20 mph sabotage at Leigh Woods

Our mid-august coverage of the 20 mph "firstbus" review, was illustrated with a photograph of a 20 mph sign nonchalantly keeling over.


That photo was taken on Bridge Road, the approach to the Clifton Suspension Bridge from North Somerset. If you are driving from Portishead down the 40 mph-limited A369, or sprinted down Beggar Bush Lane from Failand (60 mph), this is the first sign you are entering the Big City where you have to temper your expectations of speed with the need to share the road with people on foot and bike and keep your speed at around 20 mph.

Here's the sign today.

More specifically: it's where the sign was. Rather than repair the sign, someone in the "hypothesised" North Somerset Highways Maintenance Department has decided that rather than repair the sign, they'll just take it down and fill in the hole.

Which means, for anyone approaching Clifton on this road, there is no large roundel here warning of the speed change. There's one on the other side of the road, but it can be hidden by parked vehicles.
As a result: no major cues that you are in a 20 zone.

Does it change people's behaviour? Hard to tell.

Here's a rear-view clip from earlier in the week of one of tax-dodgers (expendable) approaching the bridge and going past where the sign used to be. They're doing 20-25 mph in the 30 mph zone.

If you look at the speed of the car WR07YFL coming up behind, it's probably doing 35-40. And, as they both cross where the sign used to be, the driver decides she doesn't want to slow down for a bike only doing 25 mph, and instead swing past. Which, given our tax dodger is positioned in the middle of the lane, and there's a lane separator fast approaching, isn't going to work. She eventually slows down and tucks in behind, only getting an option to go forwards when the cyclist pulls over on the "they don't have to pay any-more!" cyclist bypass of the toll gate. And then, the same cyclist pulls out in front and speeds up to 20 mph again, enough to stop the car from overtaking. We've documented dangerous passing on this bridge before; at least here the driver was sensible enough to not attempt it —but we wonder, if it had been an oncoming bike, not a car, would she have done any differently?

In town, she drives less aggressively; the cyclist is now "only" doing 20 mph, but so are the cars in front. Seemingly having the reason for the speed constraint being a car, not a bike winds up the driver less. Again though, we have to ask: if it hadn't been for that, would she have made another attempt?

Who knows? And one recorded incident doth not a defensible dataset make.

For now: if caught driving above the 20 mph limit, anywhere in the inner zone, just say "I came in over the Suspension Bridge and didn't see any signs!" Which, if it works, shows that all it takes is some laziness from an adjacent council for the whole 20 mph project to slowly fail.

A letter to Smiths of Gloucestershire, re the blind overtake of their van VE08NKX

Hello

I'm the cyclist the driver of your van VE08NKX chose to overtake on a blind corner on Belmont Hill, Somerset, at 15:46 on 25 November.

I'm the cyclist who shouted a warning to your driver that there was an oncoming car —a warning he chose to ignore:

And I'm the cyclist who videoed your van nearly hitting the oncoming car.


That car braked to avoid a collision, incidentally, and we both waved an acknowledgement to each other of how close it had been.

I've not got in touch before; I was waiting to see how Avon and Somerset Police were going to respond to the complaint that I'd filed online with them. As the time limit for them to file a Notice of Impending Prosecution has expired and they are yet to get in touch, the answer is: nothing.

Your driver has to consider themselves lucky to have not only avoided a head-on collision with an oncoming vehicle, but to avoid any form of punishment from the police for nearly doing so. That is despite the irrefutable video evidence showing them ignoring a shouted warning and overtaking where they had no visibility. If A&S Police were to adopt the prosecute-on-video-evidence policy which the Central Midlands Police are now operating, they would now be facing a choice between prosecution to Dangerous Driving or pleading guilty to the lesser offence of Careless Driving.

As it is: no prosecution, no pleading, no penalty, no points on their license, and no insurance premium.

That fact reflects as badly on our local police as it does on your employee.

Given the police's utter inaction, you can report to your driver that this particular near-crash won't result in any prosecution.

However, you do need to consider your brand tainted. It's clear from your website that you take site safety as seriously as it needs to be —but it's also clear from the video that your staff are treating off site safety with utter disdain. This driver endangered other road users in a van with your business name and telephone number painted on three sides of the vehicle, making identifying this employer trivial. The more incidents like this, the more videos of your drivers will go online, the more that safety theme gets devalued.

Please: tell your driver that in a world of helmet cameras and dashcams —the era of "getting away" with dangerous driving is over. If they drive dangerously in their free time, it is only the lives of themselves and others and their own driving license which they endanger. When they do it in company vehicles, it is your vehicles they are also threatening, your insurance premiums they are risking, and your brand that they are destroying,

Traffic lights on roundabouts, cyclists and tinted windows

Bristol Traffic does have a twitter account, which rarely gets used for the following reason "to spend time on twitter is to waste an important life". Yet we do get notifications on messages sent to @BristolTraffic, as it is a way for little people to contact us. We obviously care more for little people to call up our Stokes Croft "adult content" fulfilment centre, get redirected to our Luxembourg sales office for Bristol Traffic s.a.R.L, buy entertainment products from the tax-efficient locality and then have us deliver them to anywhere within the former Avon county.

Today, we get a tweet from one Andrew Fawkes:

@bristoltraffic Would you like to R/T this? Even turning them off at peak times would help congestion! Thank you.

Pet hate: traffic lights on roundabouts. RBs were designed to keep traffic flowing. Please r/t if you agree and let's keep traffic flowing!

@AndrewWFawkes is proud to be a "Marketing consultant, career coach, classic car activist, MotoGP fan, guitarist & singer in a band and lots of other spare time activities!", based in Somerset UK".

Somerset is of course the elf-kingdom, which is where important people live, despite the fact that Bristol council is trying to push bike lanes into the kingdom -against the elf-folk's wishes. Everyone who commutes in up the A370 gets stuck somewhere in the way by anti-car policies of the inner city.

The traffic lights on roundabouts are merely a detail -and not one we care much for ourselves.

We are actually against them for a number of reasons.

1. By making it safer for cyclists to cross, they make it easier to cycle round the city, so encouraging cycling.
2. The James Barton Roundabout has a special light for buses coming from the M32 direction, so encouraging bus use.
3. Sometimes we have to wait at them for up to 30s
4. Sometimes when we pull out just as it goes red, our van blocks other traffic who then get upset.
5. The lights on the James Barton and St Pauls roundabouts are still on at 4am, where the only traffic is our van on an emergency delivery of inflatable sex aids to some of our St Andrews customers.

What we aren't sure about is the idea that turning them off at peak times would help congestion.

Having to put traffic lights on a roundabout is an indication that the roundabout has entered a failed state; that without them you woudn't get fair access to the roundabout.

Because a feature of a roundabout is that you can pull out, which can only be done if one of two conditions are met

1. There's nobody on the roundabout.
2. The roundabout is very busy, but traffic is exiting onto your road, so you can pull out as they turn off.

At peak hours, the "nobody on the roundabout" condition is not met, so we depend on the "traffic exiting" condition.

If people don't turn off onto your junction, you don't get out -leading to what is known in queue/scheduling theory as starvation.

For anyone trying to cycle over a roundabout when someone pulls out, this is why we do it. It's not just because we hate the cyclists for being there and not paying -it's because the only way to pull out in a busy roundabout 

Here, for example, is the car AE59JGU pulling out in front of a bicycle on the St Michaels roundabout. It's not that they didn't see the bicycle -it is that it was a weekday morning, and the only way to get out was to cut up the cyclist. There was no reason for the cyclist to catch up with them and say "please don't cut me up like that -it makes you look bad in the video". That was just selfish behaviour by a cyclist that shouldn't have been there.

While covering this incident, notice that the car had tinted windows. This is a great feature from a game-theory perspective, as it introduces more uncertainty into the negotiations. There is no way the tax -dodger could make eye contact with the driver, to see them and for them to see you. Instead, the dark windows depersonalise the car " there is nobody in there that cares -this is only a machine", as well as stopping the cyclist from even imagining that they've been seen.

Given that uncertainty, slowing down is the only thing the tax-dodger could do -creating the opportunity for the audi to pull out. Such an incident discourages the city-folk from cycling, so making easier for commuters from the Elf-Kingdom to come in to the city and so create wealth.

To summarise then:

• Traffic lights do hold up traffic, but not always at peak hours, as they make the scheduling of junction ingress fairer.
• If the council does remove them, we have to correct for this scheduling by pulling out when you don't have the right of way
• Cyclists are much safer to pull out in front of than buses
• Tinted windows are great for reducing the confidence of cyclists, so making it easier to pull out in front of them.

Andrew -thank you for your opinions! We have summarised our views on the matter!

This is why the Battle for Flax Bourton must be won now

Some people must have seen our post and and an estimate of 30-40 bicycles an hour and peak times and thought "so what?

This is what. This is the bike path that the petitioners harassed the Elf King himself, about, the one in jeopardy, the one he said should only be built if the sheep used their existing cycle paths. As far as Flax Bourton is concerned, using those cycle paths is bad enough. When this route is finished, their quiet life will be destroyed.

Look at it. 3-4 metres, wide, already built out, with the trees cut back. Raised enough to make it hard to swing onto. And already being scoped out.

The narrowing of the road means that the paint between the the lanes will be removed, forcing us to drive slower. If the 50 mph speed limit is dropped to 30, that will add another minute to the Flax Bourton to Long Ashton school run, again, threatening a lifestyle people paid into.

   
Look at it. Our tax money. It's on the opposite side of the road from the footpath, so there won't be "badly behaved cyclists" "riding on pavements amidst pedestrians". No, they will be cycling as fast as they do now -sprinting to and from Backwell, on this new £1.2M route running parallel to the A370.

Every one of those cyclists could endanger a motorist.

The Elf King said he wouldn't pay attention to petitions from people outside Long Ashton, pressuring him to build this blatant war-on-motoring facility. Well, he caved in. Hopefully he'll listen to the next petition, from local folk.

"Local Roads for Local People! And better commuter routes into the Bristol City Centre"

This is what we want!

The festival way: exposing Long Ashton to the city

Why all of a sudden the problems? When the Flax Bourton to Backwell route has existed for over a year? It's this: a wide bike path from Ashton Court to the western end of Long Ashton.

It runs parallel to the A370, it doesn't have the cars or buses of the Long Ashton road, and even runs alongside the schools.
 

It's designed to give the cyclists an A-road of their own. And because of that, they are coming out. Which is making Flax Bourton suffer.

Back in September, Elf King Ap Rees, leader of the Somerset-Elf-Folk, said "We're spending all this money on cycle ways and yet I'm always getting complaint that say the cyclists don't use them -they use the roads instead!".

It turns out worse than this. Some of the cyclists are using the cycle ways that they spent all the money on -and endangering people by doing so.

When we visited Rosemount Road on a (sunny) February sunday, we saw three cyclists in the space of five minutes. At that rate: thirty six an hour. Thirty-six cyclists that are cyclists are "posing a danger to pedestrians and motorists". And behind it all -the council trying to change the residents behaviour, to make them cycle with their families to school, then on to the city.

Farleigh Green Residents Association chairman Michael Barnes said: "Now the Festival Way route is completed we are seeing a lot more cyclists coming through the estate.

"The issue for residents is safety as the route follows narrow roads through the estate with the longest having no pavements.

"There are at least three blind corners giving no visibility for motorists, cyclists or pedestrians and there have been several collisions and many near misses involving cars, pedestrians, children and cyclists."

He added: "We are not anti-cycling and many of us enjoy cycling."

We have some bad news:  if you think it is bad now, it will only get worse.

Rosemount Road, Flax Bourton -ruined by the cyclists

The residents of Rosemount Road, Flax Bourton didn't just move the countryside for fields and trees.

They moved for the rural dream: a cottage like house with room for two cars. One for one of the parents -and in modern society, that could be the dad- to drop the kids off at school in Long Ashton before driving into the city; the other for the other parent to go straight in down the A370, via a short stretch of road.


Already Bristol city threaten this dream, with their war on motoring. Closing Prince Street Bridge to through traffic makes getting from the south of the city harder. Imposing 20 mph speed limits in South Bristol has killed the rat-runs, leaving only the traffic-clogged Coronation Road. Adding residents parking in Redcliffe has even destroyed some of the near-city parking available to Somerset commuters.

All this was bad enough, but now the city is bringing the war on motorists to the villages!

Look above: a nice cul-de-sac; lots of space to turn around in.

But turn 180 degrees round and what do you see


That's right -a bike route. Going all the way from Flax Bourton to Backwell. And its used! You can see above, that even on a February weekend there is someone out there pretending to enjoy themselves

 

Look at the quality of it! Can you not see what the council is trying to do here -it's not just encouraging cyclists from the city to come out, it's trying to change the behaviour of the residents themselves! It's trying to say "why drive? Why not cycle to Nailsea and get a train into the city or Abbey Wood at the North Fringe?" It's saying "why not go for a bike ride -for fun- with your family on a weekend?" It's saying: you should consider cycling to work in the city
 

In the distance, you can see them: the cyclists. They are coming.

This is why the village has to act. If they do not, they will be turned into the mindless Dutch-style families that Bristol is trying force down our throats.

If they wanted to cycle, they'd live in Southville or Montpelier! Instead they chose to move out here, to realise a dream of a quiet road, two cars, and a drive down the A370 every morning. All this will be destroyed by the council -unless they can persuade the council to change its mind, and ban cyclists from these roads.
 

"we're not anti-cycling, but" -flax bourton joins the bikelash

This site has been quiet recently -but then our business model isn't based on having a high visitor count and then selling adverts to advertisers who want to sell things to those people who visit the site regularly (i.e. losers). We haven't been visiting the evening post much either, not since they started demanding access to the contact details of all gmail accounts.

Today though, something draws us in again: the bikelash is back.

The last decent bikelash we had in the area was in Long Ashton, where the Elf-King himself proclaimed that cyclists were arrogant and that trying to petition him to complete a bike path was sheep-like.

Today, just east of Long Ashton, the village of Flax Bourton joins in the Evening Post Official Bikelash!

Yes, in a picturesque modern rural housing estate, residents are warning that cyclists are a risk to pedestrians and car drivers!

Here is the area.

Rosemount Road is a classic example of a late twentieth century, early 21st interpretation of that rural dream, a country village.

In the background, the birdsong-like hum of the A370, offering the elf-folk access to the city, or Bristol airport, if that is their place of employ. (some day we should cover the airport. If it weren't so anti-all-other-modes-of-transport, including flight, we'd accuse it of being at war with motorists).



Like a traditional village, there are no pavements, just verges to drive over and so justify the 4x4.

 
Like a tradional village there is always somebody petty with a keep of the grass sign and stones to mark their territory.

Unlike the city, there is room for more than one car per household. And, when washing your car on a Sunday afternoon, you can leave the door open without fear that your car will be stolen and the insurance company laugh at you for doing so.
 

According to Zoopla, these houses sell for just under £500K, money well spent to get away from the city and its stress.
In these quiet cul-de-sacs, there is enough space for children to happily bounce and scoot around without fear of being killed by a passing bicycle.

But not anymore. Not now that Somerset council is partway through bulding a quality off-road bike path all the way from the city centre to this rural dream.


They are trying to bring the city to the countryside, to destroy the rural commuter lifestyle these people have worked so hard to attain.

This is the front line in the Bikelash!

Elf-King Ap-Rees: get the sheep-like cyclists off the roads

There's a BBC Radio Broadcase in which Elf-King Ap-Rees, Deputy-King of the Elf-Kingdom of North Somerset, denounces cyclists as arrogant as the "cyclists use the cycle ways instead of arrogantly ignoring them and cycling on adjacent roads".

The issue was a petition"ill-judged and unnecessary" that stirred up people to sign a petition that demanded that the council actually approved of the cycle path by the 50 mph road from Long Ashton to Cambridge Batch. It was always going to be built, just "a bit of a quibble" with Long Ashton Parish Council. Like the way they slowed down the provisioning of a cycle route alongside the A370 by Ashton Court -there were concerns that the council would reject it the way they rejected the Ashton Court stretch of the route -the bit that would cut across the newly-expanded Ashton Court car park.

"We're spending all this money on cycle ways and yet I'm always getting complaint that say the cyclists don't use them -they use the roads instead!"

 Why is his language so inflammatory?

"I'm glad it is! I want cyclists to realise that other people see this money being spent on cycle ways and actually object when the cyclists don't use it. Especially when we have 60 mph roads, and we have a cycle way absolutely adjacent to it -and yet you still find cyclists using that (ed: the road?). They cycle through pedestrian areas, you know, which they're not supposed to do..."

why have you approved this then?

"We want to encourage cycling. We want to encourage cyclists to use the cycle ways. What I'm hoping is that as a result of this...and it's not everybody, you just get a few cyclists -just as you get a few motorists doing things wrong. The trouble is they set a bad example -erm- to everybody else"

People who don't live in the vicinity of Long Ashton have no influence over the decision as as they "have one sheep-like point of view "

Elf King App Rees is the one politician who will stand up and say the prejudiced ill-informed views that we live by! Only he is the one not afraid to call cyclists sheep-like. Indeed, he's proud of it!

"I'm always getting complaints from people about the behaviour of cyclists..."

That said, we don't like this idea of saying "local decisions only". Because that's going to come back to haunt the commuters of N Somerset when Bristol City starts rolling out anti-commuter strategies like speed limits.

Similarly, we worry about the quote : "North Somerset Council has to consider all road users and the decision will be made with that in mind, not to just satisfy a cycling lobby."

This surprised us as we didn't know there was a cycling lobby in N. Somerset. That phrase "all road users" scares us. Why should we -the tax payers- care about the cyclists? If he's going to start taking their interests into account, what will this mean to  features like the new Portishead/M5 junction, where the Elf King said "the misery of prolonged hold-ups for motorists in this area should be a thing of the past.". See that? No need to acknowledge the existence of cyclists there, let alone the need to consider them at a new junction. Similarly, when he's considering parking charges in Portishead, will he actually worry about the needs of tax-dodgers who may want to cycle there rather than all the people who petitioned against the charges? We hope not!

Finally, "sheep-like". Again, that could equally well be applied to most of the people who write to him complaining about tax-dodging cyclists being in the way on the roads or on the pavements. That's the same class of insult as one of the two groups on the Evening Post comment pages calling the other lot "inflexible and narrow minded". No, you don't want to go there.

Elf-King App Rees does like those emails complaining about cyclists, so feel free to contact him on such topics, or where he stands on the battle of Mordor.

While we know he doesn't accept emails from cyclists outside the Elf Kingdom of Long Ashton, we don't yet know if he loves getting message from outside the Shire congratulating him on being the first Evening Post commenter to get radio time on a regional station listened two by a double-digit audience!

Attn: Noah's Ark Zoo Farm

Dear Noah's Ark Zoo Farm,

Someone in your employ appears to have posted a comment on one of our articles:

Zoo has left a new comment on your post "Eagle Coaches at Bristol Zoo":

I am very inspire from your blog, i love your simple and clean post for getting information about Bristol zoo. overall your blog and content is superb.

As stated in our comment policy on spam postings, " Such attempts SHALL result in one or more postings in which we MAY be rude or we MAY make fun of you". In accordance with our policy, we opt to be rude.

1. How can you call yourself a zoo when you don't believe in evolution? It'd be like a geology museum that thought the earth began a hundred thousand years ago and yet had to come up with explanations for sandstone that denied that they were historic deserts, that the limestone that your zoo stands on isn't the relics of Cretaceous-era coral reefs.
2. Why do you hide the fact that many of your animals are on loan from a circus. If you believe your religious claims are valid, then surely you ought to come out and be proud of the fact that the creatures -to which humans have divine rights over- are mistreated. Why feel guilt?
3. How can the local councils justify sending their schoolkids to a zoo whose belief system is at odds with modern rational thinking about the nature of the universe and life -and how to treat animals?
4. If you do wish to deny the whole notion of modern rational thought then why are you using computers whose existence is based on experimental science working at the nanometre scale? At least people like the Amish and the Mennonites are willing to live consistently within their world view.

We don't know what you were thinking paying some tier-3 loser to post such badly written comments on our site about your zoo, but this is the response.

If you feel that our claims that your beliefs about evolution are utterly mistaken, please file a lawsuit.

If you do want to pick on a bit of science, go for the low level physics stuff, the bits nobody really understands. Not evolution. Seriously.

Thank you for your participation in the Bristol Traffic project. It was not expected, and no doubt, neither was this response.

N Somerset school parking

This is Northleaze primary school, long ashton. There is a road between this school use only car park and the school, but there is a zebra crossing. This gives the kids the walking to school experience without the parents schedule being too badly disrupted by having to walk the kids to school and then run home to drive to work.

Why doesn't anywhere in Bristol have decent parent parking like this?

Bristol Cyclist killed in North Somerset

The police are reporting that a cyclist was killed on Tuesday in a collision with something being pulled by an oncoming Landrover, in the village of Norton Malreward. This is pretty sad, and marks the second bike-related fatality this summer. Perhaps it is time that the Bristol Cyclists adopt a Ghostbikes style memorial process, though the fact that the bike would probably be stripped within a week kind of lessens the impact.

Meanwhile, Redland police promise to be tough on cycling, and tough on the causes of cycling. Or as they put it, The police will take a robust stance in relation to cycling offences whenever the opportunity arises. That's very reassuring, as it reassures the locals that their cars won't be scraped by bikes when parked on the pavement.