Bristol Pedestrians Association: the Evening Post Party?

We are fully aligned with the Evening Post: progress is good for the city, progress means roads, roads mean progress, and people on bicycles threaten this. Whether its on the pavement or the road, there should be laws against them.

If you look at the commentators on any article, you can see that most of the newspaper's web site's readers share these opinions; you can see from the complaints. But complaining isn't enough: Actions speak louder than Words. Which is why, while the rest of press was distracted, the Evening Post launched what appears to be its own political movement, the Bristol Pedestrians Association. The focus on this will be to act as a counterweight to the organised cycling lobby, and fight back against people cycling on pavements, including those bits on the city centre and coronation road where they put a bit of white paint on to add a bicycle path and expect everyone to be grateful.

We have mixed feelings about this party. On on the one hand, they seem to mirror many of our own writings, but rather than just complain, intend to act.

On the other, we worry about them. Just as both Labour and the Conservative parties turned on their leader, Rupert Murdoch, and their parent corporation, News International, could the Bristol Pedestrians Association ever turn on the Evening Post?

It may happen, if they ever look round the city and realise there may be other causes of problems on the pavements of the city, problems that force pedestrians into the road, where again, they their children in push chairs and their pets are at risk from cyclists.

Or they look at the statistics, and realise that while pedestrians and cyclists have died since this project was founded, all such deaths were a result of collisions involving motor vehicles, that this may be statistically significant, and therefore that other issues may need to be addressed first.

This is why the Evening Post needs to keep the group under control, to stop them going off-message. It's one thing creating conflict to derive web site viewers and hence advertising revenue, it's another to create threats to the status-quo.

Monty's pavements

If every vehicle length of Montpelier pavement has a 10% chance of being free, then the probability of a four vehicle length space being entirely free of vehicles is .1*.1*.1*.1 or 0.0001. Not zero, likely to happen eventually, but so unusual that when it does happen, here on Fairfield Road, it merits a note. [Incidentally, there is no field by Fairfield Road. The place name is all that remains].

Note also the abandoned sofa. These facilities aid walking around a hilly part of the city.

Elsewhere, on Picton Street, A&M Driving School car G55MAT is practising the problem of getting up onto the pavement, with only two vehicle lengths of free space to work with. This is quite tricky for a new driver -we congratulate this learner for their skill. Not so close to the houses that the doors get bashed, not so far out that passing vehicles are blocked. Nicely done!

Undercover Montpelier

Again, we send our undercover cyclist and pedestrians into the city streets. Unlike in the Panorama documentary, we aren't going to make them do some in-mirror filming where they cry about the hard time they got -that's because we don't care about their feelings. Instead we just watch with bemusement.

Here, then, is an evening crossing of Montpelier. The bike is apparently equipped with LED head lamps, though this doesn't show up well in the video. Fairfield Road, a zigzag on Richmond Road then a descent on York Road -with oncoming traffic- followed by a drop down Brook Hill and along Upper Cheltenham Place to join York Road again.

What does show up is that there isn't much through traffic, and what there is gives way to the bicycle. It's hard to say that Bristol persecutes cyclists when every one of the approaching vehicles comes to a halt. The photographer claims that this is due to the fact that "My LED helmet lights cause physical pain to drivers I look at", which is something we aren't sure about, though it is certainly possible that they may be stopping because they can't actually tell that it is an oncoming bicycle. We would have to do some A/B testing with different lighting options to reach a conclusion. For now we shall just assume that in this city everyone is gracious to bicycles, even though they are clearly inappropriate for these narrow city streets.

Note how at the end of the ride, the cyclist has the rudeness to tell off a car for driving round without lights. What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander we say, and if bicycles are going to nip round our streets without lights, not stopping at traffic lights or zebra crossings, then we car drivers should have the same privileges -and that includes the option of driving without lights. Its more environmentally friendly, you know.

However, that's not what we really want to cover. What we do want to raise is that Montpelier is simply too narrow for cars to get past bicycles, and that Picton Street-York Road-Fairfield Road route is not some residential road, it is the primary rat-run of Montpelier, cutting out two sets of utterly needless traffic lights and two mini roundabouts. If you want to get from Stokes Croft to Ashley Down hill, you are in a hurry and you know the back roads, this is the secret route to take. Yet all it takes is one single bicycle and there's suddenly a tail back of traffic, and all that time advantage is lost. The cars parked on either side of the road are as far over as they can be, and now with the police sending them threatening letters, it's going to be hard for them to provide any passthrough space for bicycles.

We should ban bicycles from those roads! This is a key through route in the city for well-informed locals, not some back route for bicycles. They should be forced to use Cobourg Road and Upper Cheltenham Place or Shaftesbury Avenue, not this, the main road through Montpelier. Especially during morning and evening rush hours. Banning bikes here would make it much easier to get a car over to St Werburgh's and then onto the Mina Road. Here's our proposal -red is the red-marked car route, green for the tax dodgers:

View Priority Routes Through Montpelier in a larger map

Those drivers trying to use this route are important revenue earners for the city -pootling cyclists aren't. And independent of whether or not this area gets 20 mph zones, oncoming bicycles delay cars here, and that costs all those people money. Ban them from the main streets in Montpelier -give them the back roads- and all will be well.

Who tows the tow trucks?

Nobody, by the look of things

You have to fix it wherever it breaks down.

Fortunately, the Eastern end of Fairfield Road, Montpelier is wide enough to sustain trucks, camper vans and caravans on both sides of the road, so it is not inconveniencing anyone.

What is scary is that someone was under this vehicle last night doing repairs, at night. Look how safely it is held up: bricks and a couple of bits of metal, and imagine what would happen if a passing vehicle were to accidentally clip it, all of that would come down on top of anyone unlucky to be underneath. Not good. This is why garages have lots of equipment to life up vehicles or pits to get underneath them.