Clifton: riot of the self-entitled

The Economist has discovered the Clifton Popular Front in their article Four wheel Fever.

This shows what press a tank in a city can have.

The paper did fail to note what bad press a tank in a city can have, such as when the driver of the tank feels that a protest against an RPZ in Clifton is more important than a protest against bombing of UN refugee centres in Gaza


As the paper nodes, "CLIFTON, in Bristol, is an unlikely hotbed of political activism. ". It is however, a hotbed of self-entitlement, be it the right to park your 4x4 on a double-yellow-lined corner near your fee-paying school, the right to double-park near your house -and the right for commuters to park on pavements.

Which is the problem: a clash between a mayor trying address the traffic problems for the city with a part of the city that believes in the inalienable right to drive the kids to school even if there is no parking, to drive to the local shops even if there is no parking, and to drive to work even if there is no parking.

A lot of the city believes that, but Clifton is one part of the city that has come out in protest against it. There's also the Aberystwyth Faction of Gloucester Road, but they have gone quiet. And in Clifton, its the traders who believe in the right to drive to work that are being most vocal.

The article is interesting, we just have a few points to add

"Bristol is one of the most congested cities in Britain. Traffic during the evening rush hour moves more slowly than anywhere except Belfast, Edinburgh and London. "

That's something we've looked at before. "Congestion" is an odd concept; for Bristol it is often defined as "the city with the highest variance between peak hour and non-peak hour traffic". Bristol becomes easy to drive around between 09:10 and 16:30, whereas outer london is always near-stationary. Another metric "average traffic speed" fails to consider that journey time is defined as distance/velocity, so if the distances are short, so is the time. In London, people travel further to work.

"Locals will pay £48 ($81) for the first permit to park near their homes."

Locals in some of the city already do, Kingsdown (KN) and Cotham South (CM) being examples. Nobody protested there, showing that it's not the residents in the inner ring that have the issues. It's those people who have adopted a lifestyle that assumes that free parking will be available near their place of work, and consider congestion to be something imposed on them, rather than a consequence of their own decisions.

"In Clifton, a suspension bridge links Bristol with North Somerset. “Everybody and his daughter will park there and walk across,” predicts one resident. Rather than solving a city’s traffic problem, Mr Ferguson might just end up pushing it elsewhere."

If you ever visit Abbot's Leigh on a weekday you will see that it is already full of park+walk commuters. Why? You save on the £1 bridge toll, adding up to £10/week for commuters. There's also more chance of finding a parking space there. Claiming that the RPZ will force commuters to park elsewhere really means "the expanded RPZs will force commuters to walk further". Oh, and as the Downs is out of the zone, park+bus and park+pedal from there will continue to be as popular as it is today.

What the paper does pick up on is the fact that South Gloucestershire council has a big chunk of the Bristol metropole —and a very different transport policy. S Gloucs has the "Leeds Strategy": wider roads. They've had the space for this, but all it does is amplify congestion in the North Fringe. That conflict between strategies is going to place Bristol and South Gloucestershire in head-on conflict between long.

The Mayor's Motor pays the bollard tax

According to the Evening Post (so it must be true), the Mayor's Car was driven into a bollard that should have got out of the way.

We extend our sympathies to the mayor -but at least he doesn't have to resort to public transport, as he has managed to sort out a replacement. We hope the bollard has third party insurance to cover this. If it was in any way damaged, it is the bollard's fault for being in the middle of the road and not being covered in hi-viz.

If the car really is written off, it may only be remembered in its two Bristol Traffic articles, one showing secret cabot circus parking, and another by a pub.

Let us mourn it. It shall not grace our pages again,



Regarding all those very unsympathetic comments where everyone seems to be against getting a new car on the basis that buying a second ford-fiesta with a non-personalised number plate and selling the AE1 plate off would actually earn money - fails to recognise the symbolic role of the mayor. Like the Crown herself, the mayor is a powerless figurehead whose role is to attend meaningless publicity events in vehicles that reflect the fact that the UK is a fading power.

As for the comments that the mayor should be riding a bicycle, remember that Cllr Gollup is the offical evening post spokesman of the Bikelash. He does not cycle.

The mayor visits

Lovely story behind this photo -click on the link to get the full details from Gothick Matt on Flickr of his encounter of the Mayor's car 


What's impressive is not just that this is the second sighting of the car AE1 in our database, but that the photographer took the photograph because. as a Bristol Traffic reader, they've started to appreciate the things people have to do to park their car in the city -here on double yellow lines on a roundabout partially blocking the bike access.  We welcome such audience participation and are glad that Matt didn't cause any bother.

Incidentally, part of the Big Society theme is that we too may have our own elected mayor, "our own, personal, Boris". In the past, we have suggested that Carol Vordeman would make a good elected mayor. Since then we've moved on: the second tier former celebrity we want to rule us, to fix this city is Noel Edmonds! We support Noel Edmonds and his taxi for our own, local Boris!

Secret Cabot Circus Parking in Castle Park

Who remembers when Castle Park was little more than a parking area for the shops, back when the nearest shop was an Argos outlet, not the fancy Cabot Circus stuff? In those days, parking was easy and cheap, now you have to queue behind everyone else to get into the new parking area. Still, for your money you get parking spaces big enough for your landrover discovery with the roofbox, not like the Galleries parking area.

We get lots of visitors looking for secret and free Cabot Circus parking -today Captain Bikebeard is sharing some of the places they've noticed you can still park a car for nothing, right next to the shops.

Where is the place? Where it's always been: Castle Park.

Here a car with the number plate "AE1" is parked. This is apparently for the Lord Mayor, who has been driven down to celebrate the biggest bike ride.

But it is not just for the mayor, here another car BN03VVU has snuck in.

There must be lots of little places in the park you can fit a car, and it's very handy for the shops. Just take care not to run over anyone sunbathing if you have to drive over the grass to get there.