Some of the Easter preparations of the city can be seen by this man walking down Tyndall Avenue with a cruicifix.
You can just make out at the base of the cross a wheel, so that when this man walks around the city, it isn't so much hard work.
What kind of penance and suffering is that if you are going to pull a wheeled cross round the city?
At least this believer has recognised that as soon as you start to travel round the city with any form of human powered wheeled device, you are at risk of being run over by people who have paid for the right to be there. This is why he is wearing a bright hi-viz top to walk around our city's streets
Like we said, we don't suspect anyone associated with the
Bristol Cycling Campaign to have done this, as S Gloucs council has a
process for dealing with those people:
There is a monthly cycling forum, to which the activist cycle and the area's cycling advocate drives.
The cycling campaigners complain while the council staff nod and draw doodles on their notepads.
The campaigners' complaints get ignored.
The council staff drive home to their nice houses, laughing.
The cyclists pedal home in the rain, wondering what went wrong.
No, this was done by criminals out there, acting without control, without checks and balances, without morals.
Who could it be?
According to the anonymous supplier of the photographs it was the People's Cycling Front of South Gloucestershire
They are not to be confused with the South Gloucester Popular Cycling Front, who was shopping at the Sainsbury's superstore nearby at the time.
We are disappointed that such clearly dangerous people could get close to an MoD site without being arrested.
Have any other subversives been taking to the street in our fair city, harassing motorists, taxi and lorry drivers on their important missions, parents trying to get their children to school by car safely, street designers trying to improve the streets for all these people? Reporting of such outrages to the Bristol Traffic site are welcome, so we can document the fall of our city into lawlessness.
Given the fact that the students and the schoolkids are now out protesting -often after dark- we need to think how to deal with more pedestrians on the road.
Here we see some of the students outside the Senate House, Tyndall's Avenue, which they have occupied part of.
Not one of them is wearing a hi-viz top!
Across the road, there is a minor police presence: one horse.
The police know how dangerous the city streets are -which is why both they and the horse are wearing hi-viz, though we are saddened to see that the rider isn't wearing a helmet.Do they not realise how dangerous horse-riding is? It is from the fort at the end of the path that Prince Rupert of the Rhine surrendered Bristol to the Parlimentarians -the people- and then rode off to wales for safety.
Fortunately, we are aware of such safety issues, and in conjuction with the local councils and the Evening Post, we are pleased to announce a new Christmas Gift: discounted high viz tops. These are available at discount rates, and different sizes. Imagine how your children's eyes will light up when they get their first hi-viz top! As for the students, well, if they are to get in the way of cars driven by important people, they need all the hi-viz they can afford!
Sainsbury's Local is now open in Gloucester Road, so you can "shop locally" without having to go into local shops. Of course, any one who does this will miss out on the pain-au-chocolat which the Bread Store has raised to an art, but sometimes you're in too much of a hurry to queue for them or talk to the staff.
What the new shop does have, and presumably will have the cyclists and students of Bishopston happy, is a contraflow bike lane just next to the shop, here on Elton Road. You can just see it under the HSS Hire van NA09EZJ.
Presumably the driver was worried about cyclists in a hurry endangering these new shoppers, who would be unused to such things, so he has positioned himself for the safety of these pedestrians. The fact that he is wearing hi-viz shows he recognises how cyclists on a the pavement can endanger pedestrians, and how it is important to be visible to them.
To make this an unbiased process, what we did was invite some of the cycling activists in the city to see what feature they hated the most, and gave the prize to that feature. Here they are, Terry and Chris on the right, talking to Adam Crowther of Bristol Council, about the Zetland Road junction that got nominated for the award.
This is where Bristol Council lost the race. Because they are going to try and fix things by changing the signal times slightly. Not just for the cyclists, but pedestrians too. While the troublemakers were loitering, one of these pedestrian people came up and joined in. She saw the hi-viz people with clipboards and assumed they were professionals, so came up and joined in with her own problems.
Apparently vehicles turning right from Zetland Road have nearly run over pedestrians who have the green man to cross the bit of the A38 the cars are using. She wanted it fixed, yet the obvious solution: don't give pedestrians a cross phase, didn't get a mention. That was it, the final straw.
Here is Cllr Jon Rogers, still smiling, still thinking he is in with a chance at winning the prize a junction where the police ticket bicycles for cycling on a pavement that cars can park on, and a light sequence designed to kill tax dodgers. But if they plan to stop the tax dodgers dying, it's lost our vote.
Chris Hutt breaks the news. Apologies for the sound quality and wobbly camera, but we had to get out of our truck for the video, and we were shivering a bit in the bitterly cold wind. The key point: he promises to do better next year.
We must also say, gracious in defeat. Always handy in a politician that.
More people surveying Cheltenham Road, here on a weekday evening
You know they are on official business as (a) they are parked on the pavement, where they don't interfere with passing traffic and (b) the hi-viz clothing.
There's an interesting question there: you can see from this photo how reflective clothing makes car drivers and passengers more visible, even inside the vehicle. Should we therefore demand that not only are hi-viz tops mandatory on cyclists and pedestrians, should we demand it in car drivers and passengers too?
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!
Evening on the 'croft. now the line of deck chairs is full of a different shift of traffic engineers, all sporting their Bristol Traffic approved Hi-Viz tops, enjoying the evening sun with a faint hint of FirstBus diesel.
When asked "how did they get their cars onto the pavement without driving the wrong way down a one way road", they said "We have dispensation". Clearly doing a traffic survey not only allows you to park on pavements -seen that before- but drive a car down a one way street, all for the sake of the experiment. This must be a very powerful dispensation.
What could be so powerful as to give the cars HD02OVG and X636FWP the ability to drive and park where they like? For that is a power that everyone in Bristol would love to have.
Only one thing has that power: Hi-Viz tops. Admit it -if they weren't in the shiny yellow, they wouldn't be people in positions of authority, they wouldn't have respect from the population. This is why everyone should embrace the yellow tops -they are the first step to achieving power and influence in this city.
Following some comments earlier, I can reveal I will be doing Hi-Viz tomorrow night...
Having just received the following email:
Subject: Reminder: Critical Mass on Friday
Just a wee reminder about the Critical Mass bike ride on Friday!
Still a little time to spread the word... and remember to decorate your bike (and/or yourself) in some way if you get chance - anything from a couple of ribbons to a full-on costume would be fantastic!
As always we meet at the fountains opposite the Hippodrome from 5.30 and set off at 6pm.
On our previous post on Bristol Cycling Chic, we got some wonderful feedback from the Copenhagen cycling chic team, who accused us of having a high-viz fetish; that our interests in bright green outer wear was somehow unhealthy:
And your fetish for hi-viz and other gear is odd and by promoting it you are merely stunting the growth of bicycle culture. Where are your photos of pedestrians in hi-viz or your calls for them to wear these things?
Good point. We haven't been covering the pedestrians properly. Consider this posting a correction.
Interestingly, since we were denounced, traffic to the site, indeed that post has been fairly high. The initial thought was that our philosophy had taken seed across Europe, and soon even in Amsterdam and Copenhagen people would be riding round in hi-viz tops and budget Lidl waterproof trousers.
But no, that turns out not to be the reason for the sudden surge visitors. A quick look at the search keywords that bring people to the site shows the real driver. If you type "High-Viz fetish" into your favourite search engine, Bristol Traffic comes out on that first page. Clearly enough people have been doing exactly that, that it's been bringing a whole new audience to the site.
We can but welcome these new viewers, with their special interests, and invite to Bristol, where they will blend in, on foor or bike.
Those who are about to put on High-Visibility clothing, we salute you!
The SmartCar BJ03NFU caught our eye at 17:51 on a weekday, nestling under the trees on the yellow-lined build-out where Arley Hill meets Gloucester Road. Parking Services will have knocked off for the evening, but we should still add it to the dataset
Except look -whoever is driving it is still there, and wearing genuine Bristol Traffic Hi-viz clothing, for safe car driving. A closer look is needed.
After a quick discussion, it's clear that the car is apparently parked on the pavement with the permission of the police, and it has a piece of A4 paper in the windscreen to prove it.
Well, if all it takes is a hi-viz top and access to a colour printer to park on the pavement, we have just solved the parking problems of Bristol. Or at least Bristol Traffic!
Over the last month, two Cycling Chic blogs have appeared
Bristol's Cycle Chic. This is currently a fetish site about a fairly old-school bike. An obsession with a specific vehicle is perfectly natural, though it may not be something one wishes to share
Bristol Cycling Chic. This is an collection of pictures of bristol cyclists on their day to day rides, to show that you can get around town in your daily clothes
Both are, sadly, flawed -if their ambition is to be as popular as Copenhagen Cycle Chic.
Copenhagen chic is the incredibly popular web site showing photos of Danish women cycling round their city in their fur suits and boots or high heeled shoes -it is now one of the most popular European city cycling advocacy sites. Or is it? Because the main driver of web traffic is not the bicycles, it is the tall, blonde beautiful scandinavian women on them. A web site showing the same women pushing shopping trolleys round the city "Copenhagen shopping trolley chic" would be equally popular. A nokia-backed mobile phone service delivering a photo a day of Finnish women using the latest nokia phones on their daily Helsinki travels would sell better than their music subscription service. It is not about the bikes, its the women. Which is fine for many of us -although it is unfair that there is not a sibling site showing all the danish men on their bikes.
Now, why does Copenhagen Chic show the women in fur coats and the like? Because they are practical in that city. Copenhagen is one of the North sea cities -like Amsterdam it is flat, and in winter dry but bitingly cold.
Compare with Bristol. We have wetter weather, can do with being seen by car traffic, and the people just aren't as pretty. Sad but true. In our city, we also get rain all too often. A waterproof and visible top is very practical -and not just for cycling. It is good when walking round town, as are a nice pair of gore-tex hiking boots. That is Bristol Cycling Chic: a phrase we first used, and lay claim to. We just don't normally photograph people cycling around in the rain because it gets the camera wet, and we don't normally photograph people cycling around as they are ugly and it isn't that funny. But if needs we, we can adapt.
Here then, is someone cycling through a red light on Cheltenham Road at 17:44 on April 21. They need that high-viz top as they are picking their way through gaps in the traffic of cars coming off Arley Hill.
Similarly, when the Bath Buildings road gets the green light, that traffic has to deal with the next person running their red lights, here wearing a fairly grubby pullover that will look the same after a few more months of use. They are both wearing a helmet, because that may save your life if a car pulling out of either of these junctions were to hit the cyclist.
One more bit of cycle chic, here in Bath Buildings, watching all of this.
White van WN58HWW has pulled entirely into the bike ASL lane while the light was red, and is sitting their watching these bikes with amusement. But a mellow look on his face and fairly cool pair of sunglasses. He didn't try to run the lights. And for all those Bristol Cycling Chic bikes running the red lights, the fact that this van is in the ASL is unimportant -if you don't stop, you don't need and Advanced Stop Line.
There are some bike sites: Copenhagen Cycling Chic, London Cycling Chic, that advocate wearing fashionable clothing as you cycle round their cities. Two things those cities have in common: Flat, near the north sea, and hence cold and windy rather than wet.
Here, waterproofs are a good year-round item to wear. We in Bristol Traffic think that everyone in the city should have a good one, ideally with reflective bits. Because even pedestrians need to be visible at night. But cyclists even more so
Take this cyclist, that is busy cycling from Bath Buildings to Arley Hill. She is wearing reflective clothing and even the bike wheels appear to be reflecting. This will make her visible to traffic, especially that going along Cheltenham Road in both directions, which they are doing while this cyclist loiters by the traffic island before sprinting over the next half of the road.
Such reflective clothing means that such cyclists will be seen when they cross a main road on a red light. This shows how safety-conscious Bristol cyclists are.
Over in Copenhagen, the chic cycling movement advocates cycling in normal clothes. As we do in Bristol too. The difference is that the average Scandinavian cyclist is generally tall, blond, fit, beautiful and worth looking at, especially in minimal clothing. Whereas we Bristol residents are somewhat less appealing. We also have an odd sense of fashion. Rather than put on bright reflective yellow clothes just to cycle round down, we are now going the other way, making wearing reflective gear at work as much a fashion statement as shorts and sandals. Here we have Rowland Dye of the Bristol Cycling campaign modelling a yellow top with his day to day clothes, while Councillor Faruk Choudhury shows that it goes well with his suit.
What's impressive about Cllr Choudhury's clothes are that not only is he wearing a yellow top while he walks to work -he isn't here with a bicycle- it is official council-issue cycle-chic clothing
Which even has his name on the back.
We are looking forward to attending the next full council meeting, in the hope that we will see all the councillors wearing their officially issued, Bristol Cycle-City-Chic clothing.
Posts
