Abbeywood Week: Filton Abbey Wood station

While visiting the abbeywood area (we drove, obviously), it seemed appropriate to check out the Abbey Wood station. We had heard of this, MoD backed station put in for commuters, offers fast travel from Wales and templemeads. Fortunately, no functional connectivity from the Severn Beach line, as that would actually make it possible for commuters in that part of the city to get in by train rather than by car -so threaten the entire economy of the city.

There are some signs of it being used, and that bicycles are a problem. All along the signs up to the station: no bicycles, and cycles dismount.

Coming down the hill, in the other direction, the same signs, in case bicycles come from that direction.

what kind of criminals do people here fear?

Ones who ignore police warning signs, although the fact the 1835 law they cite is about pavements beside public roads, doesn't cover footpaths, railway bridges and probably not even the bit of railway car park by the sign may be one cause.

There are also cycles dismount signs on the footpath signs, again, presumably disregarded.. We were not aware that cycles on pavements were such a threat to society in this corner of the Abbey Wood sprawl, but clearly it is. 

After a bit of research, we identified a potential cause. If you look at the abbey wood area on the council-supplied map (large PDF file), it's clear all the footpaths and footbridges are marked as green, places bicycles are welcome. There is a small note "Bridge please walk", but it doesn't say how far, and it doesn't cover the footpath with the cycles dismount sign.

The fact that the councils are giving away maps encouraging cycling is leading to this problem of bicycles on pavements, one the police are left to deal with.

All money enforcing cyclists dismount signs should come from the cycling city budget!

Vertical Parking: a new technique

A reader of our blog sends in this photo taken on 26th April 2008 showing a new parking technique in the quiet residential streets of Stoke Gifford

This is Ratcliffe Drive at 6am on a Sunday morning and it is the neatness of the new method of parking which is perhaps especially worthy of a mention. Apparently no-one heard or saw anything during the night (when, presumably, the "vertical parking" took place).

It does appear to have damaged one of the wing mirrors, which is often one of the motivators for parking on-pavement. However, once that mirrors is off -and who needs them anyway- it will work quite well. You can get a full vehicle into the same space normally taken by half a car. If used in the inner city -we are thinking Montpelier- it would let people double park on both the pavement and the road, so double the entire parking capacity of the area.

Filton Road Holdups

From a couple of weeks back, South Gloucestershire Council dared to close Filton Road, that well known short-cut so much loved by UWE students and Business Park users that avoids the lights and queues on the A4174 (the reason for those queues? mostly people using the short cut but never mind).

Anyway, the barriers and signs didn't deter many, convinced this was some clever ploy by Council Engineers into tricking them to take the long way round, a great drivers saw those pesky cyclists sneaking through and decided they'd follow, including the driver we see here in the Citroen Xsara X268GOV.


The only problem was the signs weren't a clever ploy after all, the Council really had dug the road up. And we see poor old X268GOV has been forced to execute a 5 point turn and come back the other way. Worse they've now got to go back down Filton Road, past all the 'Road Closed' ahead and Diversion signs they'd apparently missed earlier and re-join the back of the queue on the dreaded A4174: a dual carriageway whose opportunity for widening has been neglected at the expense of a bike lane that never gets used by bicycles, on account of them being on this rat-run instead.

And the reason for the road closure? Gas works? New sewers? No, to add insult to injury those lunatics at the Council had closed the road to build a new cycle path!

South Gloucestershire is the motor-centric part of Bristol, and such facilities and road closures go against the interests of the residents and commuters. Why do they think we moved to out of town villages and got jobs in a featureless sprawl of buildings, were it not to drive to work and home again, pausing only to nip in to Sainsbury's and B&Q's on the way home, eating a hamburger grabbed from the McDonald's drive through as we do so?

If we had wanted to live somewhere where we walked and cycled to shops and to work we would have chosen to live and work in the city centre. We don't and we didn't -so why is this anti-car council interfering with our lifestyle choices?

MOD Persecution at Abbey Wood

The Ministry of Defence is cramming an extra four thousand people on its site at Abbey Wood (up from 6,000 to 10,000) by building a new office block and creating new 'Flexible Workspaces' (that's hot-desking to you and me), as a consequence of this and their policy of encouraging people to drive to work by paying them a handsome mileage allowance, the MoDs two huge car parks now don't have capacity to accomodate all those who want to drive. This means roads and car parks in the vicinity have now become full with MoD parking, including on the newly built access road to the Hewlett Packard site - since they flogged their entrance to UWE.

The owner of this Citroen Saxo, W797OJH thought they'd found a nice free car parking space for the day and parked across the dropped kerb blocking the shared use cycle and footpath, but what's this? The Ministry of Defence Police have issued them with a ticket! What are the roads for if they are not for parking on? Why can't cyclists get off and walk around cars parked in their way?

If there is one redeeming feature, the MOD parking tickets -which may not be legal on this bit of road- also have space for "cycle frame no". This makes up hope that if more than four people cycle into the MOD facility, and park somewhere other than their two sheffield stands, those cyclists will also be fined.

Bristol's secret chainsaw problem

There's a weapon in Bristol that nobody discusses: Chainsaws.

They're a useful tool, but in the wrong hands, danger. Thankfully, chainsaw-crime is fairly low level in the city -and mainstream media hasn't picked up on it. Attend a Police PACT meeting and in between the hippies ranting about cars, we tax-payers rightfully complaining about bicycles and skateboarders, someone stands up and complains about a neighbour cutting someone to pieces with a chainsaw. "We'll look into it", the police say, but nothing ever happens.

This week though, Chainsaw-rage surfaced, with an altercation behind parkway station between a taxi driver and a chainsaw-wielding pickup driver. On a weekday morning.

Having recently had to drive to parkway station and then back across Bristol at 5:20 pm, experiencing the full joy of the ring road at its most stationary, it's easy to understand why this part of the city is road-rage hotbed. But at 10:20 am? The mid-morning lull? Not a tense time at all. Whoever spin their chainsaw must have had a grudge against taxis.

And who do we think in the city has the biggest grudge against taxis? That's right, cyclists. Always getting upset about the revenue-earning tax-paying taxis in the ASLs, always getting upset about the taxis in the bus lanes sounding their horns to get the tax-dodging cyclists out of the way of the important paying customer. Those are the people most likely to go over the edge, get their chainsaw out and run amok round a taxi rank -be it at Parkway or Temple Meads.

Attached is a photograph of an out-of-city Bicycle and Chainsaw shop.

This is exactly the kind of crime-enabling one-stop-shop that should never be allowed. Bicycles are a crime, and a chainsaw in the hand of a cyclist -a crime in the making!