Correct junction tactics

This video of Stokes Croft on a weekday evening is interesting. As well as the number of cyclists trying to along a road which clearly doesn't welcome them, most drivers are taking the collect "seize the junction" option here at the junction with Jamaica Street. Indeed, the yellow-hatching only covers half the road: its OK to block vehicles coming out of Jamaica Street, just not those going in.


What is odd is that the car at the end, WR60VVG , doesn't take the junction, even though at list late in the cycle, there's a risk of the lights changing before she gets to go through. Admittedly, she has passed the lights so can't see them changing, but even so, why hold back?

It's only as she goes past the camera that we can see why: she's on the phone.

That's a problem that phone users present: they slow down the vehicles behind. If she'd been paying attention she would have gone through earlier, and another car could have come up behind. While she didn't suffer, another vehicle did.

No, this is what we'd do


At 0:15 you can see some pickup -a proper vehicle- go through the roundabout and stop in front of the Cotham Hill traffic. That lets vehicles behind turn right, and ensures that the pickup driver isn't held up by anyone else. Of course, it does block that Cotham Hill traffic, so the usual "If you don't see them they aren't there" tactic kicks in: don't look to either side.

What does the driver do. The phone would be a context switch and make them less responsive to changes in the road ahead. No, they do a better action: they eat their breakfast. There's nothing like a bacon roll and a bottle of cider for a breakfast on the road. Eating this way reduces the cost of congestion: instead of being stuck in the middle of the roundabout being "wasted" time, it is now useful. We think the drivers coming up the hill, instead of being unhappy about the driver's actions, should exploit this opportunity and have their own breakfasts.

Safe passing

A lot of people on their bicycles complain about being passed badly by cars. Yet in Bristol, many of us, even though we are important -and show it by driving big cars- still pass our fellow citizens safely, even when they are poor and can only afford bicycles. Here is an example on Lower Maudlin Street, heading towards the BRI. This is one-way, with a contraflow for tax-dodgers heading downhill.



As you can see the Important Pickup moves safely into the contraflow to pass the bicycle, and then cuts left, so giving the bicycle room to share the ASL with them.

Isn't that generous?

Monster Cycle

When is a motor cycle not a motor cycle? When it’s a Monster Truck!

Our St Werbian correspondent "DW" was on his way to a gig at St Georges on Wednesday the 11th of March and he spotted this amazing magic trick. This Mitsubishi Monster Truck AX56LAZ has transformed itself into a single Motorcycle and has quite neatly totally occupied the Motorcycle-only slot on Great George Street.

Better yet it’s totally jammed in by the car parking on the double yellows at the junction of Park Street.

When he came out of the gig – 2 and a half hours later – the truck was still there sans parking ticket.

Redrum. Redrum. Redrum.

There are big problems in the US regarding short-term funding of General Motors and Chrysler, and, to a lesser extent, Ford. Having seen the size of the cheque the governments have written to keep the financial system alive, the CEOs each flew down from Detroit to Washington D.C on their own personal jets, then demanded $25 Billion to keep themselves alive for a year, where they believed all their problems would be solved. Hmm.

This is a photo of a place made famous by a Stanley Kubrick-directed Stephen King film: the Shining. The one where the caretaker is persuaded by the ghosts of the hotel that all is problems will be solved if he cuts his family into little bits and then kills himself, because, "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy". Although the interior is completely different. and there is no room 237 to stay in, its a lovely place to visit; a fantastic climb with a great view of Oregon's Mout Hood behind the building, Mount Hood Lodge. Here though, are how most of the visitors have got there: in cars.

The closest three cars are VW Jettas of different eras: golfs with their luggage removed. Nimble and comfortable. Everything else in the parking lot looks like US product or Japanese toys made to compete: SUVs, Minivans and Pickups. All of which operate on a simple assumption: fuel costs $1.60 a gallon or less. The big three manufacturers had a business model selling overweight truck-based designs with an overweight, under-technological V6 or V8 engine to pull it around, the engine, automatic gearbox and all-wheel transmission adding to the weight and inefficient engine, resulting in SUVs and pickups where doing 20mpg is considered economical; 12-14 MPG bad. The white SUV poking out, a GM Chevy Suburban, probably did 12mpg.

This is the root problem. Fuel inefficiencies and the cost of use. The car manufacturers may blame the credit crunch for killing financed sales (including leasing), but what caused the credit crunch? The collapse of the sub-prime market. And what triggered that? the end of the US boom. And what caused that? Some people (like The Oil Drum) argue that the cost of fuel and hence the cost of driving round the US triggered it. A system that worked at $1.50/gallon struggled at $3/gallon and collapsed at $4/Gallon

Imagine, then if the US had, instead of embracing fuel-inefficient SUVs, had embraced smaller EU-style cars. Cars and "wagons" where a 2.0L engine would be considered big, have a turbocharger on it to make it fun, and deliver a mileage of 35-40 mpg (US gallons here; 4 Litres/gallon). The burn rate of the fleet would be half what it is, so even if the cost of fuel was still above $4/Gallon, it would be affordable. And if the petrol demand of the US fleet was half of what it would be, well, cost of fuel would have been lower even before the recession kicked in. We'd still be vulnerable to the incompetent risk management of the banks, obviously, but maybe things would have been better.

Anyway, it's moot. The US embraced 10-14 mpg toys as what real men drove, and we are all stuffed now. Regardless of whether they get their money or not, the CEOs will be running round the factories like Jack Nicholson with his blood-coated knife, desperately trying to do what it takes to stay in the game. Everything except give up their planes, and the SUVs, of course.

From IMDb:
Delbert Grady: [referring to Jack murdering his wife and son] Mr. Torrance, I see you can hardly have taken care of the business we discussed.
Jack Torrance: No need to rub it in, Mr. Grady.

Deadlock on the school run

Deadlock: in which more than one entity try to acquire the same set of resources, and by doing so create a situation in which none of them can acquire enough resources to get work done. In traffic, it is where vehicles trying to enter a junction stop the vehicles in the junction from leaving, and hence nobody can achieve their goals.

Here's a spot of bother in Clifton. There's the Volvo XC90 WV57EUU, which we already have indexed, here helping pedestrian access to the school by slowing down traffic. It's not on the pavement today, or blocking a driveway, just right on a corner where there is a double yellow line to remind people not to park. Its' not dangerous, look -kids still manage to cross the road alive.

Unfortunately, while such conscientious traffic calming helps most vehicles slow down, it does nothing for coaches trying to do a turn -they need this space to get round. A traffic jam is now building up with three lines of cars, and the Volvo desperately trying to reverse a car for which reversing was never a design goal. Or if it was, that and "fuel economy" came lower down the list than "create the illusion of security" and "wide"

What we in computing call a "deadlock" has developed: nobody can get out because the other vehicles are blocking each other. Here's how it gets resolved. The Volvo struggles to reverse.

Leaving room for the Mercedes to pull through, and get stuck in the same place. Nice bit of forward planning there. Must work in investment banking.

Incidentally, the reason the Volvo had such a hard time backing up is not just land-barges like this are a dog to reverse, there's another parent blocking the other corner, again on the double yellow lines, this time in a pickup WR56UUH.



You could hang around all day waiting for a situation like this to resolve itself. But we have other schools to visit, so we must leave them to it.