Should we fear the new mayor of City Hall?

A letter hits our inbox:

I know you may have concerns that our new mayor doesn't have the need of the city's important car drivers close to his heart.

Hopefully this picture of him parking his car on double yellow lines in a bus stop will put your mind at ease.

I'd feel more comfortable if he was driving a 4x4 or transit van rather than an electric Smart car, but you can't have everything.

Looks good to us: he's already got a bicycle and a pedestrian in front of the car, ready to run them over.

Parking enforcement changes at schools

This event made the E.P. last week, although this photo dates from the week before: it's a sign up outside a school warning that the parking rules will be changed according to plans CAE/MLS/P/586, listing half the primary schools in the city

What's interesting is that this plan is not up online. An email to the planning people came up negative. A quick email to the planning people got bounced over to traffic management, and since then, silence. Perhaps they too don't believe in this email thing.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: customerservices ptsd
Date: Tue, Apr 28, 2009 at 9:18 AM
Subject: Re: School stopping order proposal CAE/MLS/P/586


Hello
I have forwarded your email to Traffic Management as I believe they arrange stopping up orders. You can contact them on 0117 9036822 email traffic.management
regards
Claire
Customer Services

>>> 27/04/2009 18:58 >>>
Hello,

I'm trying to find out about the School stopping order proposal
CAE/MLS/P/586, whose details I have seen pinned up outside a school. I
can't seem to find it under the planning portal Does it exist
somewhere else on the web site?

Since then, the string "CAE/MLS/P/586" does turn up one interesting article, namely a discussion in the Bemmy Forum on the topic. The schools will be going from a voluntary yellow zig zag to something enforceable.

Judging by the discussion, everyone in Bemmy thinks it is good, though it may inconvenience people driving to George Ferguson's Theatre down there. It will be interesting to see what the reaction elsewhere is.

Incidentally, there is also the problem that "theoretically enforceable" does not imply "enforced". Most parents quite happily park on double yellows near schools today because they know that unless they see a parking services team standing there, all is well. If this enforced school parking plan coincides with rollout of CCTV enforcement from passing vehicles, it would become possible for BPS to do a drive-by enforcement of these zones at dropoff and pickup time of every primary school once or twice a fortnight. Which would be frequent enough for the markings to be considered real.