There’s some new signs up on Southwell Street, at St Michael’s Hospital
UH Bristol
Private Road
No parking
on double
yellow lines
No Parking at an any time
private property
(small print about how there’s a fine of £60 for doing so and if you don’t play up they will go to the DVLA for your details)
Any cycles chained or locked to these railings will be removed -contact security
There are some covered bike racks, about enough for ten bicycles. Why no more?
Even after taking away the pavements to provide parking, even after creating a parking basement for staff, there isn’t room for any bicycles.
As to the other signs -and interesting topic. It’s not clear that this is "a private road" -it is just a street in Kingsdown, albeit one whose pavement has been co-opted by the BRI.
Someone with a residents permit and time on their hands should test this
we have no idea what these new lumps of concrete embedded in Southwell Street are.
Presumably the hi-vis colour scheme is to stop anyone bumping in to them
even so: why?
What do the Southwell Street changes mean? It'll be hard to tell until next term. Already, though, it seems to create the (false) impression that people on foot are welcome, and the zebra crossings appear to act as traffic calming too.
The restored pavement is in use. This will reduce car/pedestrian conflict, so actually be beneficial
That said, it also reduces bicycle/pedestrian conflict, while increasing bicycle/car conflict. This puts the blame on us, not them. Of course, put a van in front of these bollards "Only 15 minutes, guv", with another van on the pavement, and the old regime will be restored.
You can also see that the bollards are set up for a hard right turn into the pay and display car park. This makes it important to keep people off that pavement. It also makes us suspicious that the bollard placement was explicitly designed to remove the short-stay parking option on that side of the bollards. You can't park there without blocking the car park. Yes, you may be able to park the other side, but it's a ten minute journey round the block to get there.
Overall then, the bollards, the pavement and that deviously moved row of bollard don't appear to help us much. It's interesting to compare this with the original proposal, which was very much van-friendlier. Drive-in/back out parking spaces instead of pavement, room to park for delivery on both sides of the bollards. Assuming they dont' actually enforce parking in front of the bollards in the spaces currently in use, the physical parking capacity has been reduced by four. That's going to create tension, and making the bollards "opaque" to people on foot or pedals will create more. Now they will be upset if we park there, whereas before we could do it and not feel bad.
The key tactic here will be to set everyone's expectations up now. During the university holiday. We can take over the bollard area for parking, nobody will get used to cycling through it, and when term time begins, it will stay that way.
The gate has been removed and replaced by bollards.
Yes, you can still park a van against them, but as they are the people doing the roadworks, that may change.
More shockingly, the "ex-pavement" that was to still have NHS vans echelon-parked over it, has been reinstated as public pavement! This goes against the whole "shared space" theory, or, as we van drivers call it, the "our space" road design. It's all ours, see.
The car exit is as before, except the signs blocking off that pavement have been replaced with less bent ones, and anyone walking down that road gets to get in the way of cars pulling out -as you can just make out here through the windscreen of the beetle.
We think that zebra crossing is new. It's hard to see why they bothered.
The tax-dodgers are complaining about Shared Streets this week -that they really mean "streets mostly for cars and vans". Exactly. Given a choice between a pedestrian area and a shared street, we'd go for the shared street. Once you get a hang of the chicanes they can be quite fun.
Southwell Street, our unofficial logo, is being "improved". We know that, as the vans to do it are parked there this week. Expect photos soon. But before that, the plans.
As people will recall, the concerns by the non-drivers about this area were
uphill pavement turned into NHS parking, possibly illegally.
no way for bicycles to get through except on the pavement
the pavement was blocked to give priority to staff cars
both dead ends were used as short stay parking for vans
Overall then a van-and-staff friendly area, with pedestrians as an afterthought, and one of those deliberately created bike/walker conflict zones to divide the opposition, all on the premier walking route from Gloucester Road to Bristol University, and hence full of students. By creating such conflict we could discourage people from trying to do this.
We were initially worried, then, when this draft plan hit our inbox, "a shared space".
Then we saw some emails from Ben Hamilton-Baillie, who we thought would approve of this fusion of walking and driving. Yet he seemed unimpressed
Most residents in Kingsdown feel, as I do, pretty insulted to be presented with a sketch of such pathetically poor quality for Southwell Street.
If the UHB really believes that Southwell Street and other streets in and around Kingsdown can be treated with such contempt, we should not give them any support. I have seen work experience students aged 16 produce more intelligent work than AECOM’s output for UHB. I only hope the hospital trust is not having to pay them fees as well....
Finally, we saw this video from a tax-dodging pavement cyclist who encounters the designers, and provides some feedback.
At 00:10 the Ginster delivery van does a U-turn without indicating, at which the troublemaker engages in discussion with the driver about, that and the fact that it isn't making any beeping noises. Well, the lorry pays more road tax, and isn't of a size where it needs the beeps. That shuts them. Remember that lorry though.
At 1:02 they execute the highly illegal "pavement bypass" option, so endangering pedestrians.
At 1:16 they meet the a hi-viz'd person planning the traffic calming area -and say to them the plan sucks, because painting a bit of pavement, whether it's in coloured paint or some cobbles down the middle of the road is utterly meaningless. They mutter on a bit, and we think their key point is that taking one pavement off for car parking and closing the other off for safe car park access is somehow wrong.
At 1:38 the cyclist, who is standing in the middle of the "person on the road" lane is actually forced to wheel their bike backwards to let a car out of the staff carpark. This shows to us how the "shared space" design will have no effect on our daily lives, so may as well be permitted. There is a risk of some benefit to people trying to cycle here -as they won't be quite so discouraged by having to hop on and off the pavement, but if we block the bollards with vans often enough, they'll be discouraged differently.
At 1:48 the troublemaker demands some of the pavement back. We'd hoped to have some good news there, but based on the building work it looks like these people have got their way. Somewhat. Wait until tomorrow for the specifics there.
At 2:02 they express concern that the dropoff area in front of the hospital is chaotic, and it will remain so. Well, that's why it's called a dropoff area, isn't it? If people were expected to do dropoffs and pickups on St Michael's hill, there'd be an area there instead.
at 2:20 their rant finishes and they finally head off, presumably to the relief of the site team. They then proceed down a road that clearly has room for parking all down one side, yet lacks it. And there are an oddly large number of pedestrians, given the effort the NHS has gone to here to discourage walking.
At 2:43 you can see some people trying to cross Horfield Road. Notice the wide five-junction crossing here. It's a dangerous exposed crossing and people shouldn't attempt it, not when there is a zebra crossing further up the road, as the video shows at 3:07. If people aren't prepared to cross the road where a crossing has been provided, well, it's like people on bicycles not using the bike lanes.
At the zebra crossing they do a U-turn, and at 3:08 show what is paveparked over yellow lines round the corner: Ginster delivery van HN58LVK. Purely because Southwell Street doesn't support through traffic, that van had to do a 180 degree turn in a narrow drop-off street, turn right up St Michael's Hill, right again on to Myrtle Road, then onto Alfred place. One U-turn and two right turns -not just a philosophy for the coalition government, it's costing the company money. The DfT puts a financial cost on critical business motoring, and its clear that closing this road has tangible costs to that key part of the economy: the white van.
Therefore, although the proposals don't take much away from us, they don't deliver what we need, either -the removal of the gate and the re-instatement of Southwell Street as a van-friendly rat-run!
Someone cornered a team member a few weeks back and said "where are the secret plans for Southwell Street?". We forwarded them on, but are still waiting back for the note the police stuck through their door advising them on the rules for parking on pavements in Montpelier.
We are also trying to get permission to reprint one email from Ben Hamilton Baillie, Kingsdown resident and shared-space advocate, sent to the Bristol council denouncing the proposals. We need his permission, plus a review from the legal team, before printing. Legal? Well, it is somewhat critical of the plans.
In the meantime, here's what's happening as a video
and a photo of V984DNA
Why the increased number of vans on the co-opted pavement and over the pedestrian-in-middle-of-road paintwork? BRI parking changes. With the closure of most of the Horfield Road car park for building works, there's a deficit of patient parking. 75 spaces in the St Michael's Hill car park area (through the tunnel to the right, perhaps?) being opened to patients and their visitors. Hence less parking for staff -who have no choice but to park on the pavements or pretend pavements.
There's a notice up on a lamppost on Marlborough Hill discussing this. It also lets slip that staff parking permits cost £4/day. Not bad for the city centre, not bad at all. Given that once the NHS gets privatised in the next 6-12 months, the annual "consultancy fee" with our GP for getting a disabled sticker will probably go up to £200/van, this rate starts to look appealing for city-centre commuters, although it's not quite as flexible as the magic blue sticker.
There have -apparently- been complaints about this shared space. We don't know who, we don't see anything wrong with it except sometimes people get in the way of where we want to drive or park.
Whoever is complaining clearly must be walking or cycling, so not contributing to the national economy,
Yet they want things "improved". What improvements will help us? None.
Southwell street represents all that is inner Bristol. A road on a hill, old houses, the pavements turned into parking and barrier in the way to discourage people from walking and cycling. To attempt to change this is not just an attack on the hospital, it is attack on modern British society!
Just a few photos here to celebrate Southwell St, by the St Michael's Hill hospital. What was once a road has been successfully turned by the BRI into a useful hospital facility, with lots of staff parking.
The presence of paving stones under the cars above has created some tension with the residents association, especially as no evidence has been found proving the pavement was "given" to the hospital. We say there's nowhere else to park.
We also understand why blocking the pavement and forcing pedestrians onto the road was the right thing to do. It is for their own safety.
Furthermore, painting a little sign of someone walking along what was once a pavement makes them feel grateful -and ensures that if they do get hit by a car and were walking anywhere else, well, they didn't follow the signs.
Like we said, we have heard rumours of change here. We now have the documents and some of the emails -and very interesting they are too.
But before publishing them, consider this: this road will be the first sight of the city for all children born in this hospital. To try and make it friendly to pedestrians and cyclists would be an attempt to redefine our city, not just for the adults, but for these newborn. Therefore we want to be the first to say that we are glad that the hospital is attempting to do the least it can get away with, namely painting the bits where pedestrians are meant to walk in more solid colours. We could call them "walking superhighways".
It's been a few weeks since the RPZ rolled out, a year since Chris Hutt last commented on it. Time start looking at the impact of the RPZ on the city.
The RPZ has devastated Woodland Road and the rest of the university quarter. With some of the staff having parking in the (former) front gardens of the buildings, these roads used to be a lovely commuter spot, just before the pay to park area. Students got up too late to get look in.
But now, well, completely empty at 08:30. That not only makes it bad for commuters, it makes it a more pleasant place to walk and cycle. At least on those days when some Big Society volunteers act as community lollipop people.
The sign of cyclists just makes things more painful, as we know that not only do they not pay to be in traffic jams, they don't have to pay to park.
Fortunately, we managed to get our white van to the BRI-managed "shared space" area that is Southwell Street, which had a little bit of pavement left for us.
Important: we have heard rumours of changes planned for that road/NHS parking area.
Any anonymous documents or emails are welcomed at the usual email address. We like them to remain consistent with our mission statement "be 12-18 months ahead of any breaking news covered by the Evening Post". If we don't get anything in the next few days, we will have to make something up.
Our secret instrumentation of cyclists, with some followup chat, shows us how these people endanger pedestrians and patients on Southwell Street.
Look how they
Cycle along the "pedestrianized" bit of road on Southwell Street, so endangering anyone forced to walk along this bit of road by the no-pedestrian barriers around the car-park entrance.
Pop up on the real pavement to get around the gate completely blocking the road.
Stay on the pavement to get past the van V722LAE parked in the no parking area by the gate.
Leap onto the road and endanger pedestrians crossing the road, the delivery vans, and the cars dropping staff off.
Swerves into the oncoming lane to get past the Ginsters cornish pastry lorry.
In the past, someone suggested to us that we should make Southwell Street the official logo of Bristol traffic, as a combination of a gate to block bicycles and a pavement closed to pedestrians represented our city. Well, it does -these cyclists ignoring the hints that the NHS gives them -that cycling to school, work or the nearby university is wrong- show us the problems we face in our city. What else can we do to ban them?
Southwell Street, a road "enclosed" by the hospital for parking. It gets the pedestrian and cyclist activists foaming at the mouth.
But what about is drivers? Is it any good for us? Look at the signs.
ATTENTION
These parking bays are not
designated for public parking
NO PARKING
you will be fined if you park here.
Then look towards Kingsdown. The road is closed, the slipway chained off, and on the pavement, they've stuck up bollards and gate things to stop us parking there even if we could get through.
We don't care that you can't walk down a pavement because of the things they've stuck up, we don't care that the gate stops cyclists. But if it doesn't even help us, the motorist, what exactly is the point of all these features?
Those walking/cycling people mutter on about sixty years of post-war motor-vehicle-centric city design, they go on about institutionalised motorism, but look at this road. You can't drive through it, you can't park on it. The only people who appear to benefit are the three or four UBHT vans that park on what was formerly a pavement. That's not institutionalised motorism -or if it is, it's a pretty mediocre implementation.
The RAC. The fourth emergency service. Or is that the AA? Either way, they come out for us, and will park on zig-zags by a pedestrian crossing -below on Muller Road- to handle our breakdowns. But expensive. RAC roadside assistance for two drivers with at home support, recovery and euro-breakdown comes to £283.50. That's a lot. If you are one of those wimps who don't drive a group G road-tax car, it's way more than your road tax. So you need to make a choice, don't you: Tax and MoT or breakdown cover? One you need, one you may be able to get away without, providing the DVLA don't catch you.
Fortunately, the RAC have seen a solution: abolish road tax.
The RAC has put up a paper on Road Charging, that encourages replacing road tax and fuel tax with pay to use fees. We initially thought that the BBC had accidentally used the phrase "road tax" to cover vehicle excise duty, and completely ignore the fact that group A vehicles pay nothing, so if you drive a small hybrid car you pay no VED and discounted fuel duty due to its increased economy. But no the RAC, they don't represent the little people. They represent us: the big cars, the white vans, the V8 range rovers coming in to london from oxfordshire. So the RAC used the term "road tax" in their key points, and the BBC radio and web site naively believed the report was somehow independent, rather than a plan to free up money for RAC breakdown cover.
Now, what about the actual report? We like the idea of abolishing fuel duty and road tax, but we think the idea of making people pay-per-mile-driven misses the elephant in the room: pedestrians and cyclists. How can we make them pay-per-mile walked or cycled -and without that, how can they be made to bear a realistic proportion of the congestion they cause? Every pedestrian who uses a zebra crossing or pelican crossing may hold up traffic, and should be charged at least for the lost time of every driver. Similarly, a bicycle pootling along at 15 mph shouldn't just be billed for using the road, they should pay a congestion charges of the row of cars behind which have been forced to also drive at 15 mph.
We don't understand why the article missed this -it's so obvious. They even showed the problem at work in bristol. Go to page 47, look at the photo on the top. That's the zebra crossing on St Michael's Hill, looking down to town. And there are some happy students gaily prancing over the crossing -probably holding up the photography team.
We don't currently have the photo from that exact same location, though we have one from slightly further back on some winter day when drivers were forced to swerve round road closed signs.
Slightly further down the hill, almost aligned with the zebra crossing, you can see the view of the city that the RAC use in their paper. Yet despite the photo, the RAC miss the elephant in the room, or more precisely, pedestrians in the road. In our way. In the way of the road-taxy payers, or, in the future, road-use-tax payers.
Unless a pay-to-use road system also bills all pedestrians and cyclists for the congestion and pollution they cause, even indirectly, it will be anti-motorist.
There's only one thing about the RAC using photo of our St Michaels Hill in their otherwise missing-the-point article that cheers us up. Every person walking over the zebra crossing from left to right in these photos has had to come from Southwell Street. And what's so special about that? It's the one where the hospital blocked off the pavement to force the pedestrians into the road. But even there, do the pedestrians get billed for holding up BRI hospital cars? We doubt it.
It's good to see that the new St Michaels' Hospital barriers are working to keep pedestrians feeling second class citizens.
However, we are shocked to see that someone has already bent one of the warning signs!
Who would do a thing like that? We suspect a cyclist. Who else would go down a pavement at speed, not looking where they are going. We are fortunate they hit this warning sign, and not a pedestrian, and that if they were injured there was at least a handy hospital alongside the car park.
We watched to see if the cyclists would stop now there had been accidents, but no, we saw two in a row nip through the parking pavement to the right of the barrier, then pull in. Such actions are dangerous.
Shortly thereafter, someone parked a vehicle to discourage such actions
Sadly, despite the best efforts of the NHS, not only is there still a gap for bicycles, some pedestrians are walking outside of the designated walking area!
They may be wearing hi-viz and carrying a helmet, but this is no excuse for such dangerous activities.
We sent one of our expendable cyclists out there to see whether the new anti-bicycle, anti-pedestrian features would stop cyclists trying to use the pavement on Southwell Street. We hoped so, because it would discourage them from trying to cycle to the University, taking up valuable space on our streets. Sadly, our experiments -on a Sunday- showed that it is still technically possible for a bicycle to do it.
Of course, were it a weekday, when the main road option is blocked off, and the street full of pedestrians, attempts to cycle this way would create exactly the kind of bike/pedestrian conflict that we always complain to the Evening Post about as proof the cyclists are selfish criminals.
Some other findings.
The painted pedestrian bit on the road really is meaningless: vehicles know that it is a road, and anyone walking on it is a tax dodger without any insurance -and that they have chosen to die.
There's no way to get a wheelchair back up on the pavement, what with the dropped kerb being blocked off.
We don't care about the first of these, pedestrians should not be there. Disabled people? Interesting. In the video they carry on along the road, but remember, on a weekday, the barrier will prevent this. This raises some interesting questions about who owns the road.
If the road belongs to the council and has been blocked by the hospital then the barriers are probably technically not-legal. This is a pity, as anyone who owns a driveway will be watching this case and hoping they can put barriers up on their bit of pavement, so that they can pull in more easily without worrying about passing schoolkids.
If the road now belongs to the hospital, then it's just fallen foul of disabled access legislation and there's a risk that someone might grass them up to the DWP for falling foul of the Disability Discrimination Act.
Either way, it amuses us. Our biggest fear is that the council will now take a look at this problem, explore which bits of pavement are theirs, and not only force open this road, but take away the parking on the other side. We get lots of visitors to this site using the keywords "BRI Parking", presumably because when you get an invite to visit the BRI, the leaflet on getting to the hospital includes no details on parking. Instead it covers how to get there by bus and train, the timetable for the free bus from the station, where the bus station is. What the leaflet doesn't cover is where any free parking for the hospital is. Unlike the suburban hospitals in the city, like Southmead and Frenchay, there are no half-empty residents streets nearby, not on a weekday, and the council and hospital both refuse to provide free parking for visitors. This is unacceptable.
Many political groups in the city have asked us for our endorsement. So far, the UKIP transport policy appeals the most.
We like their plans to raise speed limits on M-ways to realistic speeds, though think 80 mph isn't that realistic -haven't they done the M5 northbound run recently? 90 is more honest.
We like their idea of introducing the turn-on-red rule, as it ensures that bicycles and pedestrians can't view a green light as a safe time to move. Walking and cycling are too dangerous in modern cities.
We like their idea of making free parking in hospital parking areas possible, though they aren't as strongly behind it as the SNP are, so we doubt that the BRI will benefit.
We like their proposal to remove all licensing issues on taxis other than roadworthiness, though we don't believe they have noted that taxis and minicabs have special MOT requirements: indicators and brake lights should be optional.
Our favourite option is their ability to make no cycling signs enforceable:
10.9 Local authorities should be given additional powers to enforce a ‘cyclists dismount’ or ‘no cycling’ regulation where there are safety concerns – such as on busy roundabouts, junctions or bus lanes, or where the road would be too narrowed by cycle lanes and cause unacceptable delays to traffic.
That's lovely. Where the road is too narrow for bike lanes, and the bikes would hold up cars by being in the way, ban them! Yet just before that, they say they approve of cycling for leisure
10.8 Cycling on safe cycle routes, lanes, tracks and trails should be actively encouraged,particularly as a leisure pursuit.
This is so wrong! Leisure cycling still encourages people to ride a bicycle, out there, singing Edelweiss or whatever families do on bicycle rides. No, leisure cycling is a crime. Stamp it out. Fortunately, they do that on page 33 where they propose re-opening the Yatton - Cheddar line, stolen by the cyclists and called "the strawberry path".
If there is one big flaw in their paper, they use metric measurements such as tonnes and metres as soon as page six. If they want to be free from EU interference, they should get rid of these EU counting systems and go back to yards, feet and lbs. Indeed, let's get rid of decimal values, go back to pounds, shilling and pence. Decimalisation is EU interference in our money!
Contributor "A" pointed us at Southwell Street, said we should check it out to see what had changed since our last visit.
Oh yes. To reduce the risk of pedestrians being hit by cars pulling out of the hospital's underground car park, the pavement is now blocked off, with a sign:
CAUTION:
beware of
exiting traffic
from
car park
Ideally, that would be enough to discourage pedestrians from attempting
to use this road, especially given the removal of the pavement on the
other side and the placement of a large yellow barrier across the road.
This pavement was the only place they could walk, so removing that
option should stop pedestrians getting in the way.
For some reason -perhaps the fear that the Kingsdown Conservation Group includes lawyers, they haven't come out with some no entry to pedestrian signs -though we are pleased to soon have some footage of such signs nearby. Instead they have painted a path on the road, showing pedestrians where to walk.
One concern we had -would pedestrians have the right of way over cars, even though they were now walking on a road. Because on a pavement, after all, one of those pesky little laws says you aren't actually allowed to run over pedestrians -even if they are in the way.
Testing the system was fairly straightforward -wait 30s for a car to come out, see if it does anything resembling looking or giving way to pedestrians. No, it's a road, pedestrians should not be there, its OK for W99AER to cut them up.
Only one question remains: how to get access to the car park? If this area goes residents only, those spaces will become invaluable.
Incidentally, this marks our first nomination for the 2010 Bristol Traffic Anti-Pedestrian awards. More welcomed.
If you ever get directed by the NHS helpline to drive a small child down to the BRI kids A&E, you are left with the problem of parking. Assuming you do have an emergency, go into the ambulance only bit outside the Bristol Heart Institute, then -staying outside the warren of buildings- go down to the A&E unit. Drop the kid off and then nip out to worry about the problem of parking without getting fined.
Even if there is space in the parking area, it's minimum cost is £4, in coins, and if you are on an emergency run you may not have it to hand. Out in the street is cheaper as you can pay in smaller amounts. But pay you still do.
Which is why we are pleased to pass on some news about secret BRI parking places, this time credit to the Kingsdown Conservation Group for tipping us off.
Southwell Street. Between Horfield Road and St Michael's Hill (the direction the camera is facing). On the left, St Michael's Hill hospital, on the right, the BRI's new Southwell House. And what's that on the right? Parking. Big enough for a truck
Coming from St Michael's Hill, you can fit a van or estate car in. Even though you poke out into the road, the large yellow barrier ensures that there will no passing traffic, not even passing bicycles. Your paintwork is better protected here than in any nearby roads.
Here then, is our secret BRI parking. There's just one small problem, according to the signage that appears to have gone up as an afterthought.
YOU RISK
BEING FINED
IF YOU PARK
HERE
THESE SPACES ARE NOT DESIGNATED AS PUBLIC PARKING
This is where it gets complex.The hospital clearly consider these parking spaces theirs, and not for anyone else. Yet in a lovely worded letter from the Kingsdown Conservation Group, we are let onto the true nature of the parking spaces. They are, technically, pavement. As the KCG put it
UHB has appropriated the whole of the pavement for private parking. Photograph 1 shows the path on the north side of Southwell Street to be continuous. Buried in the modern concrete are the remains of traditional stone paving slabs. KCG is not aware of a Highways Act order that entitles UHB to block the pavement to pedestrians.
See that? Not hospital parking. Pavement. It may have concrete on top, but the slabs are still there. Which makes it our pavement. Open to any of us city tax payers to park on.
The KCG include some questions in their letter
We would like the City to answer a number of questions. They are: 1. Does UHB have a legal right to invite drivers to park across and block the whole of the northern pavement of Southwell Street? 2. Does UHB have legal authority to erect and to maintain a permanent barrier across Southwell Street? 3. Does the Highways Department have a right to approve the quality and appearance of a legally authorised barrier? 4. Does the Highways Department agree that vehicles emerging from the hospital car park into a Southwell Street are a danger to pedestrians and cyclists? 5. Does it propose to improve the safety of Southwell Street?
We have some of our own.:
1. If the north side of Southwell street is technically pavement, who is authorised to fine vehicles for parking there without permission?
2. In particular, does that "you risk being fined if you park here" sign mean that it is Bristol Parking Services, Avon and Somerset Police, or the BRI?
3. If you do park there, and the BRI do issue a fine, can they actually enforce it?
We await answers. We would also be very curious to know what happens when you do park here. Anyone willing to experiment would have an entertaining day. Alternatively, someone malicious could call Bristol Parking Services or the police and report a number of illegally parked vehicles. That would be fun too, especially if they hung around with a video camera to see what happened next.
In the meantime, we would like to draw attention to the fact that this popular student route suffers from bicycles on the pavement, just by the barrier. It seems that a wide yellow barrier and a chain on one side is not sufficient to prevent bicycles. We propose a low barrier at the height of a cyclists head. They may get knocked off, but provided they have a helmet it will do no damage -and they are at least outside a hospital.
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