Time to nip over to the BRI to see how the dropoff/bus only zone is working.
There's someone being helped into an hospital car; the one behind it is also marked as patient delivery. The lovely "lowered at both sides pavement space" is in use, and there's a car with a driver in it waiting for a space to come free.
The uphill pavement provides an excellent motorbike parking space.
This isn't incoveniencing pedestrians, as Brunel Flooring Limited, in WU050GS
If there is one fault -not enough pavement to go round.
Some drivers -such as the driver in LB53LTZ are being forced to double park
With the Goldfish "I don't remember what Murdoch said" Party council candidate saying more imagination is needed to solve Clifton's problems, well, let's see what can be imagined on the Mall.
Here we see a small car (a smartcar variant WR06EDP) double parked in front of a disabled car. It's not blocking that car, once they've managed to get in 10-15 minutes of zig-zagging will get them out.
Nearby, a little Nissan is echelon parked. There's a note in its windscreen.
On the other side, a Ford Focus CA60BHD double parked, a smaller car echeloned up to the pavement. The latter has the note in the windscreen.
Let's take a look at the note
Mall Gardens Residents Association
(MGRA)
Neighbourhood Watch
IMPORTANT NOTICE
CHEVRON/ECHELON PARKING
IF YOU ARE A RESIDENT OR REGULARLY
PARK IN THE MALL GARDENS YOU WILL BE
AWARE THAT THE MAJORITY OF RESIDENTS OPPOSE CHEVRON
PARKING NOT LEAST FROM HEALTH AND
SAFETY CONCERNS AND DAMAGE. YOU WILL
ALSO NOTICE THAT THE NUMBER OF CARS
CHEVRON PARKED IS DOWN TO A HANDFUL
INCLUDING YOURS. THE AVON FIRE SERVICES
ARE CONCERNED ABOUT ACCESS TO
EMERGENCIES IN THE AREA DUE TO THE
POOR PARKING
PLEASE HAVE CONSIDERATION FOR OTHERS
HAVE PATIENCE AND FIND A PLACE TO
PARALLEL PARK
PLEASE SUPPORT THE RESIDENTS ASSOCIATION
There you have it. Echelon Parking is a health and safety hazard, which is why some of the residents are so concerned about it that they have put together a lovely A4 note printed in colour which they carefully place in the windscreen of every echelon parked car, so as to encourage people to double parallel park instead.
Now, some cynics may note that echelon parking works well for small cars, whereas double parking works well for big cars too, so perhaps it's not a concern about health and safety so much as the owners of the big cars wanting to be able to park, and if everyone in a small car echelon parked they wouldn't be able to. We don't believe this. If the fire services are concerned about poor parking in the area then clearly it is echelon parking to which they are referring, and it is critical for these people to invest their own time and money into discouraging these selfish echelon parkers from endangering everyone.
What with the 20 mph zone and all, some people may think that Monty no longer welcomes vans.
Not so!
First, we are pleased to show the first ever double parking event recorded in Montpelier.
We didn't know it was technically possible, but with the BMW in the yellow line area and the van FH02EKZ up on the pavement, we have reclaimed Picton Street!
Round the corner, Picton Square.
Can you see that? A missing bollard. Finally it can be used again for short stay parking, instead of a wasteland for pedestrians. Today HY08UOK is celebrating this shared space.
Meanwhile, over in Montpelier St Werbughs, the council van RF58NRZ is showing others how to park on a corner with double yellow lines. The chosen parking option allows for excellent visibility and does not hinder the progress of other large vehicles.
YA55VDY is a cult van to us. Never seen to park legally, instead encountered driving up onto pavements, sounding its horn at pedestrians to get out of the way. A delivery van's delivery van.
Yet what should we see on our travels round the city than this very van outside the Star And Garter pub, Montpelier
That's right. The famous van, parked kerbside, on a road with no yellow markings. No wheels on the pavement.
This is a shocking site, and makes us question the entire delivery model of Medina dairies "avoid refrigeration by driving fast and parking close to the shops".
Fortunately, we have evidence that the van driver's colleague who has the Dovercourt Road delivery knows what to do with the van LK08LDN
When given a choice between parking legally in a gap four times the length of your vehicle or double parking, go for the easiest option.
A lot of cyclists complain about "Echelon parking" as the cars and vans reversing out can hit cyclists. Our solution: ban cyclists, isn't being taken up, here on Whiteladies Road, so alternative solutions are being investigated.
We are pleased to see that the Saab KC03TKN and the Range-Rover behind it are doing their best to reduce risk here by double parking alongside the echelon-parked vehicles. Any bicycle that can get past them will be confident that no vehicles will reverse into them during the operation.
Such cyclists may be pleased to know that some extra echelon parking will be provided behind the camera, so ensuring that the roll-out of a bus lane doesn't remove any parking spaces from the urban realm. Indeed, when combined with the double parking option seen above, there may actually be more short-stay parking than ever before.
There are now signs up in Kingsdown discussing the details of the proposed RPZ. Looks like it is going there after all.
Where it is not going, as the locals rightfully resisted it, is here, Hampton Park, behind Whiteladies Road.
As the keep-parking-free campaign points out, any imposition of an RPZ would take away traditional parking areas, such as the pavement in front of the house used by N11AMO on the left, or the double parking area on the right of the photo, in use by M910HPJ and a builder's van. Unless an RPZ proposal can be made that grandfathers in such traditional parking options, the RPZ proposals will take away parking spaces from the residents.
This (attached) is why we citizens of Cliftonwood voted against the CPZ.
That kind of blunt one-size-fits-all approach wouldn't allow for the fact that somewhere like Ambra Vale is wide enough for perpendicular parking on one side of the road and double parking (like FL09NLN and K837XPJ) on the other and still has enough space for a bunch of layabouts - sorry, students - to sunbathe.
We are disappointed by the absence of the kingsdown dark-winter-ritual-tree
-we fear our publicity has made them more self conscious; that they will practise indoors, out of site of outsiders. This makes sense, most of Bristol views sacrificing goats and small children as excessive at this time of year, though given a choice between that and watching X-Factor, it's not that clear cut. Anyway, it means Kingsdown is looking a bit less seasonal.
Fortunately, over in Montpelier, other ancient rituals are being remembered, and coming out into the open. Here we see, in "Picton Square", the return of the traditional "Painted Christmas Bollard"
The tradition of bollards and bollard-painting may date from the Crimean War, when the great "Bollarda Sebastopolnya" was one of the spoils of war, a giant iron obelisk brought back from the city of Sebastopol in the Crimea and dragged round the towns of England, before being stood up in Bristol docks, our equivalent of Cleopatra's Needle in London. Sadly the demand for iron in WWII meant that it was melted down, and all we have to remember it is the models, scattered round the city, where they serve a largely ceremonial role.
Most of the year, nobody knows what they do, but here, in the runup to Christmas, they have been painted in bright colours, to celebrate the Montpelier Double Parking area, here used by L008YXR and Y204HAE. Someone has also put a ceremonial traffic cone on the removable bollard. Normally these cones are worn by statues, but as the students have gone away for a few weeks, they have been moved to other parts of the city.
Following on our campaign against zebra crossings, we find ourselves forced to start new campaign "Save Double Parking!". The anti-car council has come out against double parking as being dangerous and anti social. Maybe but for residents is the only way to park a car after the morning school run, and for commuters, its the only way to park a car with all the legal spaces taken up by those selfish residents who don't drive to school or work, so freeing up spaces.
Every cyclist who owns a car and goes round being smug, "I pay my road tax", is missing the point. The car they've paid the road tax for is on the road somewhere, that's the rectangle of tarmac they have rented, and by not using it they are inconveniencing not just the vehicles they hold up on their crawl round town, but those commuters who rely on the spaces they create.
Returning to the double parking problem, the BBC have an article calling it anti-social, an article that includes this road as an example: We don't normally cover double parking, and when we do we never name the roads. Those streets where you can get away with it are secrets we do not dare share, as then we will have nowhere to park. Certainly this road looked familiar.
The buildings look Cliftony, possibly university area, the road is wide and quiet with an RV on the left, opposite a smartcar. Time to send a query off to our petabyte scale datacentre to see what shows up -and yes, we know this road. It's Belgrave Road, BS8.
View Larger Map What's interesting about this road is why was it chosen? Did the council have to tip off the journalists that this road was trouble? Was in in fact staged purely to push out new CPZ/RPZ restrictions, our very own WMD-for-iraq claim?
We have a theory there. Belgrave road is right next to the BBC. The journalists just popped out for 30 seconds to get a couple of pics and then went back in, job done. Of course, that does not mean that the photo was not staged. More research is needed.
This is where our new experiment to instrument cyclists and pedestrians in the city has begun to pay off. By having them filming themselves, we can review exactly what they've done wrong, from their own position. This is a lot easier than filming them ourselves, as it is really hard to hold a camcorder steady while driving through Montpelier, especially when you are trying to text someone. We just let the bikes do the work, then later get the pics. Up until now most bike filming has been written by the cyclists, always whining about something or other, such as this Glaswegian Magnatom, who has taken up the classic sport of that city -starting fights with strangers- out of the bars, and onto the roads. We aren't like that. We will criticise the cyclists and any other tax-dodging subversives we see.
Here then, is our ride-by of this road, where we can say that yes, it looks like a good place to double park. Nobody seems to mind, and it's handy for the BBC. This is important if you are Noel Edmonds, on a visit to the competition to see if your latest idea for a Saturday evening show has got any interest. The video was taken ten days ago, in term time, so if the council staged the entire double parking scene, they kept it up outside the BBC for a long time -it probably is genuine.
Analysing this video, we see a number of events which concern us
At 0:06 a tax-dodging cyclist -correctly dressed in hi-viz and helmet- sticks her arm out to force a Mercedes to stop its manoeuvre, a turn into the bus lane. This was a premium car, and clearly belongs to someone important -possibly Noel Edmonds himself. All the cyclists should have given way, and not held up this car by being in front of them in the bus lane.
At 0:13 we see a skateboarder on the road. Again, another form of tax-dodging
At 0:31 we see a Vauxhall Zafira being forced to brake hard after overtaking the bicycle.
Throughout the sequence, we see pedestrians crossing the road -only one of them is wearing hi-viz clothing.
Event #3 concerns us, the car which has to put their foot down to swing past the bicycle, then cut in , apparently to double park right in front of them. If the cyclist had not been pootling up this double-parking-friendly road at 5 mph, the driver would not have been forced to take such action. It is not environmentally friendly having to accelerate and brake like this, showing that while bicycles themselves may not be polluting, they cause the other vehicles in the city to waste more fuel, to pollute the city more.
We can see then, in 46 seconds, how a couple of bicycles can hold up the journey time of cars, be they important cars who need to use the Bus Lane, or merely someone who needs to double park outside the BBC offices. It is bad enough that these cyclists are allowed to do this, that they do not pay any tax, let alone compensate us for our lost time -now we see that the council is trying to take away our right to double park. Furthermore, the video showed how pedestrians, cyclists and even skateboarders are trying to take our roads away from us. We must resist!
It's nice to see that the Shared Use area is being used effectively on Cotham Road, now that term time is started.
It can be used by parents dropping their kids off at the Steiner School. We have seen them argue with Parking Services whenever an attempt is made to discourage this, and clearly this term BPS are avoiding the area, so helping harmony develop.
First, the parents use the "buses only" parking area -respected by residents and commuters- for their short stay work
What happens when buses come, cynical viewers may ask? That's simple, they just double park in front of the commuters, just above the build-out indented to help pedestrians to cross.
Doesn't that make it harder for walking schoolkids to cross? not really. There is now parking for those parents who wish to drive to school. More subtly, they make what is otherwise a fast and dangerous road to cross one-way-alternating-traffic. Parents who wish to endanger their children and slow down tax-paying road traffic by walking them to school can now actually cross this wide and fast road more easily
This shows how a mixed use: school-run-parent and bus parking area can actually enhance all school transportation options.
This site is not satire or sarcasm: it is documentary. When we praise someone for finding a new solution to the problem of where to leave their chosen transport option when not in use -we mean it. We do like novelty and entertainment, however, which is why we despair at the sight of the Montpelier Range-Rovers every time one of us passes Picton street -what else is there to say about them except give them names and try and spot them parked anywhere else in the city?
No, what we need is novelty and entertainment. Which is why we are very, very grateful for the Peugeot N10L0S on Hanbury Road/Eaton Crescent this fine February morning, for introducing a whole new concept to Bristol Parking: Double Corner Parking It's not that obvious when you approach, just a car at the end of the road with a pedestrian trying to get through the gap between it and the car to the left But look sideways on -you can see that even when another pedestrian has squeezed past, the front of the car is still a car-length away from blocking the pavement. This car's driver has given up trying to find a space in the part of Clifton that opted not to become resident's parking, and just stopped in the road. It's not far off that Will Smith zombie film where everyone pulled over to the side of the New York streets before turning into flesh-eating killers, leaving Will Smith to drive round the empty roads at speed. Looking from Eaton Crescent, the sheer boldness of the parking manoeuvre becomes apparent. The car is just stopped in the middle of the junction, seemingly left there all night. To turn left here you will have to swing out into the oncoming lane then pull out slowly, visibility being done for in the process.
This is more than corner parking, it is a whole new concept, something like "random junction parking", though sadly that isn't as catchy. But think if the idea does catches on? Right now, every corner: room for one more car. With this, two cars. Really wide junctions, three cars.
The best bit, if enough cars park over the junction, then it becomes a de-facto shared space/home area.
Clearly, this piece of innovative parking is a profound new development in the city's portfolio of places and ways to park. Is it a coincidence that this new way to implement shared-spaces gets rolled out the same week we get a new local government? We suspect not.
The sight in The Mall, Clifton, is shocking. It must have been terrible here on Friday, given the damage all around village. It is surprising it hasn't made the national news: tens of drivers forced to abandon their cars in the streets of Clifton, as the snow closed the city down. Even on Sunday, these cars haven't moved. The cars GK02ULL and R163PHG are stuck where their owners were forced to abandon them in the middle of the road. There's still 10+ cm of snow around cars like Y961DBW, so there's clearly been no attempt at rescuing these cars. In other parts of the city, things are settling down to normal. But here, everything is still chaos. Why has Clifton and its cars, cars like X984CAE, V431HKY and X292KUY been abandoned? Why has Bristol City Council not come to the rescue of Clifton?
Equally shocking: why has the local press not picked up on this scandal?
Half an hour after TG was encountering grief on Horfield Road, Cotham Road was downgrading from a wide street with room to pass to a narrow one-lane only road, a Montpelier-class street. Why? Cars not making it up the hill.
This audi got towed out by a Landrover, so I didn't get to rent out my beloved Z-Chain snow chains -"best snowchains of the Pacific Northwest". More to the point, I didn't have to get on my hands and knees and fit them, which is always the miserable part of the process, especially if passing cars are chucking up slush in your face.
You get a good view of the cars here. I've just helped get another car out of the road and parked when the Herbert's Bakery Delivery van "getting you your baguettes" got stuck and then three of us were pushing it away from parked cars. It gave up trying to get up and opted to reversing down safely, which created more problems for the cars behind, especially those in it blind spot. Once you stop, you stay stopped.
The Z-chains site has some good winter advice, which is worth reading. In the PNW states of Oregon, Washington and Idaho they don't grit, they plough the top layer and put signs up saying "cars with chains or 4WD with winter tyres only". The hills of Bristol should have had them today.
Other tips they don't mention
Walking is a practical and convenient travel option
Use 2nd gear, not first for pulling out.
When any "traction control" light starts flashing, pull over and put chains on or start your walk
Don't stop on an uphill. Keep your speed up
On a downhill, keep those wheels rolling.
4WD does nothing for your stopping distance if you lock the wheels.
If you have a front wheel drive with chains on, the back of your car still fishtails badly if you turn fast. You need good tyres on the back.
Have fun out there. Send the photos to bristol.traffic at gmail dot com
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