing the same direction when it swung left into Kingsley Road and got into that debate with the pedestrian about whether they should have indicated before the turn. The answer from a game theory perspective is of course: no, don't signal your intent -it makes it harder for them to plan their attack.

Today we are held up by some lights, cars coming from Cromwell Road are heading up from the Arches to Cotham Brow. This is a narrow road with parking spaces on either side of the road almost deliberately laid out to create conflict -conflict the parking review will leave in. For example, those cars on the left? Short stay parking, with only 40cm of pavement alongside there's no room to get wheels on the pavement, so it creates a choke point -a bit of traffic calming. And a place where a malicious pedestrian could attack a lorry driver and make off with their payload.

The small cars, like the council car, don't have a problem, they pootle up the road. But what of the SITA van S788NNK? The choke point here exposes them to attack -anyone could pop out from the side road hold a knife, a gun, a rolled up newspaper (we've all seen that Bourne Identity film -we know newspapers are weapons), and take their valuable payload of ready-for-recycling cardboard.

How will the SITA drivers handle it? With Military precision.


They seize the enemy territory by going straight onto the pavement. Notice how they do it. No halfhearted "protect the wheels" actions, but a full "take the high ground" operation to get along the pavement and then drop down once they get past the narrowness.

By keeping the forward momentum, the oppo team is left on the defensive, and without the pavement they can't hang back and hope to jump up into the cab as it goes past.

Together, this ensures that the SITA cardboard will reach its destination securely.

This whole notion that lorry and HGV drivers fear pedestrians is going change some of our thinking. In fact it's profound. It explains a lot of city design -like the pedestrian underpasses of the Bearpit, St Paul's and Lawrence Hill roundabouts. They must have gone in not just to keep motor traffic speeds up, but to reduce the risk of pedestrians attacking trucks. It also explains why money needs to be invested in making pedestrians and cyclists feel unwelcome in those parts of the city popular with HGVs -because the drivers don't want them there.

The implications of this discovery are still trickling through our brains, so expect more coverage of the topic in the new year. Until then, all those pedestrians whom we now suspect read this blog -remember, the HGV driver is more scared of you!

Observability

Our complainer from the past, "Slug" says they went to the PACT meeting to complain about some car on the pavement. Apparently the Police actually need to see someone obstructed before the vehicle is causing an obstruction.

This is a useful fact to know. From now on, whenever we park our car on the pavement -such as here BS51VDX does on a build-out by Cotham Brow, we shall wait for some family to get a push-chair past, and get a photograph of them as they pass.

With such a photograph, we can demonstrate that our parking did not cause any obstruction, hence is ineligible for any penalty.

Breaking news: Mobility Vehicles pay no tax either!

We are pleased to see the Evening Post commentator team have turned their attention from one enemy of our city -the cyclists - to another: the elderly and their transport options.

Here on Cotham Brow we see one out on the road, swerving past the van WV55UED parked on zebra crossing zig-zags  -a van which, were it to say Siemens Traffic Control- would be allowed to park there unharassed by the parking police.

The disabled person in a mobility scooter is not paying any road tax, and as it is an electric vehicle, no fuel tax.

Yet it holds up white vans, the lifeblood of the city

Dads, you can be Redland Mums too

A special callout to CV53EJX, here going down Cotham Brow. Moving too fast for a good photo taken one handed from a moving vehicle, low light conditions..

For some reason the school run went well on the way in. Yes, it was by bike, but since the DVLA sent a note asking for the license back in a pre-paid envelope, driving is not currently an option (*). But when you consider yourself a driver, not a cycling or walking under-person, you retain some of the old habits. You know, you occupy a lane, when an oncoming vehicle stops for you, you wave with your hand, they wave back. Sometimes you pull over for them, they wave at you. A friendly morning. Sprog delivered within a few minutes of the specified delivery time in a state of calmness. Perhaps the week off has left everyone in a good mood, no more Redland Mum "Death before a late dropoff" driving.

Then this, on the way home. Being still in motor-driver mode, after negotiating the buses parked in the downhill lane of Cotham Road, on account of the school parents parked in the coaches-keep-clear-zone, I slowed down to let a car coming off Hartfield Drive pull out. Mistake. Bicycles are not allowed to stop to let cars out, as it gave this CV53EJX a chance to overtake the bike and cut up the car pulling out.

Obviously, I caught up with the driver at the zebra crossing, where those bastard students hold up everyone. "I stopped to let a car out", I said. The driver look over with so much anger, his whole face torn up in rage and frustration "Oh Shut Up", I think mouthed, as he sprinted off to get caught behind the next car. 

Getting kids to school is pretty stressful. There's a hour or so of a parental attempt to impose schedule on small kids that would rather play with lego or read or watch Horrid Henry. But once you are out the door, there is no way to regain lost time. It's the rule of project management: time lost upfront cannot be regained. Trying to drive aggressively round Bristol on the school run doesn't do anything for your journey time, because that is a function of the number of the junctions (a constant) and the traffic load, while variable, is mostly a function of time, t, and whether it is a schoolday or not, also a function of (t). The equation becomes something like

T(journey) = congestion(t)*schoolday_factor(t)*junctions.

There is nothing you can do about this, you may as well mellow out unless you are out the door so early that t is earlier in the morning, and hence congestion lower. But not, clearly, this Redland Dad, who is suffering too stressful a life. We hope that it does not impact on their family life, that his kids and partner do not suffer. If they do, the news outlets inform us that there is a National Bullying Helpline which provides support, though you can't trust them to keep the calls confidential, not if the story is interesting enough.

(*) Details not to be discussed. All those people who pine for "real" police rather than speed cameras should note that they've never experienced being pulled over by armed traffic police on US Interstate 5 between Seattle and Tacoma. Cameras aren't as scary.

Out of control on Nugent Hill

We have some back catalogue of vehicles getting into trouble on ice on Nugent Hill

It doesn't come out that well in the pics, but here these vehicles on Nugent Hill drivers must have had a bit of a fright.

This one is wedged in on a corner where it must have been skidding down the road until they got to veer toward somethign that would halt it. 

This next one got a fair bit further down the road before they managed to bring it to a halt. It's entered the contraflow , but they managed to get it to halt without causing any damage, and its been left until the snow goes away.

This last car WN08EZX ended up going all the way down the contraflow, executing a right turn despite the "no right turn" feature on Arley Hill, and managed to come to a halt just before the traffic lights with Cheltenham Road. The driver must have been pretty shaken up. We are glad they made it down the hill safely!

On a normal evening you'd think "Oh, this car is running the one-way stretch to bypass congestion on Cotham Brow and put in on the Arley Hill traffic jam". But this wasn't a normal evening. No road traffic, no traffic jams, and both Cotham Brow and Arley Hill were gritted. There was no rational reason to deliberately drive the wrong way down the Nugent Hill contraflow -an ungritted road on a steep hill, when the legal option was in fact safer.

That leaves

• They loved danger
• They were stuck in this ungritted part of the city and the only way out was down the hill

For these reasons we will not be passing the photograph of this vehicle on to the local Kingsdown police, the way we normally do to help our city's drivers resistance to the oppressive anti-car one-way infrastructure get more widely recognised. We in Bristol Traffic celebrate your bravery!

G827YLA: redland mum

Hello, this is a note to the man driving the car G827YLA down Cotham Road at 08:48 on Monday December 14.

I don't think you read this blog. In fact, I don't think you pay any attention to anything other than the little bluetooth headset you had in your ear as you sat at the zebra crossing at the bottom, trying hard not to to make contact with a cyclist. Me.

However, at some point in the future, unless they destroy that car under the scrappage scheme, you are going to try selling that vehicle, and when it happens, whoever is thinking of buying it is going to type in the registration number into google, possibly with spaces, "G827 YLA" . And you know what's going to turn up? This article. The one that accuses you of being a redland mum.

As background, here is our definition of a redland mum: a parent who is in such a hurry to get their children to school that the lives of of any person on the road are unimportant. If there is a choice between the death of a pedestrian or a cyclist and pulling up on the "school no parking" area after 09:00, then somebody has to die.

I know this, because I am the cyclist you nearly ran over, the one who had stopped to let a mother and two children cross the road. I'm sorry I had to slow you down to let a family get to school, but since they were walking, they rely on generosity to get to school on time, and I was feeling generous. This area, outside Cotham Grammar, is a marked "please drive at 20" area, and those buildouts are to make it slightly easier to cross, to avoid having to run through parked cars. But the pedestrians still have to rely on vehicles stopping to let them across. Back when the build-outs were put in some people did ask for a zebra crossing, but it was turned down "nobody has died here yet". Well, you almost managed to get the criteria met today, didn't you, my little redland mum, the man driving the 1989 Toyota G827YLA.

I guess you were a bit surprised that after swerving round to overtake all us (without signalling, we note) and sprinting off down the hill, I did actually catch up with you. For some reason you didn't want to wind down the window, you just sat their looking surprised, muttering something into your phone, and unhappy at having to stop for all the students. No need to fear - we Bristol Cyclists don't believe in violence. It doesn't fix problems, it only creates more animosity. And we come out worse. I was just planning to get a video of you to stick up on the web site for what we do instead: public humiliation. But you got away, even as you went down Cotham Brow, trying to work out where you could go that the cyclist wouldn't catch up with you. To let you into a secret, I'd memorised your number at that point, there was nothing else to do. I let you go down Arley Hill. There you are, thinking "Oooh I got away from the angry cyclist", when in fact my goal had been achieved: you were now heading away from whichever school you were trying to get to, you would be stuck in the 9am Arley Hill traffic queue, and your children would be late. Your initial goal: get to school on time at the expense of a family and a cyclist would not be met.

Oh, and you are in the database. Forever. That's Google's BigTable, which, as they say themselves "is a distributed storage system for managing structured data that is designed to scale to a very large size: petabytes of data across thousands of commodity servers." By replicating facts "G827YLA is driven by a redland mum" across multiple datacentres, each with thousands of "commodity" x86 servers with IDE or SATA hard drives, BigTable's storage capacity is bigger than any database ever built before. By distributing those datacentres round the world: Mountain View, California, The Dalles, Oregon, Dublin, Singapore, BigTable won't just cope with an earthquake scale disaster, they'd even cope with something more dramatic, like a small Tunguska-class asteroid. It would take something big like another K/T Boundary Event or an accidental or intentional exchange of strategic armaments to take your registration number offline.

Which means when someone looks up the car registration, this article pops up. It could be you, it could be a friend, it could even be one of the kids you had in the back of the car who will then start snickering and call you a "redland mum" behind your back. It could maybe be the police if you try something like this again and it goes wrong, someone does end up injured, and they decide to do a checkup to see what anyone knows about the vehicle. Which means that this posting, accusing you of dangerous driving -not just to cyclists, but to pedestrians- will show up. You now, as they say "have a history."

Goodbye, or is it just au-revoir?

Skateboarders: holding up tax payers

We are still hoping that the police will do something about skateboarders in the city.

We had high hopes for the Cotham police area, where the PACT priorities had considered this issue.

Cotham Gardens, Redland Grove and Cotham Grove - Pavement Cycling/Skateboarding
Inconsiderate cycling and skateboarding on pavements within close proximity of Cotham Gardens causing damage and safety concerns to local residents.

Actions

• PC 1860 Harding to carry out a minimum of two patrols each week during school finishing times between 3pm and 4pm to give advice or enforce with tickets as appropriate.
• PC Harding and PCSO Horton to hold school assembly at Cotham School to promote safe cycling and personal responsibility.
• PC Harding to contact Bristol City Council Parks Department to discuss implementation or improvement of any existing facilities for cyclists/skateboarders.

See that? Police to ticket skateboarders out on the pavements after school closing time and to turn up at assembly to promote personal responsibility. Finally, a police group representing the interests of us, the tax payer. We have footage of the three skateboarders in question, and will one day show our interview with these teenage criminals.

Today we have some bad news. The police have changed their priorities.

3. Parking issues
Vehicles routinely parking inconsiderately on the corner of junctions and in front of drop kerbs causing pedestrians, wheelchair users and people with pushchairs difficulty in passing, and obstructing the view to motorists attempting to negotiate such junctions.
Actions:
PC 1860 Harding and PCSO 9935 Horton to include specific area on daily `Patrol Plan` covering Warwick Road, Abbottsford Road and Cotham Gardens junction with Aberdeen Road, taking positive action against offending motorists by issuing `Fixed Penalty Notices` and vehicle `Tow Away` where deemed necessary.

See that? No skateboarders, now it is us taxpayers, all of whom have legitimate reasons to park where we do -especially near the schools in the area. Indeed, it is threat of having our paveparked car scraped by the skateboarders that was our main reason to complain to the police in the first place, now they not only leave the skateboarders alone, they come after our cars.

And what are the consequence of this change in policy? The tax-dodgers have come out of the side streets, and are now on the main through routes.

This skateboarder is about to descend Cotham Brow, on the road. Not on the pavement where the criminals don't belong either, but here in the middle of the road. Our road. Holding up important people like the taxi that eventually manages to pass. Yes, he does it far more safely than the average Redland school mum, we are pleased to see -but he shouldn't have had to. There should not be any bicycles or skateboards on our streets.

The only way to stop this getting worse is for everyone to attend their local Police PACT meeting, and make sure the local police focus on the real criminals -the cyclists and their fellow travellers, the skateboarders.

Product placement: AA

Some of our viewers come from Abroad, where Abroad means further afield than Wales or the Isle of Wight, and these readers leave notes saying "what the zig-zags we keep mentioning".

Zig-zags are the lines before and after zebra and other pedestrian crossings, which indicate that under no circumstances should you ever think of parking there. Because of that restriction, they are not normally used for commuter and resident parking.

This leaves them as the primary short-stay parking area in the inner city. The tendency of zebra crossings to be placed near schools and shops makes them key locations for short stay shopping or parental dropoff.

Today, we see a yellow van EU06NUY with flashing lights up on one on Cotham Brow

From the side, you can see that it is an AA van helping broken down cars. Someone further down the hill appears to have run out of petrol; the AA breakdown van is on call to rescue them.

Although this seems to endanger pedestrians, it doesn't really, because while it may make it harder for approaching vehicles to see people about to cross the road, if the drivers are not going to stop for pedestrians anyway, it makes no difference whatsoever.

Once you recognise that, that zebra-markings are just a quaint memory of a distant past when children walked to school, it's then clear that their sole remaining use really is short-stay parking. They have no other purpose in our fair city.

On the Blower

Another cyclist, dangerously using the phone while towing a child from school.

He has pulled over, but given this is the top of Cotham Brow, that's a very wise move. But it is still dangerous.

Why? That child is getting bored. Another couple of minutes of parental chat and then dad's going to set off down the brow at speed, curve round the mini roundabout at the bottom and only on the level bit will he notice the lack of pedalling coming from the stoker. At which point, it's back up that hill to try and find the kid that got bored and ran off earlier.

Some people say this isn't going to happen, but those people haven't been half way down Burrington Coombe when they discover their small child has actually got off by the ice-cream van at the top.

Footway Closed

There is a new activist group forming/reforming to push for pedestrian rights in the city, Living Streets

Hi, we are mailing you as you are listed as a supporter of Living Streets in the Bristol Area.

We are going to rebuild the group in Bristol: this is much needed. Transport dominates the agenda locally and all forms of transport except walking seem to have strong lobbyists.

* The bus network is receiving long term attention and investment through the 'Greater Bristol Bus Network'

* FOSBR and others have successfully won improvements to local rail

* Cyclists are no longer just a 'loud and articulate minority', but an organised and highly effective loud and articulate minority, who have won millions of funding through cycling city

* Even the ludicrous 'Association of British Drivers' has a regular media presence

Who is speaking out locally for pedestrians? No-one, well not in a co-ordinated way.

This is odd, given that we are all pedestrians to some extent. We can see with our own eyes and through blogs like Bristol Traffic, Southville Parking, On the Level and Green Bristol blog that pedestrians are increasingly marginalised.

Current issues include:

· There are unacceptable delays to pedestrians using the light controlled crossings at the new road arrangements at Bond St and Cabot Circus.

· Changes are planned to Blackboy Hill which will include replacing zebra crossings with light controlled ones, to favour traffic and delay pedestrians.

· Pavements are blocked by vehicles in the inner city for days on end as the owners know there is no enforcement.

We think it will be relatively easy to get a better deal for pedestrians and are asking you if you want to help. The door is part open: the new transport executive Jon Rogers states that they will be improving enforcement of parking regulations, supports 20mph limits in the city and is committed to an open style of government. We will not only keep him to these promises but ensure pedestrians are properly represented in all road proposals.

This is an interesting idea, though sadly inconvenient for the rest of us. Take, for example, these roadworks on Cotham Brow, primary foot route from Gloucester Road to the university and Clifton. The pavement is closed for roadworks, pedestrians expected to cross the road.

Where another set of roadworks ensure that there is no safe route on that side either.

This level of anti-pedestrian activity is not an accident -it is done this way to ensure that no cars are held up. If this Living Streets group had their way, these roadworks would have required the road to be shut down, returning it the quiet and peaceful lane it was last summer -and so preventing anyone from commuting through this route. Commuters bring money into the city! Shoppers spend cash in the city! Pedestrians take up valuable space that can not only be used to park cars, it can be used to house mobile phone masts and electricity substations. These are effective uses of pavements. Not this walking thing.

Anyway, the announcement continues

The plan
At the moment we want only an expression of interest - ' yes, count me in'. Please respond to this e-mail if you’d like to be kept informed about the activities of Living Streets’ Bristol branch.

We will have the minimum of bureaucracy and will not flood you with emails, promise.
Please let us have your comments on what the problems are where you live, and ideas for tackling them. In two weeks we will mail all those interested with a summary and an invitation to draw up a strategy.

You can find the national Living Streets strategy here

We look forward to hearing from you!

Steve Meek
livingstreetsbristol at gmail dot com
Coordinator
Living Streets Bristol Branch

So there you have it. Either a militant pedestrian group to push for pedestrian rights, allies with Association of British Drivers in the war against bicycles, or an attempt by the cycling campaigners to create a mock dissent group, like an Eastern Bloc trades union group. At this point in time, it's to early to tell which.

Bus Parking

On Thursday Feb 5, it was snowy enough for FirstBus to not come out. Some people knew this, and took advantage of the fact that bus stops were now parking spaces.

But why is that woman standing forlornly at the bus stop?

Ahh, it's the the afternoon, and the buses have started running. Too bad all the bus stops are taken.

Driver reporting

Someone asks on the Bristol Cycling Campaign mailing list, "can I report bad drivers"?

it was a maroon hyundai accent reg# T352VOA. I was cycling along Downend Road from Ashley Down Road at a fair clip when I heard a car coming up fast behind me. it's pretty tight there with cars parked on both sides. I turned around and the car was right by my back wheel. i shouted back my annoyance and rode defensively, not wanting to be in the path of an opening door with this aggressive driver right behind me. A couple of cars came towards us which allowed me to progress while she was held up. but as soon as they were clear she zoomed right up and didn't stop - basically pushed herself through forcing me towards the parked cars. All of which happened within 100 metres of the traffic lights. of course i was fuming and told her so, through her wound up window before she drove off.

RAC car check confirms there is a Hyndai of that number, ASKMID confirms it is insured. So if they had knocked you off, you may have got some money. This web site isn't really the place to complain about specific drivers, for which BetterDriving is a recommended location -Though we do like to know where in the city trouble lies. And on that note, we can re-assure you that the entertainment you get on your morning commute isn't likely to change in the near future, because Ashley Down Road remains a 30mph road on the 20mph-zone map; as will Muller Road: if a 20 mph zone ever went as far as Horfield, well, Downend road would run the risk of being one of those busy-back-roads-leave-it-fast routes, even though its part of the quiet road route from Filton, being between Dovercourt road and the one-way roads parallel to Gloucester Road).

A lot of those back roads have two roles. A quiet option for cyclist commuters who can't handle the A38 any more, and a fast option for car drivers in a hurry who can't handle the jams on the A38. That creates, well, tension. There's nothing like ambling down North road or suffering up Belmont Road to hear the sound of an over-revved clio 1.2 coming up fast behind you. What to do? Well, St Andrew's won't be 20mph either, so make the best of the bus lane on the A38.

The other email, "I was cycling on Cotham Brow when some car turned right in front of me, even though I had my lights on and shouted at them. Got a photo of the Peugeot N314MAF with my phone"


We like photos, and while we have low standards, this one is fairly close to not making the cut. Were you by any chance drinking before hand? And what is that strange light in the sky? All we can do is confirm this car exists, and show that clearly their actions didn't get them very far. We do hope that you did not shout anything that would give cyclists a bad name, and allow the E.P. to start complaining about cyclists swearing at passing traffic.

These alleged incidents show a problem with focusing on 20 mph back roads. They don't go anywhere. And the through roads, the 30mph roads, are things that you either have to cross -somehow- or actually use to get to places you need to. Keeping all the through roads 30 mph contains an implicit assumption that cyclists and pedestrians don't actually get out of their own street, or when they do, it's by car.

The other issue with a 30 mph road is that it makes people believe that the road is its fast. It creates unrealistic expectations. More honest would be for every road in the city to have a speed limit of 15 mph for cars, 18 mph for bicycles on the flat dropping to 8 mph for them uphill, and 47 mph for taxis.

Pavement Work

The Evening Post is always complaining about bicycles on pavements.

A few dedicated car drivers do their best to discourage this by parking on the pavement, here at the zebra crossing between Cotham Road and Cotham Road South/Cotham Brow. There is about enough room to walk through, but not for bicycles. Well done BMW J2LXX! Thank you for standing up to pedestrian's rights! A lot of kids cycle down here on their way to and from school, and families with push chairs, but today they get to go in the road -where they belong!

[The reason the pavement is so wide here is to improve pedestrian safety, and to make the corner sharper; the one whose visibility is now hampered. O2 keep trying to put in a phone mast disguised as a lamp post twice the height of the trees, but keep getting turned down as the wall abuts some listed pillars. I almost phoned this one in to Bristol Parking Services, as I was annoyed that they were on the pavement by the zebra crossing. But as the office closes at 17:00, at 17:02, you can park where you like]

Disabled Parking

I can't help wondering if my ongoing knee issues put me in a position to apply for a disabled parking permit. Because it radically expands the places where you can park in the city.

Unfortunately, as this car WM06BLK has discovered, have a park-outside-your-house permit does not exempt you from wingmirror bashes. So you need to park on the pavement too.

This is the top of Cotham Brow/Cotham Road incidentally; the yellow lines went in a couple of years ago to provide an opportunity for the bus to pull out, and to provide a safe bit of cycling after a fairly harsh climb even for those people whose knees actually work properly. You need to recover here before pulling into traffic for the right turn onto Cotham Road. It will be interesting to see if this car continues to exploit its park-where-you-want facility once the roadworks on this road go and through traffic returns to Cotham.

The Cotham Brow traffic free zone

The experiment in making Cotham Brow nearly 100% traffic free continues. When these photos were taken, it was blocked to everyone but buses, locals and taxis in a hurry.

As a result, the whole of Cotham is much quieter. By blocking the main route through the area, you can see that most traffic is through traffic, not local.


And interestingly, people walk on the street. It becomes somewhere pleasant to be, somewhere you can cycle without worrying about pulling out in front of the taxi or the oncoming bus.



It is a lovely place to visit. Enjoy it while it lasts. It looks like the traffic calming is moving South towards Horfield Road next.

More buses on Cotham Brow

People who complain that Bristol's public transport system is bad have missed an obvious fact: all vehicles are buses. Why else would all of these be going through a road-closed area that is blocked off to everything but buses?

Buses Only on Cotham Brow

Cotham Brow is closed for road works; they are slowly moving up the hill. Until completed, the road is closed to everything but buses.
Therefore, this Saab P402 FRX is a bus.

As is this Bristol Taxi and the AA van going the other way.

And these two cars.
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Being down to one lane, Cotham Brow is very narrow now. Which is why it was closed to all but buses. But nobody is bothering to enforce it. Why not? Are the drivers trusted? Is enforcement of traffic regulations no longer something the council bothers to do?

Maybe its because the buses get to enforce the rules themselves. Here is the #20 bus forcing a golf to reverse

When the next bus came along, the cars gave up and turned back up Archfield road.

Conclusion: buses make the best enforcers of bus-lane rules.