Clifton : bring out your dead

After the Tank visit, we felt that a trip to Clifton was in order.

We took our stolen bicycle to the area. Just as there is no tank parking, there is no cycle parking in this part of the city -something they are proud of, rather than something they campaign about.

We ended up using the "no cycling" bit of tarmac where the tank had been.


Here's the video from a quick spin round the area


Key points

1. There's nothing happening
2. In the centre of the village, there is no legal area to park left.
3. Even the parking for under 2 hours is full -showing that short-term parking restrictions do not stop shop customers coming.
4. All four bicycle racks are full, and cyclists are inconveniencing pedestrians and endangering motorists by chaining their bicycles to railings and lamp posts -they do not take a hint, do they?
5. at 1:18, outside the parking limited zone, the residents are double parking. This extra parking area is going to be lost come the RPZ.
6. all vehicles bar the one a 3:49 have wing mirrors
7. There's no decent graffiti -hence no motivation for modern tourists to visit it.
8. Nothing is happening. There's a few people wandering around, but that's it
9. Despite all the echelon parking on Sion Hill and York Crescent, there's only 3-4 parking spaces there. The residents have to be grateful that they are powerful enough to stop the council taking the echelon parking away and putting in something anti-Clifton like a safe cycle route to the bridge!
10. Down in Hotwells, on Hope Chapel Hill, the RPZ is being painted in.
11. Civilisation has not collapsed down there, there are not legions of zombies walking around chewing the limbs of people with resident parking permits.

No, Hotwells's RPZ is not zombie country. Clifton village is, sadly. For all those "Clifton Will Die" posters, clifton is already dead as far as the rest of the inner city is concerned -they just haven't noticed.

Which means that rather than worry about whether the removal of shopkeeper and local business staff parking will kill the village, the Clifton Popular Front needs to think about how to get customers who aren't local businesses in there, competing with other parts of the town that are getting a national reputation.

Stokes Croft: exciting.

Clifton: an afternoon with an elderly aunt who smells of cat wee.

Clifton: premium knives out for the residents

As we said yesterday, the knives are out in Clifton. And when we say knives, we mean the  Messermiester Meridian Elite 9" Kullenschliff Chef’s Knife on a granite kitchen unit, freshly sharpened after its wash in a Miele dishwasher that actually texts your iPhone when the wash is done.

Why? Because the Clifton Business Improvement district's press release on the RPZ contains the phrase "99% of those surveyed feel there should be less residential permit parking in the Village with more pay and display and business permit parking"

The 99% surveyed are the businesses obviously, though they don't give full details about the population size for the survey, number of responses, whether the responses are a representative sample of the population -all the things that we, as a data science organisation, would expect. As the release also says "over 300 business" (sic),  then perhaps that was the population, and the response was over 100, with 1 person saying "no".

This may seem a small detail, but we like defensible data, which is why we like to back up our datasets with photographs, and are prepared to email councillors for the data behind their claims.

Similarly, we like data to justify conclusions, such as "Through BCC’s actions shoppers are more likely to migrate to Cribbs Causeway with free parking and to Cabot Circus where there is sufficient car parking and an efficient bus service."

Note how they avoid noting that Cabot Circus hasn't got any free parking. Because it doesn't -yet there's invariably a queue on the M32/Newfoundland Way approach on a weekend, showing that if people are prepared to drive a distance to the destination, they are prepared to park there for a while. And, if you look at the Cabot Circus pricing, you'll see that it is priced for shoppers not commuters. Because the Cabot Circus operators know that parking is too important to waste on commuters, not when you want revenue-earning shoppers in there. Cribbs Causeway don't have that problem: they have a separate one, namely it is in the middle of nowhere unless you have a car or take the bus.

Anyway, the key issue here is "less residential permit parking in the Village with more pay and display and business permit parking"

If they'd stopped at "less residential permit parking in the Village with more pay and display ". There would have been a nice argument "we need more space for visitors than residents", which could have been a negotiating point -how much for exclusive residents vs shared. Given the residents are (presumably) sacrificing their right to double park in the Mall, unless the Mall Garden Residents Association comes round to approving of echelon parking, instead of saying "please double park instead". they are already sacrificing a lot of the parking capacity of the area.

With a nice tangible "paying customers => money" equation, the BID team would have gone into meetings with the residents with a good negotiating point.

Except they go and spoil it with that final clause "and business permit parking".  That lets the cat out the bag. The reason the Clifton BID want resident parking capacity reduced is not for those customers who would otherwise drive to Cribb's Causeway or go to Cabot Circus. No, it's for commuters into Clifton: the shops and other businesses, such as the soon to be re-opened private hospital whose  management have just discovered that there is nowhere on site for their 100 staff to park and they'd better have a plan here.

This is why the BID is going to go head to head with the residents, and why they have to get the Astroturf out to make it look like the resistance to the RPZ is going to come from residents who will suddenly get hit with bills of "up to" 192 pounds for their car.  It's not about how much residents will have to pay for their #3 car. It's not even about the 0-48 pounds they will have to pay for the #1 car. It's about whether weekday parking space in Clifton should be allocated to residents or to the staff of the businesses in the area.

Which is why this is going to be so much fun to watch it would be worth attending and just asking completely off topic questions like "I only park on zebra crossings -will that still be legal" or "if Bristol Zoo is complaining about staff parking issues, is it because of their history of opposing park and ride to the zoo in favour of letting visitors pay to park on the downs?"

Yes, the wednesday evening event will be entertaining -please attend if you can. Being at Clifton High school there will be free parking for your 4X4 on the school keep clear area -and, as the commuters will have gone, other spaces further up college road if you find yourself forced to walk

Clifton: some bike parking has snuck in to the village

Before we can declare victory in Clifton in the motorists side of the warn on motorists, we must note that some bicycle parking has been added to the village, and it is -shockingly- in use

On the mall: two stands, three bikes, on a buildout that would easily fit if not a 4x4, a little mini.

By the Thali Cafe, more stands and three bicycles. you can tell this isn't Stokes Croft as the bicycles are newer and still retain their wheels.

Further up Regent Street, two more stands and one bicycle.

It does reinforce that induced demand idea: if you provide bicycle parking, they will come. This is why it is critical that the councillors and aspirants do all they can to encourage driving and parking by car, instead of conceding any more pavement or road space to cycling or cycle parking.

On that topic, can we at least praise Clifton for not having a single bicycle lane anywhere west of Whiteladies Road, apart from that one on the approach to the Suspension bridge that doesn't actually work. Active Transport campaigners would probably push for some integrated route to join up the bridge with Cotham Hill, then to link over to Gloucester Road, then Bishopston and Montpelier, their own version of an Inner City Ring Road. They can dream, but as long as we hold the high ground that is Clifton, we will defeat them.

Clifton: abandoned to the snow

The sight in The Mall, Clifton, is shocking. It must have been terrible here on Friday, given the damage all around village. It is surprising it hasn't made the national news: tens of drivers forced to abandon their cars in the streets of Clifton, as the snow closed the city down.

Even on Sunday, these cars haven't moved. The cars GK02ULL and R163PHG are stuck where their owners were forced to abandon them in the middle of the road.

There's still 10+ cm of snow around cars like Y961DBW, so there's clearly been no attempt at rescuing these cars.

In other parts of the city, things are settling down to normal. But here, everything is still chaos. Why has Clifton and its cars, cars like X984CAE, V431HKY and X292KUY been abandoned?

Why has Bristol City Council not come to the rescue of Clifton?

Equally shocking: why has the local press not picked up on this scandal?