Fear the Tree!

This week we are reminding everyone that the annual critical-mass prance round the city takes place on Saturday May 1, as people dance and hop their way from the Arnolfini to Horfield Common by way of a large number of pubs, including, here, the Highbury Vaults.

Now, we too like a couple of pints before getting the roads too, but find that drink-driving laws prevent us having more than four pints before heading out, and even then you have to hope the police don't pick on you. Yet here we can see -in another example of anti-car bias- that it's OK to bounce up St Michael's hill so stocious(*) that you think dressing up as a tree is a good idea, yet we car drivers are not only prosecuted for being less drunk than that, we even get held up by these tree people.

And their families! They bring out their children! And walk them down the road!

This is unacceptable. A strong government would ban this kind of thing, not just re-instate foxhunting, but let us hunt people that dress up like vegetables.

We plan more coverage of this problem, unique to Bristol, in the coming week.

Including, exclusive, shocking, scandalous video coverage of the council's secret support for this so called "alternative transport"!

(*) Stocious: to be very heavily drunk. A Scottish word (there are lots of words for drunk in Scotland, more fine-grained than elsewhere). Even the Eskimos with their alcoholism issues don't fine-grain the details quite as much, but then they have the snow to talk about.

(*) Update. The original article said Saturday May 3 -Saturday is in fact May 1. 

Becoming a Redland Mum

Everyone was pretty shocked when that Panorama expose of Bristol racism came out. In most of the city, when somebody new moves in, the concern isn't their race, nationality or sexual orientation. It's: how many cars have they brought? Will they bring in enough vehicles to tip this street over the edge? Will one of them start to park in Our Space? That's all that matters.

In this Bristol, egalitarian Bristol, anyone can be a Redland Mum. You don't have to live in Redland, you don't have to be a mum. All it takes is quite simple:

To be a Redland Mum, getting to or from school in your car, on time, is more important than the safety and wellbeing of anyone else in Bristol.

That's all: drive aggressively to school and you too are a Redland Mum.

A video comes anonymously to our inbox proving that a dad driving a Malik's Hair and Beauty van can be as much a Redland Mum as any mother driving her 4x4. Notice how the vehicle comes out the side road without even a hint of attention to the give way sign, to come screaming to a halt at the last bit of build-out before Cotham Grammar, so ensuring their child will make it to school on time. The man driving this -he is proud to be a Redland Mum.

The road he came from at speed is interesting as it's part of the area where residents have been complaining about cycling and skateboarding on the pavement. It's simply not safe to have kids on the pavement, on wheeled toys that could suddenly skid out in front of a parent in a rush to get to school. The sheer presence of children walking, cycling or skateboarding to school will force other parents to drive more cautiously -and so be late for school!

Even if the pedestrians, skateboarders and cyclists are not in front of the car, slowing them down, their very presence in our streets slows us down on the school run and makes us late. We are glad that the police are doing something about the skateboarders and cyclists, and hope that the school can do something about the pedestrians.

Finally, for whichever cyclist took this video, all we can say is: if you felt that this van pulled out in front of you from a side road dangerously, then you were clearly cycling too fast! You should be grateful that we do not report you for cycling fast near a school!

Driving Standards

That prominent subversive, Chris Hutt, has been wondering whether people should be a higher standard of driving from professional drivers -buses, taxis -and if it is not met, have some way of complaining. Presumably he was thinking of taking photographs of buses and taxis parked in ASL lanes and such-like, and complaining to the council.

We in Bristol Traffic think such persecution would be needless. They are trying to make a living. It would not be fair to report this taxi, purely for parking over a build-out in front of Cotham Grammar school at 08:30 on a schoolday morning, to complain that the taxi WN57JZA was endangering schoolkids such as the one crossing the road.

Because it would not be fair. That schoolkid was actually dropped off by the car WM56FMP also on the buildout five seconds earlier.

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.

Bristol Tree Festival - Today, May 2

Today, then, is the day of the tree festival itself.

After swinging through Cotham Park, the tree turns onto the A38, the ancient route between Somerset and Birmingham, before finishing on Horfield Common

The organisers say

on Horfield Common, at the end of his journey, Jack must die, to release the Spirit of Summer. Come and witness this spectacle, and take away a few leaves and a little of Bristol's history and culture.

We aren't sure whether that event involves burning a virgin alive, but since the little one seemed overexcited about fillowing the procession in his scooter, it was a concern last time it was encountered. Hence the finale was avoided. Maybe this year...