fraternal greetings between arrogant and self-entitled road users

We've observed before that there's no real difference between cyclists and the owners of fast german cars: Arrogant and Self-entitled wankers: the only variable being how much kinetic energy they bring to a collision.

You can see that some of the individuals are in fact self-aware of this little detail. And rather than treat "the opposing team" as unworthy, instead welcome their presence and greet each other as they pass.

Here we can see exactly this at work, with our tax dodging adult and teenage child heading towards the Clifton "dead zone" from the more exciting parts of the city, on a weekend afternoon where almost nobody is around. This St Pauls Road, incidentally, because its the way from Clifton to those more exciting parts of the city. It continues as "Tyndall's Park Road", because the Bearpit roundabout wasn't considered in the victorian era destination, so "Bearpit Avenue" is eternally denied our city.

You can see, as they head down St Pauls Road, a Porsche turning in from Whiteladies Road, cutting the corner as it revs up to the 20 mph speed limit Marvin Rees is yet to publicly abrogate —though his state of the nation "we can't punish driving" hints that it will come soon.

It comes up behind the two cyclists; the father riding alongside the child to stop both of them getting close-passed.

Rather than get upset, the Porsche driver pauses for a moment, assesses the situation, and recognises a fellow arrogant and self-entitled wanker. They pass, but close enough they can see each other clearly, and sound a friendly on their horn as they pass.

Our cyclist, also recognises a fellow arrogant and self-entitled wanker waves a friendly hello back. After all —why else would someone beep their horn in a quiet Bristol road except to say hello?

fuckwit RLJ at race speed

People ask us: why no coverage of RLJ-ing cyclists? Well, we generally leave that to grumpy Havana Coffe Hamid, on account of his soundtrack choices and spelling skills. But when the opportunity arises, well, we do

Today then, this fuckwit


This is filmed from St Pauls Road, leading from the dull part of town, Clifton, to the more interesting bits, albeit after a final bit of climbing and a university area inevitably full of texting students.

Approaching the lights, they're red, time to hang around for a while waiting for green. And then slowly off, in case the BMW driver is in an hurry. No problems there, except carving out from the left is someone on a road bike, looking like they are near that 20 mph limit, blowing straight through the red light to make a high speed turn into St Pauls Road.



On the shout of "fuckwit" you can see some surprise and a bit of a wobble, though delayed. Leaning into the corner like that, he was fully committed to the bend: the only two options were: carry on or come off sliding sideways exploring the concept "road rash" more fully. It'd have been interesting to see if a scream of "no brakes" would make him choose the latter,

What were the risks this fuckwit exposed themselves to?

• If the car he had cut up on the inside had gone through the light themselves: crash
• If the BMW turning right from Tyndall's Park Road had been in a hurry: crash
• If a vehicle coming out of St Pauls road had been in a hurry, he'd have cycled into it.

And of course, if our tax-dodging reporter hadn't been so slow setting off: they'd have been in the crash too. Which is why we think this fuckwit deserves coverage.

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

Fixie Riders: don't Slipstream Mountain Bikes

It's January, and you can see who is out and about on their new fixie bike. This rear view video show our (expendable, tax-dodging) reporter turning off St Pauls Road, Clifton, onto Pembroke Road,
at a double-mini-roundabout put in to break Satnav. And coming up from the triangle, along Queen's Road, here comes someone in a shiny clean fixie, who decides to slipstream our reporter (expendable, tax-dodging).



This is where they a number of mistakes

1. Cycling behind someone on a bike without letting them know you are there. Risk: the rider in front might perform some manoeuvre without warning.
2. Cycling directly behind the bike, rather than off to one side, generally further from the pavement. Risk: you have to be able to stop as fast as the bike in front.
3. Cycling behind a mountain bike while you have a fixed wheel bike,
   albeit with a front brake.

We'll assume they were a bit drubbed from the climb and so didn't feel like passing, but they should have hung off to one side. At the very least, when they got behind our reporter (tax-dodging, expendable) they should have looked at the bike, and realised that it was a mountain bike.

In the video, you can see that the fixie rider (tax dodging, expendable, not so good at braking fast), gets to cycle behind the mountain bike until 00:30, when, in front of our reporter, someone on a phone steps out onto the zebra crossing. This puts our reporter into an aggressive-but-non-emergency brake. All well, until someone one a bike shoots up their left, almost into the aforementioned pedestrian. Which was a bit of a surprise.

It was only later, when the question "where did that rider come from", went through our reporters idle mind, that they went for the rear camera and had a look to see what happened. As you can see, they had their hands on the bars, drifted in right behind our camera, and, when the bike in front has to do that stop, nearly ride straight into the back of them, only avoiding it by swerving to the side.

Mountain bikers don't do chain gangs. They don't go along taking turns at the front, slipstreaming each other for performance, before hanging at the back to cycle no handed while you rummage in your back pocket for a gel with the same texture and flavour as baby food. Nor do they try and communicate with each other with little twitches of the hand, or pointing down and waving to say "there's something on the tarmac to avoid".

Instead they cycle along with enough of a gap between the rider in front so that they can see, enjoy and then learn from the mistakes the rider in front makes, rather than join in the crash. Food? Maybe, but they'll stop for that as they are generally lazy and view "cycling no hands" is one of the precursors to a trip to A&E. As for pointing out gravel, potholes or other surface hazards, those are not things to swerve around, they are there to jump over.

And, unlike fixie bikes with one front caliper brake, a modern MTB has hydraulic disk brakes, which, if the bubbles have been squeezed out of the cables, lets the rider bring the bike sliding to a halt with only the light touch of one finger on the brakes.

Because of that one-finger braking, mountain bikers are generally split into the "index finger faction": cycle with their index fingers on the brakes and the "middle finger faction", who use their middle finger. Whatever the choice, except on uphills, they're going to be cycling with their chosen finger on the brakes at all times. And when needed, they'll know to put that on, push their butt backwards to keep maximum weight on that rear wheel, with its 2.2+ inch surface on the ground, and so rather than skid, bring their bike to a halt faster than you could stop a British Leyland era Austin Mini (*).

When you come up behind a bike, see that its got wide tyres and disk brakes on the back, instead of cycling close enough to see whether the brakes are Shimano, SRAM or Hope, you need to think "this is a bike which can stop fast ridden by someone who may know how to use them", and not cycle right up their arse without even saying hello.



Do you know this rider? Are you that rider? Whoever it is: either hang off the side or stay back, especially to mountain bikes. Thanks

(*) MkI Minis had non-servo assisted drum brakes and to stop rear-wheel skid depended on that battery in the boot along with the WD-40, the hammer and the tow rope. As a safety feature, it was designed not to go very fast.

Grass a driver week: MK59USB, texting across a junction

Apparently some police forces in the country are now rolling out enforcement of driving too close to tax dodgers, maybe even section 59 ASB orders, which are interesting as there is a lower burden of proof. It doesn't impact penalties or insurance, simply threatens to take the car away.

We watch these experiments with trepidation.

Meanwhile, Bristol has a page to report incidents for their records alone.

This week we are conducting a small experiment to report a few dangerous drivers to this site, to see what happens. Expect followups if there are any results.


First, MK59USB on Tyndall's Park Road, crossing Whiteladies Road while reading their phone.



There are now pedestrian crossing lights on some of the arms of the junctions, specifically Tyndall's Park Road has a walk and ike one (a small dip in the kerb allows the bikes over); Whiteladies Road inbound also has green. These require left-turns to be restricted, which has long been a rule more ignored than observed. The council has recently done some raised corner sharpening; be interesting to see what's happening.

Where there is not any pedestrian crossing is on St Pauls Road —the Clifton Side— people run across when there is a gap, such as when vehicles heading inbound are waiting to turn right, and in that little gap between Whiteladies Road going read and TPR/St Pauls Road going green.

Which means this mercedes is about to head towards a junction where there are likely to be people sprinting across. Will they put down their phone?

No, is the answer, they keep on looking at it, going down to one-handed so they can hold the steering wheel with the other. About half way through the junction, they look up, notice the cyclist, and hold the phone down out of sight.

Interesting question: what would have happened if the tax-dodger hadn't been there?

The experiment begins, then, by filing this on the A&S police site, see how they react.

What about the full report an incident process? Too much hassle given its inevitable that nothing is going to happen. If they don't act when you go to the station with a CD of a video and a complaint, it's unlikely that they will react to a youtube URL.

Whiteladies Road: a weekday dataset

Our last trip down Whiteladies road shows that on a weekend, yes, pedestrian shoppers did hold up through traffic. This implied that yes, the FirstBus/Showcase bus route plans to reduce pedestrian crossing options may benefit their schedules, but we were worried about the impact on us cars getting out from side roads.

This video is different as it's a visit by our expendable cyclist on a weekday morning, down the bus lane from Oakfield Road, and through the Triangle as far as University Road, where they head off. Commentary first, analysis later.

At 0:24 FH56CVV switches lanes early, but as everyone else in the RH lane who isn't turning right also goes left, they are forced to give way to the vehicles in front of them anyway.

From 0:29 to 0:40, a bike lane that even waltham forest would be proud of. Its worn-out nature hints that it's popular with larger vehicles, while the trees keep it bumpy.

At 04:40 A9VNG is in the ASL, but we suspect that it was in there when the lights change. Why the suspicion? One car in the pedestrian area and one in front in the yellow hatched "only enter when clear to exit" area stopping cross traffic from St Pauls Road and Tyndall's Park Road getting across. Incidentally, Tyndall's Park road (on the left) here is no left turn, St Paul's (on the right, into Clifton) is no right turn, so all congestion coming up from the Triangle is Whiteladies Road traffic. Note also this junction provides no time for pedestrians to cross when the traffic isn't actually allowed to drive -if only all major junctions in the city were like this, congestion would be much improved. The BBC offices are on the left, incidentally.

Following the cyclist who is commuting without helmet, body-armour or hi-viz clothing, we eventually discover what is holding up WL-road traffic, it's the "triangle" gyratory system, which our tax-dodger hits at 1:43. The underlying problem is that Whiteladies Road traffic is forced to give way to traffic coming from the right, which initially means traffic from Clifton. Further on, at 2:17 we get held up by traffic all coming into the city from the A4 or the Hotwells's Bridges and then up Jacob's Wells road.

There are four lanes here, one for parking, one turning right at the next junction, and two straight on, but that leftmost one is lost even to vans ignoring bus-lane signs, not just by the police car at 2:41 but by the taxi-rank at 2:53.

WN59UDP is held up by these taxis forcing them to wait with all the in-town traffic, so as soon as they can they cut left in front of the bicycle, through the pedestrians and up University Road -only to find that the Biffa refuse collection lorry is in the way and ignoring the important traffic being held up. Finally passing that, they can sprint up to Woodland Road, where as you recall the Evening Post was campaigning against two paid parking spaces going away, which we felt was overreacting as nobody parks their except arts students, and their tuition fee increases will eliminate that luxury.

However, today we can see that the paid parking area is also popular for parental dropoff outside Bristol Grammar School -and it actually makes for a nice, low-chaos dropoff area. Admittedly, there isn't enough of this short-stay parking right in front of the school, forcing some parents to stop in the double yellow lined areas, but the alternative would be parking on the other side of this (one-way) street, forcing the children to cross the road. Would you want your children to cross a busy road like this? Exactly. Parking on the double yellow lines outside the school entrance is the only safe place to drop your kids off and be sure they get to school alive.

Now, returning to the Whiteladies Road issue, what does the bus plan proposal change on this stretch? The Oakfield Road crossing will be moved further away from the road, so making it less useful to pedestrians trying to walk from Cotham to Clifton or bag. Plus one point. But, this makes it harder for cars to get out or over from these roads, so minus one point.

Heading in to town, the right hand turn to Clifton will be removed for all but buses. This will turn Oakfield road into the primary rat-run option, but as we've seen, the moving of the zebra crossing makes it trickier. What they aren't doing is extending the bus lane any further south, and they are leaving that toy bike lane in there. We say toy as its so half hearted that no rational cyclist will think they are welcome -what with the faded paint and tree roots, but its very presence implies that some people in the city do welcome cyclists. No, better to remove it and put a cyclists dismount sign up.

Entering the triangle is more informative. Congestion is caused here by traffic joining the road from other places (Clifton, Jacob's Wells Road), and whatever is slowing them down on their final journey. There are no pedestrian-only lights or zebra crossings to play with, so there's little that can be done to make pedestrians feel less welcome, no tricks to make the schedule more accurate.

And that's the key problem. The goals of the showcase route are faster bus journey times and a more predictable schedule. Removing and moving zebra crossings will only help with this out of hours, on weekends and midday, because on a weekday morning the problem is more fundamental: Erlang's Laws. Congestion is a result of the ingress rate of a queue being higher than the egress rate. The reason vehicles can't leave whiteladies road isn't that there are vast numbers of people struggling to turn up Cotham Hill (more on that another day), or any of the side roads, it is because the merging of multiple queues at the triangle creates a bottleneck which having one lane dedicated to bus stops and a taxi rank doesn't do much to help.

And do we care about mid-day firstbus schedules? No -and neither should anyone else. People using the bus at weekend and mid-day weekdays are either people who can't afford a car, people with bus passes, or people who have made some ideological decision to take a bus: passengers FirstBus can take for granted. If they want to make money, they need to get the commuter traffic, and quite frankly, changes to pedestrian crossings aren't going to do it. They may help us car commuters by reducing the number of pedestrians and cyclists, but given our dataset implies that the Whiteladies Road congestion is due to problems in the city centre, those crossing changes aren't going to help buses or our cars on whiteladies road at peak hours, which is when it matters to us as well as FirstBus.

Sorry FirstBus, but whatever datasets you have on congestion problems on Whiteladies Road, they were clearly collected by FirstBus or Council staff during their working hours, rather than during am or pm rush hours. This is the only explanation why your proposals don't just do nothing for us drivers while making pedestrians and cyclists suffer, they don't appear to help buses either.

That's the irony there. This proposal has already got the cycling campaign saying "oppose this it's anti-pedestrian and anti-cyclist", it's also anti-car, but we think it manages to be bus-neutral at the same time. That takes skill, that does.

Spirit vs Letter

There are some new houses up on St Pauls Road, Clifton. The council forced them into putting in bike parking as part of their planning permissions.

Two per front garden. Room for four bicycles.

There's just one small flaw. Anybody who spends however much these premium clifton "city" houses cost is going to want to park their cars, multiple thereof. The designers of the houses realised this, and put them as far to the side of the driveway as you could get, allowing the owners to slide two cars in to each garden, from which they can reverse out safely onto this popular road.

As they all do.

This shows the whole futility in this sustainable housing thing. If the house plans require parking to be provided and bike parking, well, the bikes get the short straw. Yet the letter of the requirements "sustainable" has been met.

It would be better to recognise the futility of this design. Anyone in Clifton who does want a bike will get a fancy one and keep it in doors. All these do is take up space and threaten car doors.

Every road closure is a new parking space

Our fellow travellers, the Association of British Drivers, regularly complains that the council does "anti-car" things like closing roads. We in Bristol Traffic think they are over reacting.

A road closure can provide room for 1-4 cars to park.


Here in Clifton, a road is closed for some engineering works. And in doing so, St Paul's Road, now has two extra parking spaces. By parking diagonally LT54HKG, leaves room for another vehicle alongside it.

Some people may complain that the car is on a corner, but as the road is closed, it's no longer a corner, is it?