Colston School declares more war on parents

No sooner had we issued a call for more low-quality pictures than one reaches our inbox from "M", showing how Colston's Primary School is persecuting parents.

It's bad enough they have bicycle parking in the playground, now they have a large sign in front of the keep clear zone.

Welcome to Colston's Primary School

Around our school please drive safely

DROP THE 'DROP OFF' HABIT

The yellow lines protect our children. Stay off them!

Irresponsible parking endangers our

children's lives and is reported to the police.

Ignoring the fact that when you push your child out the door while keeping the engine on in neutral and not even bothering to put the handbrake on isn't technically parking -just unloading -it is needless persecution.

We look back fondly on how it used to be, when small children could get views of motor cars that they could aspire to own in later years.

It was only back in 2008 that we started documenting our city, and today we must mourn the many parking spaces removed for build-outs and bike parking -and now, even School Keep Clear zones are taken from us.

the luxury school run

We are sent an email by "Mike" showing the proper way to get the kids to school, here with a stretch limo outside Colstons Primary School on, what, Cotham Grove

The submitter of this photograph seems a bit, well, unhappy about the incident, and we can see why: a vehicle like this can take up the entire school keep clear area, so stopping other parents doing their dropoffs.

However, people need to recognise the hard truth: taking the kids to school in the family 4x4 is, well, common. Twenty-five years ago, yes, most kids walked to school and those that got driven were taken there in the mini metro, but times have moved on. From the metro, to the VW polo, then the VW Golf becomes car #2, now it's one of the little Audi or BMWs, while family car #1 has grown up from an estate to something with more status. Nothing has more status than a stretch limo -which CN55PZS clearly is.

Jealousy, that's what the other parents are suffering from.

Stretch Limo school runs: you saw it here first!

Schoolkid build-outs for Colston Primary School

This area round Colston Primary school has a double role. It's commuter parking par-excellence, and its somewhere for parents to drive their kids to school, either here or Cotham School slightly up the hill. Anyone doing the school-run there knows that Cotham Park North is the turnoff to take.

Yet now, we see buildouts going in, buildouts with bollards planned. This is the price of having the city's Councillor for Walking the locally elected representative.

There was a perfectly good "switch off your engines while waiting" sign up by the school-keep-clear dropoff zone, and now what? More lines, more signs, more bollards

For the parents, the one redeeming feature is that the final draft resident parking zones are up, and this road is in it. If there is only one resident parked here on a Saturday, we can assume that if commuters cannot park here on a weekday, there will be plenty of space for short-stay dropoffs.

Indeed, we suspect the anti-schoolrun developments at Colston's are primarily to push all those parents in favour of resident parking, to split the drivers up into residents, commuters and school-runners, so stop us unifying against an anti car council.

Measuring Bicycle Lane Use

One nice aspect of the snow is it gives us a good way of measuring bicycle lane use. No bike tracks: no cyclists. It therefore provides us with hard proof that money spent on the tax dodgers is wasted.

Here is the Cotham Hill bike lane off the St Michael's Hill Roundabout. No bike tracks, just car tracks

It is good that at least some tax-payers are using this, otherwise it would be entirely wasted.

Further down the hill, some bike tracks hint the tax dodgers have been using the motorists paid-for area, not the bike section to the left of the bollard.

Elsewhere, off Cotham Grove, a completely unused bike lane.

Why do we bother wasting any money on these people, when it is clear the facilities are not used?

More snow chaos

Nobody has posted any photos in on a par with last year's Nine-Tree Hill disaster, so maybe things were less chaotic this year, what with everyone having experienced snow once in living memory. Also it being the school and university holidays, no students, no schookids, parent's having to handle small children somehow anyway.

One van, EY53LFL, out of control and up on the pavement on Cotham Hill

Another car, VK09KKJ this time going uphill, must have skidded onto the pavement outside the Homeopathic Hospital

And this taxi SF09BHU, taxi #8048 must have had to do an emergency halt in a bus stop

No major signs of damage, so all is well. Some of the team had to push a couple of cars in trouble. Remember, use second gear when the wheels start to spin, don't just push the accelerator harder.

To follow: the bicycles.

Resisting change at Colston School

This is Cotham Park Grove from the South, some cars making it a bit tight to enter and exit the junction.

Here is the road during term time, some cars are quite clearly parked right over the corner. While this makes it tricky for parents with push chairs to pull out, it does at least ensure that on the road itself there are never two lanes of traffic at a time, a vehicle is either exiting or entering the system. The school-keep-clear zone provides a pull-over point, while the zebra zig zags are good for coaches.

So what? People ask. Ahh, this is where the power struggle between those in the council traffic planning department, where those few engineers who are still fighting against the anti-car elected councillors, are managing to represent the interests of us car drivers against those parents who dare to walk to school.

Those parents have been complaining that the council should act on this, and they are doing so, but managing to do this in a way that still retains benefits for parents coming in by car

• The school will have their school-keep-clear zone made enforcable
• There will be some disabled parking across from this
• The corners will be double yellow lined to mean "no parking"
• A bit of redland grove will have double yellow lines to mean "drop your kids off here"

Those last two points are the most interesting. A stretch of redland grove will be double yellow lined to say "no commuters, just parents". Which is handy, though of course if the railway line was less expensive to take an adult and a child up from Monty to Redland, perhaps less needed. But the corners will also be double-yellowed, to discourage commuters and parents from using it.

Here, from an attempt to provide a safe route to school, the plan fails. We have evidence from Clifton and Cotham that says "all double yellow lines do by schools is provide a guaranteed place for parents to park", while it doesn't encourage driving to school, it certainly doesn't discourage it. Any parent that turns up hoping to use the two car lengths of allocated space on Redland Grove is going to have a problem when they turn up and discover two other parents there. What are they going to do? That's right, they will use the other allocated spaces -the corners. These will have the same markings "yellow lines" on them, and so will be equally legitimate. Until those once-a-term days when Bristol Parking Services turn up, and you have to argue your case.

If, by some miracle of consideration these corners aren't occupied by parents, and are in fact kept free, the parents who walk are left with a problem. whereas historically the road was narrowed by parked cars, making it one lane wide, is entrance will be two vehicles wide, making it harder to cross safely. This will discourage them from walking, so stop them getting in the way of tax-paying parents.

We dropped a note to Cllr Neil Harrison, who is one of those safe-walk-to-school subversives we are keeping an eye on, to make sure he wasn't planning to surprise us.

Did the engineers look at having some build-outs on the corner instead, with enough bollards to keep cars off them? This would keep the road one vehicle wide at the junction, yet offer good visibillity to parents trying to get across.

With yellow lines, except on the two days a term when they are
enforced, they are going to be a parents-only parking area.

His reply was informative

We did talk about this, but his view was that it would create dangerous traffic tailbacks around the corner. 

You see that? The traffic engineer is doing his best for us, the car drivers. If they had added any form of build out, the effect would have been exactly the same as if there were parked cars on the corner, which is what you see every single weekday. Buildouts would not create any more tailbacks than normal, yet they would take away two or more parking spaces away from us commuters and parents.

We thank this anonymous engineer, and close the posting with a photo to show that we know he was making things up when he said that build-outs would create tailbacks, but that the councillors don't. 

Can we close by saying that given the parents are off school, we do have an opportunity to keep the plans as they are. Email alan.berridge at bristol.gov.uk on the subject of the consultation 09TM013/ACB/WH, to make your views known (cc: Neil.Harrison at bristol.gov.uk ). Remember, you have until September 8th, and some walking parents may discover the plans before then, so its important to push for parking spaces over build outs.

Update 15:30 august 28, Neil H now says

Consultation done now at request of parents Travel Action Group, all of whom are walkers and cyclists. They want to try to get works done by start of year. They devised the planned works thenselves. Build outs now planned too. Some reason why single yellows not suitable - can't remember.

Cotham goes Unionist

In past months, the community spirit and cost-effective taxi services of the segregated unionist/nationalist estates of Northern Ireland have been a source of inspiration.

Clearly it is inspiring people, as this month two house on Cotham have raised the unionist flag over their houses. Here in Cotham Grove

And again, in Cotham Road. Presumably this community spirit will be enhanced with coloured street kerbs and "no surrender" banners. something will be needed to not surrender too, perhaps the local branch of the Conservative and Unionist Party will make residents parking the no-surrender topic, moving on from "Say No to CPZ!" to "Cotham Says No!" in an Ian Paisley Senior accent.

This could be countered by Kingsdown going nationalist; joining up with the Peoples Republic of Stoke's Croft, embracing the republican theme and so creating a split in Bristol. The CPZ boundary is currently sketched out as down the centre of Cotham Road, and skating the top of Cotham Grove, so these houses could be next to the "peace wall" that will inevitably be required.