Bristol: Snow Day == Smug Day

It was pretty chaotic night out there. On the one hand: almost no traffic. On the other, an Audi A3  trying to get up a slight gradient and stuck wheelspinning. After about 15 minutes people start looking out the window thinking "maybe should help", after another five minutes they open their doors, get out and start pushing. Who says there is no camaraderie between passengers in Audi and the driver?

As the residents are all staring out the window "will they fucking get a move on", the passengers help turn the car round so its weights on the front axle, and it manages to get another 15 metres up the hill before being abandoned. Hopefully BCC have suspended overflights of RPZ enforcement drones for the next few days.

One of the wierdest things was the fact that everyone was driving well below the 20 mph limit. This completely throws off your decision making as you think "I'll wait until they get past before pulling out", and yet they take so long you think "I'll just pull out in front of them". It's the Audi/BMW driving experience on a push-bike.


All mini-roundabouts, give way signs and zebra crossings are suspended, and you can stop in the middle of the road to talk to people. Not different from normal, except now you have a better excuse when challenged than "fuck off"

We considered setting out to a nearby pub on the off-chance of getting snowed in and trapped for 2-3 days. But which one?

1. Duke of York: good pub, risk of being stuck with David Wilcox. Which is fine, except after 24h of cider drinking he becomes a barge evangelist. We don't care for barges and think the remaining waterways of the city would be best built over the way they did with the River Frome to give us the M32. Sooner they do this for the harbour, the better. In fact, we are surprised the WoEP haven't suggested that to Marvin, as it'll be more popular and easier to deliver than a metro.
2. Miners Arms: Thursday is Pub Night. Risk of a three day lock-in with pub quiz enthusiasts keeping on with the quizzes as something to do. Challenge of explaining to A&S Police how aforementioned pub quiz enthusiasts all ended up being killed messily with the kind of small nail clippers airport security love to confiscate.
3. Farm Pub: highest chance of becoming stranded, Doom Bar on draft, easiest to acquire locally curated ganja (we are told). 

Tough choice

Anyway, that was friday, what about today?

Rejoice! Today is a day is a great to be smug!

Because yes, those of us who have the equipment to get round can go round, offering smug advice to everyone trapped.

Drivers of 4x4s and SUVs

Landrover Defender drivers have it easy today: that rickety thing they've kept alive through trading bits on ebay can now be used to cruise round the city. Wearing wooly hats, fingerless gloves and warm clothes obviously, given that class of vehicles' heating system.

Urban SUV drivers have a similar option, but need to be careful. Today may be the day that you can finally justifying spending £15K on top of a practical car..

Do: drive round, nodding knowingly at other SUV drivers.

Don't: discover when you get to a hill that you only paid a £12K premium and so have the 2WD model.

Do: use engine braking on the descents. If your car is an automatic, time to work out how to put it into manual mode, or try the cruise control.

Don't: discover while driving down one of the steep hills in Totterdown or Cliftonwood that it doesn't make a difference between 2WD and 4WD when it comes to using the brakes. No winter tyres, sliding into parked cars screaming.

Owners of cars parked on hills

It's too late to move them unless you pay your neighbour with a landrover to tow them somewhere.

Do: sit by the window, looking at your car, camera in hand, ready to jump out and take pics of whichever 2WD SUV drives into the side.

Don't: own a car of any net value.

Mountain Bikers: 

Do: cycle round offering smug advice to people trying to drive up and down hills.

Don't: get off and help, admit that it doesn't work and then, while pedalling of shamefully, wipe out on a patch of ice.

Pedestrians:

Do: walk down the middle of the road. Its the only bit which will get gritted after all.

Don't: look at your phone while walking round. Not today.

Don't: walk round with your hands in your pockets, in case you need to put them down when you slide out.



Skiers
Do: get out the skis you've kept under the bed for a decade, carry them to some hill and ski down.
Don't: go on about it for years in any of the pubs our team members frequent We don't care, really.

Mid-life crisis mountaineers

We want to have a special call-out to mid-life-crisis mountaineers, the ones you see out in Gloucester Road or Southville of a weekend, wearing a down jacket branded with North Face, Patagonia or Mountain Equipment,

This is your chance to get out all the stuff you've bought from Taunton Leisure of Bedminster over the years and stomp round the city

Do: get out the most excessive bits of equipment you have in an arms race with all the other mid-life crisis mountaineers.

Do: walk around being smug, especially on the deepest snow parts of the pavement, rather than the middle of the road where it's clear.

Do: remember that if you wear crampons, walk with  your legs wide apart so you don't step on your own toes.

Do: talk to random strangers, casually dropping phrases like "hut-to-hut through the Haute Savoie Alps" and "New Zealand South Island trekking", or even better, "Everest Base Camp"

Don't: get out your stuff to discover that since you last went near any of those places the plastic boots have gone brittle and failed.

Us?

Well, with an equipment failure like that, its trapped in the Farm Pub. We just wish that skier would STFU or we'll have to start looking for those nail clippers

Further down ninetree hill, there's a red clio SN52BNJ paveparked quite elegantly.

It's only when you get alongside that it's clear that this car wasn't parked -it crashed into a lamp post while sliding backwards down the hill -presumably with all occupants screaming in terror trying to wheelspin their way out of trouble.

It must have been frightening -we hope they are all right.

Even so, as you look up the 1 in 4 hill, seeing more than one vehicle crashed on it, some thoughts spring to mind.

1. What made the drivers think going up here was a good idea? You can't into kingsdown by car all that is left is the parking on Dove Street.
2. On a day like friday, all parking restrictions are cancelled.There's no reason to park on Dove St.
3. The streets were covered in snow and ice, and vehicles couldn't get up less steep roads -some of the main Kingsdown access routes were blocked off, and we saw Cotham Hill earlier -that's a 5-10% gradient maximum.
4. If you do get to the top of Dove St to park, you'll have to come down this or the other hill-option later -and again, that could be icy.
5. If your attempt fails, you aren't going to just get stuck. You will slide down backwards until you hit something.

If this hill was a secret rat-run, we could see why someone would want to go up there. But it isn't -and these photos show why you should avoid it after snow unless you have a sledge.

Italian Job on Ninetree hill

Every year, when it snows, the same thing happens. Someone tries to drive up or down ninetree hill, gets in trouble, crashes. Every single time -sometimes people even die.

It's as repetitive as the letters that appear in the Daily Mail the same week "how can they claim there's global warming when it snowed?". We suspect the writers and the drivers may be related.

This weekend there's a white van wedged halfway up the street.


That's the street with the 20-25% gradient, something they should have noticed on the way up. Presumably they noticed it on the way down, as it slid backwards into the stone wall of one of the houses.

With the rear in the garden, it may be safe -but as no breakdown van is going to come and retrieve it for days, there's the risk that it may start sliding down the hill again.
 
Hence the mooring. Somone has wrapped some nylon tape round one of the bollards on Springfield Road, and clipped it to one of the wheels. That may be enough.

For the curious, the van has "A shade greener" on it -this is a company that provides free solar panels to your roof in exchange for getting the feed in tariff back. It seems unlikely that the day where Bristol has had its heaviest snow for at least two years was a priority day for installing solar panels -let alone trying to drive up ninetree hill.

We would love to see the correspondence with the insurers on this one.

Someone has scraped "Doh" in the ice on the windscreen of FG61NXZ. We concur.

True Grit

We've been up to Redland, checking out that our roads have been properly gritted.

Remember, people, we pay for the roads, so you can grit them.

Imagine our surprise, therefore, when we found an Igloo, no moving cars, and a place full of community spirit. There were snowmen, of course, but the Igloo caught our attention, as it doesn't have planning permission.

Seasoned readers of this blog will appreciate that we can't stand law-breakers, although we're sure the police will be onto them as a crew from HTV West are reported to have turned up to film the miscreants that created the object.

A group of students (unwashed, probably) built it, and one apparently had the audacity to actually sleep in the Igloo last night to promote the plight of the homeless young in Bristol.

Worse still, they've set up a website where you can actually give money to a charity to support the homeless. Here: http://www.justgiving.com/redlandigloo. Here's the proof:

Quite why people should get involved with this sort of thing is beyond us. Surely their time would have been better spent gritting our roads? 

The upstanding residents of Woodland Road, next to the Igloo, have their priorities much more clearly focused, using the local grit bin to proper effect, ensuring they have direct access to Bristol's road network no matter what the weather.

2WD Drivers -please get the 4x4 out for the school run today

Following on our advice to pedestrians and cyclists, we have one more

A lot people are still driving their small cars to school and work, creating needless traffic jams for important people. Here on Whiteladies road you can see this.
 
This traffic jam is making it hard for us to complete our Clifton school runs -and so feel smug about spending an extra £1500 on a vehicle with awful fuel economy. They are also hard to park -which is why Clifton so desperately needs more parking.

This morning you can see that pedestrians who ignored our advice to stay at home are holding a 2WD up Whiteladies Gate, slowing down a Landrover.
 

At the top of Cotham Hill, we can see more 2WD cars in trouble -with a pedestrian making it harder to clear the junction, so endangering themselves as these vehicles struggle to get through.


Please can all drivers leave the round-town runabouts at home and get the big cars out today -you know you deserve it.

Cyclists -think before you walk round the city

Just as we think pedestrians should stay at home, we think cyclists should question their journeys
 
they won't be cycling -they'll be walking -and in doing so, selfishly, making traffic worse.

  
It's not safe and you know it -why else would you be cycling.

The cyclist above is not only endangering themselves, they are still trying to get their son to school -a child who is being endangered by being forced to walk in the road.

Be like the owners of these bicycles: have a day off
  

Pedestrians -please stay at home!

It's snowing out there -and a lot of people are still trying to walk to their destination

The conditions are so bad that many of these people are walking in the road. This includes all the students trying to get to their lectures -when they could be indoors talking about snow on facebook or twitter.

Walking in the road is dangerous and selfish

Please can everyone trying to walk round the city, think "is this journey really necessary". If not, don't go out.
 
If you must go out -do not walk in the road, where you may hold up a 4x4, such as this landrover in Clifton -someone important trying to get their child to school before driving over to Clifton Village to help the local economy in a cafe.

Think before you walk!

Reminder :4x4 is useless on ice without studs or chains

Now that winter is here, can we drop a quick reminder to everyone driving around not to believe those "buy a 4x4 and cope with winter" adverts. Without studded tyres or chains, all four wheel drive will do is get you into trouble by hiding the problems on the uphill, only for them to surface on the descent. Here is some footage from Seattle last week:
Lots of these vehicles are 4WD, but once you've hit the brake pedal, that's useless. Winter tyres then studded tyres (legal in Washington State during winter) and chains are what you should be thinking of. Otherwise, stay at home. Don't walk down the sidewalks on roads like this either. If you have a 2WD car with traction control features, when that light starts flashing it means "chains on". No chains? Pull over, park on a road that isn't so steep, walk.

Death on Dove Street

Chris Hutt, that known subversive, sends news of a death last Monday.

Police are appealing for witnesses and information after a fatal road traffic collision in Kingsdown, Bristol. The incident occurred on Monday 4th January 2010 at around 10.56am in Dove Street. A Honda Jazz was in collision with a low wall. The 82 year old driver died later in hospital.

This is sad, and it is something that seemed to miss getting coverage in the other local media outlets.

Dove Street is the semicircular road that goes round the 1970s housing block in Kingsdown. We've sent bicycles along here, we've also seen how cars pulling on to Ninetree hill correctly assume they don't need to look for traffic coming down the hill.

During the snows, ninetree became a sledge and snowboard route, not a driving option. Here is the view uphill, Dove Street is just visible to the left. This picture was taken five days before monday's death; things got icier.

The pavement was unusuable, pedestrians were in the road. No cyclists to worry about, just snowboarders and sledgers. Someone had wisely scraped all the snow off a bit of the road at the base, to stop such snow-users ending up on Stokes Croft.

Off to one side, no obvious cues as to whether Y64PNV had chosen to end up here or been forced that way by gravity. The tyre treads implied that the wheels had been rotating, so perhaps this was a parking action.

Visiting Dove Street a couple of days after the fatal incident, police signs are up and some tape is across the road; now broken. There was more tape on the lampposts at the bottom of nine-tree hill.

Otherwise, no details of what happened. Presumably the car started off on Dove street and then ended up on Ninetree hill, which turned out to be non-survivable. Either the driver deliberately went onto that road, or it was trying to park on Dove Street the way the cars above have, and somehow ended up on ninetree hill, at which point there weren't many options left.

It is a tragedy, and we extend our condolencies to friends and family.

Lazy school run parents

We saw one parent cycling up Cotham Hill on the school-run last week. On a strange tandem thing where the kid goes in front, the dad behind. This is the kind of thing those cycling campaigners and living streets people will be thinking is sweet: someone turning the school run into exercise.

But wait, look at this blurred shot. The little girl is working, but the dad? He's just sitting there with his feet hanging off the pedals.

This is an electric bicycle, and while the child is helping out, the dad is just sitting there, doing nothing at all!

This destroys the whole "bicycles are a form of exercise" argument. You get more exercise pressing the stop and go pedals on a car, changing gear aggressively, spinning the wheel as you try and do a mini-roundabout while going from 1st to 3rd gears and texting your friends at the same time.

BBC 1 West is going to look at the Cycling City program at 19:30 tonight, with councillors and cycling activists talking about the cycle city program, and whether it is making progress. Will anyone be up there denouncing it for encouraging lazy parents to get on electric bikes and get in our way? We think not.

The Ghost Bikes of Bristol

The snow may have forced those pedestrians into our way, but it has at least shown up the harsh truth about all those cycle parks put in: the bikes there don't move.

Cotham Hill: bikes under snow

Clifton Down Shopping centre: all but one bike covered in a layer of snow

Whiteladies road: the wheel of whiteness

This shows how demand for bicycle parking is manufactured. Those cycle activists are secretly abandoning bikes all round the city, to create the illusion of popularity. We offered to tell the BBC this in a program to be broadcast on BBC1 at 19:30 on monday, but they turned us down.

The AA: turning up late. As usual.

Just like the responsiveness of breakdown organisations is measured in time they take to turn up and fix the the problem, the competence of motoring press organisations ought to be assessed by how long they take to complain about something.

Last Friday, a whole week ago, we were complaining about pedestrians walking in our road space.

A whole week ago. Since then: more snow, more pedestrians in our way.

Yet it was only on Friday, seven days after we highlighted this issue that the AA, the nominal voice of the motorist, speaks out on this in a Daily Telegraph article:

And the AA warned pedestrians not to walk on gritted roads as a way of escaping icy pavements or mounds of snow piled high after roads had been ploughed.

See that? It took the AA a week to notice what a problem pedestrians were creating for us. And they weren't even specific about what they were threatening pedestrians with!

If the warning didn't say something like "or we will follow you home and cut the head of your household pet off and put in the bed" it isn't really a warning, is it? More a polite hint. Yet the pedestrians were out and about for a whole week. Above, in Alma Vale and St John's Roads in Clifton.

Below, in Cotham Hill. There you can see one man happily walking down the road, while a law-abiding pedestrian holds on to a lamppost to keep upright. She may not be able to get anywhere, but at least she won't be trying to use any zebra crossings or pressing buttons on pelican crossings.

The pedestrians should know that pavements are for them.

And for vehicles like P78RHW whose driver has struggled against adverse conditions to get to work at the NHS Hampton House facility. At least in these terrible conditions one part of the council -Bristol Parking Services- helped the motorists by staying in.

We're planning a little critique of the Association of British Drivers for being out of touch, but the AA, the big fault there is that despite their leader, Edmund King, being good at getting quotes into the printed news, if their quotes are a week behind the issues in our streets, what use is that? They are coming out and complaining about pedestrians in the roadway just when the snow and ice is all going away. And they don't even warn cyclists to stay off the roads as they aren't welcome in UK cities.

Bristol Traffic: up to date with the issues, timely with the news. Prepared to speak the truth. The real voice of Bristol's Motorists.

Resisting Oppression

There are some new signs up on Aberdeen Road, outside St Peter and Paul RC Primary School. They say no parking on the school-keep-clear area on weekdays 08:00 to 17:00.

This is more of the city's simply insane anti-car activities, something everyone should resist. We have discovered a loophole.

By banning parking on weekdays, there is nothing to stop any local parking entirely on the pavement on a weekend.

This will protect wing mirrors, and with the bollard, ensure the body-coloured bumper of OY05LNW won't suffer any damage from other vehicles reversing into it while parking.

It will even benefit the schoolchildren, as more snow is scheduled for the evening -this car will ensure the area will be snow- and later ice- free. With such selfless drivers, it doesn't matter than the council appears scared to grit paths.

Totterdown: not a shortcut

A photo from Totterdown reaches us

What's impressive here is that two bits of rope actually held this Mk1 Golf back; must have been scary for anyone in the car!

This is probably why those tax-dodging cyclists have postponed Sunday's planned Bastard Hills of North Bristol ride. They had already wimped out by avoiding Totterdown, now they say even Ninetree Hill is too hard.

(source)

Bristol Snow Chaos: Breaking News

It seems that the blogosphere does have a use. Here at Bristol Traffic we use it to promote the car and pavement parking, whilst relentlessly pursuing an anti-cyling agenda.

Others, however, appear to use blogging as some sort of way getting messages across, to Bristol City Council, for example. Over on the BristolGreenBlog Chris Hutt managed to be challenged to a dual by Cllr Jon Rogers.

It seems that today, possibly as a result of that dual, we motorists are now being scorned as Bristol City Council begin to actually clear the pavements. We have photographic evidence, gathered by our roaming reporter, that highly visible gangs of ex-Street Cleaners are actively trying to improve the conditions of Bristol's pavements.

When will this nanny state pandering stop?

Bristol Snow Chaos

Over on Green Bristol Blog, the subversives were whining about the state of the pavements. One commenter made a claim :

In less residential areas, then the council should make clearing pavements a priority as many important people have to leave their cars in distant places and walk to work (sorry, thought I was on Bristol Traffic).

NHS stats and injuries: Sunday was the busiest day ever at Frenchay Emergency Department, due to ice related injuries. I imagine the same is true elsewhere and I have been told the ambulance service have had a record number of calls over the last two weeks.

Obviously we don't care about pedestrian A&E statistics, but we do need to correct this idea that important people need to walk to work. Only those without courage to park right outside their destination practise park+walk, we believe in park on pavement with hazard lights on. As for the snow, given all important people have 4X4, it makes it easier for us park, because there are many more spaces, such as here on Chandos Road.

No, what annoys us is this

Not gritting the pavements encourages pedestrians to walk in our roads.

This slows us down, and here, they even walk the wrong way down a one way street! They are as bad as their tax-dodging fellow travellers, the cyclists.

Worse than that, some are not just walking to the supermarket, they are taking their sledge there, pootling along with the entire family! This sets a terrible example, as this small child will now expect to walk around the city, maybe even play on the pavements, so endanger themselves.

Look what happened when our reporter stopped these people and told them off! They laughed! Here we were, thinking of the safety of the people, especially their little one, and all they could do was laugh at everything we said.

These pedestrians have no respect. The sooner they are pushed back onto the pavement, the better. Even if we still need most of it to park.

Foxes don't pay Road Tax

Yes it's late.

And yes it's 02:00 on the 12th Day of Christmas, and...

Yes I'm just a big kid - I've sent the children to bed (ages ago), but I'm still up...

But look - it's snowing... and the only subversives in Bristol's ecosystem apparently able to use the roads are Foxes and Cyclists.

If only there were more urban 4X4s we could rid Bristol of these pests once and for all.

Remember: Drive safely.

Out of control on Nugent Hill

We have some back catalogue of vehicles getting into trouble on ice on Nugent Hill

It doesn't come out that well in the pics, but here these vehicles on Nugent Hill drivers must have had a bit of a fright.

This one is wedged in on a corner where it must have been skidding down the road until they got to veer toward somethign that would halt it. 

This next one got a fair bit further down the road before they managed to bring it to a halt. It's entered the contraflow , but they managed to get it to halt without causing any damage, and its been left until the snow goes away.

This last car WN08EZX ended up going all the way down the contraflow, executing a right turn despite the "no right turn" feature on Arley Hill, and managed to come to a halt just before the traffic lights with Cheltenham Road. The driver must have been pretty shaken up. We are glad they made it down the hill safely!

On a normal evening you'd think "Oh, this car is running the one-way stretch to bypass congestion on Cotham Brow and put in on the Arley Hill traffic jam". But this wasn't a normal evening. No road traffic, no traffic jams, and both Cotham Brow and Arley Hill were gritted. There was no rational reason to deliberately drive the wrong way down the Nugent Hill contraflow -an ungritted road on a steep hill, when the legal option was in fact safer.

That leaves

• They loved danger
• They were stuck in this ungritted part of the city and the only way out was down the hill

For these reasons we will not be passing the photograph of this vehicle on to the local Kingsdown police, the way we normally do to help our city's drivers resistance to the oppressive anti-car one-way infrastructure get more widely recognised. We in Bristol Traffic celebrate your bravery!

BCC: Priorities

This is written on the anniversary of the 'Bristol Blizzard', exactly one week ago, here in Bristol on the 20th December 2009. A night that saw the snow fall, the council accused of not gritting roads, and the local blogosphere erupt with accusations of Bristol City Council's mis-management of winter.

Here's a photo of Zetland Road, taken in the early hours of Christmas Day. The road is clear, confirming that Bristol City Council are nowhere near as bad as they are painted by the bloggers.

Look at the road - cleared for cars and tax-dodging cyclists after only four days!

Pavement cyclists across Bristol, however, had to suffer for a further three days before their preferred routes were cleared by global warming.

Bristol Traffic says: HO HO HO!

(PS: and stuff you, pedestrians, you little people:

remember - Get A Car = Get A Life).

Tax Dodgers in the Snow (2)

Further footage of the blizzard that hit Bristol just before Christmas.

Our intrepid reporters are out in the cold, fighting off youths, at 00:45 in the morning.

And why?

Well, as we all know, when it snows no gritting occurs, so tax-dodging cyclists make the most of it, whilst anyone without a 4x4 is forced to stay at home.

Yes, we at Bristol Traffic are morons, but we really need more facilities for cars in this city, not just playgrounds for badly dressed free-loaders out at all hours on their uninsured danger machines.

Especially in the snow.