Hotwell's future in a divided city

Bristol is a divided city.

It's divided between North -especially North West- Bristol where the professionals who moved into the city into the city in the 1980s and 1990s settled, and those parts of the city, where families have lived for generations.

It's divided by the future options in life which children going up North of the river have, compare to those in forgotten places like Hartcliffe.

It's divided by air quality, where people who live outside the air quality management area and drive into or through the centre, then get home expressing how glad they are they don't live in the polluted zone, while complaining that even the delayed and inadequate antipollution plans reluctantly produced by the mayor's office an unacceptable attack on their right to drive to work.

It's divided into those people who live in the city and likely to walk, cycle or take the bus, and those people who live in out-of-town dormitory villages. The latter opted for a mock-rural life with an expectation that driving to work in the city should be easy and free. Really, who moved to Portishead without noticing that the A369 is a traffic jam morning and evening because everyone else had the same idea? Who buys a little Georgian something in Chipping Sodbury and then drives to work down the M4 and A4174 without expecting the roads to be moving 30 mph in the rush hour -and why the fuck do you think the rest of us really want to hear about this fact every fucking morning?

Hotwells is one of those places where the division in transport choices are so starkly apparent.


The Plimsoll Bridge: one of the key ways people drive from South to North Bristol -and vice versa, and the way those North Somerset extra-urban commuters can bring their overweight SUVs from their two-cars-per-household mock rural semi-detached houses into what ever office car park they somehow get to park their oversized vehicles.



Alongside it, the Merchants Road Bridge: how people on foot and bike get between the two halves of the city. Visiting it on Saturday, apart from one or two cars heading to or from Spike Island -the majority of traffic was people are using their own legs to get them over.

Admittedly, the Nova Scotia, the Pump House, and The Cottage seem popular destinations for the pedestrians, so legless could well be final state of the journey -but what better places to enjoy a bevvy or four than the waterside pubs in quiet and historic part of the Harbour?


On a bike, you can carry on over the now reopened "Create Centre Bridge" and then on to points south and west (east is a topic for another post). It's here that the literal stratification of transport choices becomes so apparent. While the people in their cars, are busy wondering which lane to take, under the flyover, people are walking and cycling around without anyone cutting them up.


There is a BMX area for those with skills, and a pump trail, for children and adults alike to enjoy trying to negotiate its bumps and berms in a lovely setting. None of this is apparent to people in their cars.


Which group of people do you think are behind these proposals to destroy Hotwells? Is it the families that bring a small kids down on scooters to enjoy the pump trail? Is it people crossing the Create Centre and the merchants road bridges on their e-bikes, ready to -somehow- get into the city centre unscathed? No. It's those business executives who live either in North Somerset villages, or corners of Clifton, and who only ever see the bridge for more than 30 seconds when they're stuck in traffic jam. Which is why they don't seem to have any qualms about destroying what is a key walking and cycling connection point between the two cities -North Bristol and Greater Bemmy. They won't even know it's there, except on some footnote of page 20 on a report; a report they stopped reading on page 3 once the cost of building a tunnel became apparent, the fact that repairing the existing bridge wouldn't make the money became obvious --and that there was some land adjacent to the river which nobody important seemed to be using.


Yes, the council did donate that land "to the people" in the 1960s to compensate for the bits of the park they'd used for the interchange -but they didn't have spreadsheets in that era. We do now, and they send a message to those people who look at numbers on screens in the day, and think about those numbers as they queue on the A370 en route to the newly opened traffic jam that is the new Southern Link Road.


What we're seeing here is one of those moments when we get to decide what city we want to live in. The attempts to convert the railway path into the first of the Metrobus routes was the last time we really got this. A council deciding that a bus route, was more important then anyone trying to walk or cycle into the city, that East Bristol didn't really need its parkland, not when it held up commuters from Emersons Green.

So what city do we want? We can see what city the mayor wants. We just don't understand why he has chosen to represent the car-first commuters are North Somerset and profit-first businessman of Clifton, ahead of the rest of us.

Hotwells: the Westernmost Outpost of Greater Bedminster

Hotwells -for that is the name of the undeveloped western harbour area- is part of Greater Bedminster.

Yes, much of it is north of the harbour, but it is on the flatlands, just north of the harbour.

While Clifton isn't that far away, it's a brutal climb up that Hill -and when you get there, there's only Clifton Village to show for it. Apart from the pubs, a chip shop, a very small library, and an underwhelming convenience store, there is not much there. If you live in Hotwells, and you choose to head south, you can you make your way to Asda, and buy food amongst the friendly community that always seems to be wandering those aisles. And nowadays, you have all of Southville to explore. Your parks and green spaces are also south of the Avon.

That's why the council plans for the Cumberland flyover are more than just changes in Hotwells, they are an attack on South Bristol. In particular, to propose putting a two- or four lane road alongside the Avon, through that green space which connects the Avon to Grenville park, is something straight out of 1970s Bristol road planning. Even Glasgow has backed off doing things that awful since the early 1990s (M77 and Pollok Estate, for the curious).

Our mayor is proposing destroying the unspoiled nature of the southern gorge. Proposing building a four-lane road over what today is the best view you get to the Clifton suspension bridge. Proposing making today's walking and cycling route from Hotwells to Bemmy yet another multi-lane bridge where are all walking and cycling facilities and be an afterthought. Yes, they mention "improvements to cycling", but without spelling them out -you know they'll be afterthoughts or extra lights we have to wait 15 minutes to cross the junction. And you know that as the cost of the project overruns, as the schedule overruns start to be measured in years -the "value engineering" of the project will result in the exact outcome which Avon Crescent got from their Metrobus promises: fuck all.

Why is he doing this? Because it is obvious to everyone with a spreadsheet, that large amounts of money could be made by building houses on the land which the flyover currently uses. The only way to turn flyover into profit is if you can think up another way to get people across the river. Clearly, and attempt to estimate how much a tunnel would cost to build has shown that even before you include the inevitable massive cost overruns, it's too expensive for the people hoping to profit from the land sales to fund -and nobody else is willing to. The only way you can convert that bridge into housing is if you find someone else to put the bridge. A nearby park and the side of the gorge which doesn't have traffic jams is the obvious solution -and if that doesn't work, there is always the bridge to Spike Island, which combined with knocking down some of the historical buildings of the harbour, gives you another place for the bridge. Obviously, if the council proposed building the houses on that parkland, they'd expect some resistance. Selling off the Plimsoll Bridge land space and then handwringing over how about road now need to go somewhere else lets some people make their money -too bad that South Bristol will lose a bit more of its green space and that the nice bits of Hotwells destroyed to put in the bridge which will be needed once the current bridge has been sold off for redevelopment.

So yes, we are opposed to this. Expect more coverage on this topic to follow

Bristol is not currently under water

As of 11:44, Bristol is not under water. It may well be at 20:45 tonight, or 09:20 Saturday morning

On Avon Crescent, the council are putting up a barrier with sandbags

 Somewhere we have some photos to scan of this road being under water in 1990. Hint, avoid living in places with names like "avon", "harbour", "river" or "mead" -as every so often the water comes back to remind you where the name came from.

The avon is full, though it is draining fast

 And it makes a good change from the normal mud-flat view of the area.

Presumably the A4 portway and Avon gorge cycle paths are places to avoid tonight.

If you do want a view of any floods tonight, although the Pump House is more photogenic, the Novia Scotia pub is a better place to drink beer. They often serve pints of Heavy on draught, to get the Auld Scotia feel.

The Friday Quiz - Who are the Sleepers?

It's over, of course, the Cold War. But the legacy remains.

This map is a Soviet rendition of Bristol. Before the Glorious Cumberland Basin intersection was built. Note the existing railway route through the docks and the city. Note that, with a little thought and investment, this infrastructure could have provided an efficient and sustainable rapid transit system, linking southern and central Bristol with Temple Meads. The Soviets knew this, and documented it.

Which is why, in 1969, Bristol City Council decided they had to foil the CCCP, and came up with their own Glorious Five Year Plan for the docks. Just look at what we're missing...

This vision of Utopia never happened.

Bristol Traffic asks - was the Council infiltrated by a fifth column? We know that Cycling City took another 40 years to complete. There must have been sleepers...

Harbour Frozen

The view by the Nova Scotia pub this week shows the harbour has a hint of Auld Scotia in it.

The ice is not quite thick enough to walk or drive on. Which makes us realise that it is time to get out the old plans to tarmac over the entire harbour, now we have a still-expanding one to the west. There will be room for a fast route for Portishead commuters to get into town, and the spare spaces could be used for parking. We could have a bus to take people the final half mile, call the parking Park and Ride and then even the vegetarian eco-hippies would have nothing to complain about.

Effective Propaganda

Contributor "O" says

I've been concerned about the way that the council have been using my taxes to produce cycling propaganda, with flags and banners up around the Harbourside. I am glad that the driver of WX54VZC has taken it into their hands to provide a counter-demonstration.

While cyclists are lobbying and agitating for more secure cycle parking, it is clear that you can just leave a 4x4 anywhere, without worrying about whether it will be there when you come back.

Cycle Chic? No, we want cyclistes miserables

Our calendar reminds us we haven't criticised Copenhagen Cycle Chic for a while, so it's time.

Driving to work isn't really that much fun. You are always stuck behind some other vehicle, and while you can make phone calls, the end of the month bill to latvian sex-chat lines can be pretty steep -lucky both the phone and the car is paid for by our employers.

What takes the edge off is seeing everyone not in a car looking more miserable. Pedestrians, traipsing along. If can spray them with a puddle, they look even more miserable. Bus users, standing by the bus stop, looking folorn -always heartwarming. And then the cyclists.

We know they can get across this town faster than driving, we know that it's cheaper. So how to retain the edge over them. Usually the rain does it for us. But what if it's not raining? Easy: make them dress silly, make them look different: an outgroup.

We want them to wear helmets and hi-viz clothing not just so that when someone goes under a lorry we can absolve the lorry driver of all blame "Were they wearing a helmet", as if that makes a difference when a 14T vehicle comes up behind the bike at the lights and sets off, over them. No we want them to look silly. We also want them to look silly when they get off the bike, so everyone laughs at them, so everyone knows they chose a silly form of transport as they waddle round in waterproofs and funny shoes.

This is why this photo of this couple on matching his- and her- single-speed bicycles is so depressing.

This is a sunny day in May. A couple like this, they should be aspiring to go somewhere in a T-reg vauxhaull corsa, a first car, learning to deal with the problems of car maintenance and traffic. Instead what are they doing? Enjoying themselves at the harbour. Looking happy. With each other. With their bicycles.

You see that. Cyclists. Happy. The two words should not go together

If the harbour had been turned into the four lane motorway that commuters from the M5 and portishead really need to get into the town centre, we wouldn't have had scenes like this: there would have been a proper motorway right behind them, feeding into the centre, where they are standing would have been more multistorey car parking -parking without which the tourists won't come to the city.

Yet what does the council do? Encourage them. Only Australia, with its newly increased fine for cycling without a helmet, is cracking down on tax-dodgers trying to cycle round cities in normal clothes. Let's hope this new government learns a lesson from the Aussies and comes down hard on these criminals.

After seeing this scene in the harbour we had to look at Crap Cycling in Waltham Forest for half an hour to feel better. Now there is a town that keeps cyclists and pedestrians in their place!

Parkland at The Hot Wells

Sometimes we feel this site is the only site that speaks up for Hotwells, the under-valued western end of the harbour.

Yet you can see that people travel distances to come and admire the flyovers, with the contrast between the modernist concrete and the Georgian terraces behind.

The old railway bridge, with the mud glistening underneath, is a place of peace and quiet to treasure before the BRT developments turn it into another piece of road.

And speaking of roads, what is this? An abandoned looking track with rubber surfacing, over the parkland?

According to some allotment people, it was put in to get some heavy machinery in, since they left it has been abandoned.

Not abandoned -we say it is the tooling needed to finally implement our vision of a new Hotwells: one with a skateboard/BMX park!

Best place to pick up pedestrians

If you are taxi, you make a living by picking up pedestrians. People walking. And where's the best place to find pedestrians? That's right.

On the pavement. Here taxi PK55JWC, taxi #2127 is doing exactly that on Commercial Road, leading up to the Bedminster Bridge Roundabout.

New Harbour Path feature

Despite the fact that the Rownham Mead Residents Association has fought hard for a barrier across the harbour bike path, here to stop cyclists getting past. Unfortunately, they still do -they do not take the hint. One barrier and a cyclists dismount sign is not enough to counter all that state-funded propaganda, those Bristol-cycling maps, that show this as a safe way to avoid the Hotwells roundabout and therefore get into town alive. Sterner Measures are called for.

Here are the new measures. Starting at the Hotwells Bridge and the Pump House Pub, there are some new grooves running over the path, just the right size and position to catch bicycles and drop them.

If they make it past this part, the path does a sharp left turn to ensure that there is no way to avoid the feature, therefore no way to avoid falling off.
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If there is one complaint we in Bristol Traffic could make about this, there seems little effort underway to measure the effectiveness of the design. If the residents really want to stop cyclists, they need some defensible data collection to go along with the experiments. Either sensors to measure the number of cyclists falling off, or just some bluetooth loggers to detect a reduction in the volume of cyclists. Yet they have not approached us to get recommendations for hardware or software for such an experiment -which implies to us that they are not being scientific.

Icing is bad for you

The news is out that the new Connect2/Sustrans route to the city will not bring the original Brunel Bridge back in to action, the "icing on the cake", but instead use the lock gates or a similar option.

Some people are unhappy about this. Not Bristol Traffic. Too much icing makes you fat.

We think that a narrow lock gate with exposed drops makes for an entertaining ride, especially the entry and exit points. Keeping the original bridge protected under the 1960s bridge stops more of the timbers rotting.

On an early winter evening (15:40), the low sun highlights both bridges.

And integrates them well with the other classic bridge photographs of the city. If more people took and publicised photographs of the Hotwells Flyover, it would be recognised as much a symbol of the city as the Clifton Suspension Bridge.

RTA at the harbour

Chris Hutt mailed this in: "This is from this evening 5 pm down outside the Museum of Bristol. A female cyclist has come off when crossing the rails where the points are. She and her husband are staying at the caravan park at the other end of the floating harbour, visiting Bristol (perhaps encouraged to cycle on the basis of the cycling City news?). Injuries turned out to be minor and she was eventually able to walk away"

The Evening Post recently had a two page special from some visitors to the city staying at the same caravan park, complaining about the bikes cycling along the mixed-use bits of the harbour. Perhaps this week's will have some other visitors, complaining about the quality of those mixed use bits of the harbour. The underlying problem is that railway tracks are slippery in the wet, and you really need to cross them at right angles rather than slide up alongside them -that drops you: hard, but according to Chris, fixable. The ongoing building works don't help as they constrain the route, and then there is the car access and parking which is viewed as essential to retain, forcing cyclists and pedestrians into a limited bit of the route -the place where things go wrong. And there is no north-of-harbour alternative yet.

The Evening Post cycling edition

Wenesday's Evening Post had a special on city centre cycling, one that has some great photos of trials bikers. They and the BMX riders -here at the project 360 event- are the most skilled riders in the city.

They are the best at technical work, better than the downhill MTB Riders who work the Still's Wood trails.

They also make for the best videos; the city centre bit of Roam is fantastic, and the bit the little one likes to watch -when I'm not making him cycle along the pavement.

The paper's text, under the photos, argued that bikers cycling in a shared use area -the harbour and centre- should actually be banned, somehow from riding a bike. And well they should. Look how much fun the riders are having. That is not the kind of enjoyment we want in a post-capitalist, post-functional-economy, neo-Keynsian country. We want everyone to sit at home in darkness. Its the 1970s way.