Marlborough Hill is 25% gradient zero visibility at the bottom. When the council was asking for places to put in contraflows for bicycles, this was one where even the tax dodgers consensus was "no, too dangerous" -though as they have ninetree hill as their secret cut-through, they have less need of it than us motorists. Usually.
This rider is brave, and descends at a speed where there would be no opportunity to steer out out the way or stop were something big to come out of a side road.
You can see it in the video -and hear it to; the sound of hign-end knobbly tyres on wet tarmac. tyres which offer less surface area on tarmac that slick tyres, and hence can sustain less braking force in the wet. Mud, they work, but on road, not so useful.
We've covered the rules for aggressive downhill work before: runout, align, commit! This MTBer is aligned, and 100% committed, but the runout looks dubious. All it takes is a vehicle to pull out from the upper of the two road, the one he turned into, and it's game over.
What's also interesting here is the sheer number of people walking up and down this hill. Walking and cycling activists could make the case for downgrading this from a road to a pedestrian/cycle path. We're against that, obviously, because it would eliminate a secret rat-run from Kingsdown to Dighton Street -one used by cars, cyclists and pedestrians alike
this time not only is another car parked outside Pizza Go-Go in the bike lane, showing how bike lanes benefit takeaways by providing somewhere to park, we see the minicab AE04NDG, taxi #2525, taking full advantage of those cycling facilities.
First, it's stopped part on the pavement, part on the road -but note how no wheel is actually in the bike lane. Then it pulls out -no need to indicate, it's a quiet day, and drives forward, where an ASL provides somewhere for the vehicle to wait for the light to change.
Such use of the cycling facilities of this part of the city ensures that the residents of Bristol do get some use of them. Note how our tax dodging cycle camera person (sorry!) opted to use none of them on this part of the journey. If they aren't going to use such features, well, we motorists may as well!
We are pleased to introduce a new verb, "to Walthamize". This means to turn any european city into a little piece of Waltham Forest -that part of London that is forever immortalised in Crap Walking and Cycling in Waltham Forest. One day we'd like to visit there, and we would welcome the elusive author of that site contacting us so we could arrange this tour. He would cycle round while we drove behind, honking at him for being in our way.
Today though, we are celebrating the Walthamizing of Dighton Street -simply by adding a new takeaway pizza outlet next to a bike lane.
This is lovely. The pizza chain had realised that the provisioning of a white-lined, double-yellow-lined stretch of road meant there would be somewhere for short-stay customers to park to wait 10-15 minutes for a pizza, and here at 17:00 on a Sunday evening, you can already see it is bringing in the trade.
Note also, behind the customers BS06OUC and YU53NUY, the line of other cars. These appear to be student families unloading, but what is notable is that the building works have been taken down -finally we can park in this bike lane again. And with Pizza Go-Go, we have a reason!
Whenever you monitor humans, you have to worry about The Hawthorn Effect; the fact that people behave differently when being watched. This is notorious for skewing the results of many experiments, and you should always ask experimenters how they compensated for it, to make sure they knew what they were doing.
We solve this problem by not telling the cyclists that it's a camera. They think its a light. Of course, having the bicycle with lights on would effect the experiment too, so to avoid that it doesn't actually work as a light.
By monitoring without them knowing, we get to see the world from their point of view, hear their complaints, then dismiss them.
Today's video: Dove Street Kingsdown to Broadmead, by way of the Marlborough Street Bus station.
Notice that in Dove Street, those vans parking 3/4 on the pavement ensure that passing bicycles do not get hit by open doors, and make it easier for passing vehicles to get by them.
The Honda LG57XPV that appears to pull out without indicating before veering across the road is not victimising the cyclist, it would behave the same regardless of whoever was behind it. While driving along, had its brake lights on, "tourist lights" as we call them, which warn the vehicles behind that it is planning something.
Pulling in to Dighton Street at 1:00 we see a line of bicycles using this road to avoid the St James Barton Roundabout/Bearpit options, or to head over to Clifton without cycling over the big hills. [Incidentally, we hear a rumour that the Bristol Cycling Campaign, as well as promising free drinks at their EGM on Thursday, are planning a Bastard-Hills-of-North-Bristol ride that will not avoid those climbs].
At 1:20 the instrumented cyclist and another cyclist both slide past a taxi to occupy the remaining half of the ASL. This does not leave room for the two other cyclists following. What will they do?
At 1:28, the cycling-chic woman passed earlier appears to be having braking problems, as her bike only stops after she has shot halfway over the junction. Notice how she stops by putting both feet on the ground. That means fixed-speed or broken brakes. Given that cars are still heading across this road from the right hand side, only three sets of lights/two junctions from the M32, everyone anticipating a bit of speed, this is a brave things to do, she has earned her ghostrider label.
At 1:35 we see that the vehicle waiting to turn right is in fact a police car. Presumably our little ghostrider was too busy looking for cars from the right to worry about what cars were waiting to turn.
At 1:41, the police car pulls forward, and by 1:45 is parallel with the rider. Is she going to get told off?
No, it turns right, as do the vehicles behind. Even the lorry at 1:57 doesn't clip her, despite her being positioned on the inside of the bend
At 2:02 the high speed sprint of a van through the lights tells us that they have just gone red for that lane, and that the bicycles will now get a green light, which kicks in a couple of seconds later.
At 2:06 our camera enhanced cyclist sets off and never sees the ghost rider again. She had not only tried to cycle across the red light and the lanes of traffic, she had positioned herself so she could not see the lights, and so missed them changing.
Our cyclist uses the bike lane until it ends, and is then forced to turn off the road, to go down Whitson Street to the bus station. There then follows 30 seconds of dullness.
Where things get entertaining again is 2:44, where the bicycle is in the bus and bike only lane heading towards Broadmead. They have a red light. Will they wait? Or has the previous junction given them ideas?
They wait for three seconds, then veer over to what appears to be a pedestrian crossing -but actually has a bicycle on it. Therefore we must sadly conclude that this bit of crossing on bike is legal, and we can not report it to the police.
We are not so sure, however, about the pavement riding they do afterwards. They do not go straight on, where they would encounter the car, but instead veer left past some phone boxes, over the bus lane and then on some more pavement. We were beginning to get hopeful again, but then saw that they were actually riding up to some bicycle specific traffic lights -which were going green- and then they set off again, into Horsefair and hence Cabot Circus.
As you can imagine, we are unimpressed by the cyclist who ran the first red light. Not only was it dangerous, it didn't gain anything. At least when we speed in a car we get something in exchange -the feeling of speed, reduced journey time. She got nothing, and forgot to keep an eye out for police cars. The second junction though, leaves us confused. The bicycle clearly went up on the pavement, over a pedestrian crossing, on some more pavement and then up to some lights. We do not whether to be
Upset about the behaviour of the cyclist
Upset that an anti-car council added these features
Confused by the fact that these features seem to not be at all rational. Surely to make it easier to get from the bus station to broadmead, the crossing lights would be on the left of the junction, so the bicycle would not have to zig-zag everywhere? We suspect the lights were put in on a budget to help tax-dodgers head the other way.
We have decided to go for all three options. Bristol Traffic: confused and upset.
There's been some new report published about bike lanes. Here is one of Bristols, underused by bicycles despite all the money put on a stretch between the building works on Dighton Street
And the junction with Marlborough Street. Despite all the money put in to supporting these tax-dodgers, for some reason, they don't use them. That really annoys us.
This new paper claims that cars drive closer to bicycles when there is a bike lane, as it creates a clear expectation in the driver that the bicycle will stay in the bike lane, regardless of its width or quality, while when they are not in lane, the driver has to make their own decision as to how to pass them, and they get more room. For cycling campaigners, it is an argument against bike lanes, the other being these lane's tendancy to vanish when the road gets complicated.
We in Bristol Traffic are against bike lanes for another reason. They create unrealistic expectations in the cyclists -that there are bits of the road there for them, and advertises to pedestrians and morally weak car drivers that there is some alternative to driving.
This is of course untrue. There is no bit of the road "for them". It is all for us, the road tax payer. We paid for it, so we can use it when we need it. That includes the bike lane and the pavements.
Take this contraflow on Cotham Hill. There is a delivery vehicle WU58OVZ doing something important. Does the cyclist stop and wait patiently? No they do not! They swerve into the oncoming lane. This bicycle is now illegally going down a one-way street. How can such criminals deserve respect?
Some people view build outs on bike lanes as inconvenient and dangerous.
On Jamaica Street, for example, the buildout contains a tree, which forces you to be even further out -beyond the designated bike area.
Yet greenery in the city is to be cherished, and by pushing bicycles out of the bike lane, they are out of car door range of the Ford Ka W947MCU
And later on, this BMW YK52BPP, a car that its positioned carefully to stop the small child from running off the dropped kerb and into any bicycle that has swerved back in to lane
The buildout and tree is therefore protecting the pedestrians, the cyclists and the paintwork of the cars.
Update 19-may-2009: Ian W says "Those 2 pictures are on Dighton Street....It's becomes Jamaica Street at Kings Square." Thank you!
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