Stolen Trike

Someone in Southville has had their red adult tricycle stolen, "(red Tri 1) was stolen from outside Reg's house 19.00 Friday 5 December 2008.
Pashley - large rear basket."

Here is a pic of the trike being ridden the wrong way round a roundabout during the Biggest Bike Ride event -it's certainly an unusual vehicle.

Anyone spotting it should contact Heather Anne Watts. She's listed in the phone book; call her there if you see it. Email wise, heather57anne -at- hotmail.com.

Heather, we wish you luck on your search to recover it; we will keep our eyes out. One thing to consider. Unusual Red Trike. Southville. Who do we know there who would like an unusual vehicle to travel around in? Someone who wears red trousers?

The legally-parked Range-Rover competition

Its another month, and time to start a new competition for a legally-parked Range-Rover. Contributions to bristol.traffic at gmail.com welcome. Videos of range rovers trying to park legally also accepted.

This picture of T9PJJ will not win it. Incidentally, given that parking on corners is nominally illegal, why do some corners actually merit a white line?

Walking Strategy

The council is trying to put together a walking strategy.

This web site may submit some data, a key theme being "to enable walking you need footpaths and pavements that you can walk along, and somehow make it safe to cross roads"

A key concept would be to determine which destinations in the city it is important to walk to and from. The main transport hubs, for example, the city centre, local shops and schools.

And of course, the university, where the primary halls-of-residence to lecture route is something to be known and valued, rather than something to be treated as a problem.

Queen E. School

The QEH school, on Jacob's Well's road, hadn't come to anyone's attention, but while in the area at 1600 it becomes obvious that the primary form of getting the child home is by car, which leaves a problem: where does the car park? Mostly on Jacob's Well's road. The double yellow lines ensure that commuter traffic is kept out of the area, so providing a place for parents to wait.

The lines may say "no parking", but as the parents are sitting inside, they are merely waiting for their offspring, which is not technically parking, more a lifestyle choice for parents.

Up on the side road to Clifton, well, cars such as AG06AWA and A3NUU are doing their best not to block through traffic, by getting up on the pavement and in front of resident's garages. It is this "flexible, shared space" use of city features that enables Bristol to function.

Some cars, like the Landrover WP08YAF also make use of the "school keep clear" section. Note, however, unlike outside Clifton College or Christchurch School, nobody is parking on the pavement here. That is being left as a safe place for children to walk.

The Kingsdown Parking problem

Mazda WP56DYY must be very glad that Bristol Parking Services never visit somerset street. For if they did, the fact that it is on the pavement over double yellow lines and a keep clear sign might be an issue.

Might. Because alternatively, the Bristol Parking Services staff might just sit there in their van Y184NMW with the engine on, looking at it.

To be fair, it was a cold morning. Sitting in a van being kept warm by engine heat was appealing. Its just, well, doesn't Bristol Parking Service have a mission statement or something? Some kind of goal? And if not, well, what exactly does it do?

Student travel options

There is now a U-bus running up and down Whiteladies road; this could offer a functional bus service to Bristol University. What other options are there? Let's see what we can see from a tour during student hours.

First off, this stair case is interesting. Students heading up and down the hill are strictly segregated into two lanes. Two overcrowded lanes, with people running down the hill either side of the path. One might think that opening up the central bit of the stairs to pedestrians, rather than fencing them over with highly reflective paint for safety would improve traffic flow. One might think that. But everyone knows: wider roads leads to more more traffic -presumably the same rule applies to pavements. It is necessary to close off half the steps to discourage people from walking.

There is a bike shed, but it is only temporary and not big enough. In the week since this picture was taken the stand was taken out of action, leaving only the railings and disabled access areas opposite. Again: providing bike parking would only encourage more bicycles.

What does that leave?

It leaves this, the pay and display section of Woodland Road. Here is a bit where any student can drive to work, provided they are prepared to pay for the right. At 10am on a monday, nobody is. But later on, it is seems popular, with groups of students getting out their shared cars. If you are only going in for one or two lectures, and sharing a car, short term pay and display parking will probably be cheaper than the bus.

Cotham goes Unionist

In past months, the community spirit and cost-effective taxi services of the segregated unionist/nationalist estates of Northern Ireland have been a source of inspiration.

Clearly it is inspiring people, as this month two house on Cotham have raised the unionist flag over their houses. Here in Cotham Grove

And again, in Cotham Road. Presumably this community spirit will be enhanced with coloured street kerbs and "no surrender" banners. something will be needed to not surrender too, perhaps the local branch of the Conservative and Unionist Party will make residents parking the no-surrender topic, moving on from "Say No to CPZ!" to "Cotham Says No!" in an Ian Paisley Senior accent.

This could be countered by Kingsdown going nationalist; joining up with the Peoples Republic of Stoke's Croft, embracing the republican theme and so creating a split in Bristol. The CPZ boundary is currently sketched out as down the centre of Cotham Road, and skating the top of Cotham Grove, so these houses could be next to the "peace wall" that will inevitably be required.

University Approach

Starting to collect some data on the university. A key finding is that walking is the primary way students get to university, something they do despite the effort the city goes to run them over. This is the Tyndall's Park Road/Woodland road junction.

Up until about 1992 this was open to cars, making Woodland road a high speed alternative to Whiteladies Road. It certainly made cycling down T-Park-Road trickier as cars were prone to pulling out in front of you while you came down at speed. Then the junction got closed of for a year or so while a storm drain was constructed underneath the city -car access never came back. Instead we got a road that is intermittently available to pedestrians and bikes. Currently the roadworks are being anti-bicycle. Cyclists dismount, the sign says. These signs are a stock requirement of all roadwork sites in Bristol, as the alternative would be thought and effort. If they could have a sign "pedestrians go away" they would use them too.

With the roadworks and the scaffolding truck, its a kind of edgy junction. You can get half way out and with no visibility, have to assume that when a car goes uphil (to the right in this picture), its safe to pull out. We are fortunate all students are fit as you need to be able to sprint across.

We are also grateful that most cars in Bristol don't deliberately set out to run over pedestrians and bicycles in their way. Here a car graciously slows down to avoid hitting a bicycle head on.

Where are the students going? To their 9am lectures. Where are they coming from? The halls of residence, other side of the Downs. This junction is not only part of Sustrans national network route 4, it is the primary by-foot commute for a few thousand students. Clearly it is not felt necessary to provide safe road crossings here. Further up the hill, there is a zebra crossing, but that will be replaced at considerable expense by a light controlled crossing so that buses can regain priority over pedestrians.

Trailer Park

When engaging in lazy and illegal parking, use a trailer for added effect. Leave it sticking out into the road and have hours of fun watching cyclists dodging cars who can't see around your neatly crafted blind spot. Makes city life so much more exciting!.

Mobile phones by hour of day, day of week

This is a pretty big image -it's the phones by hour by day table presented as a graph; every day appears side-by-side. Follow the link to see it at a resolution where it works.

Some immediate observations

• Nobody walks around between 0400 and 0600.
• The rest of the time, the streets are busy.
• Friday and Saturday night are when people stay out late -so late that Saturday and Sunday Mornings are peak hours beween 0000 and 0400.
• Weekday traffic peaks in the morning between 0700 and 1100. There's a quieter spot, a busy lunchtime, then another quiet spot. But not much in it -traffic throughout the day is fairly constant.
  
• Peak evening times - monday to thursday- are from 1500 to 1800
• Less people come past at that time on a Friday -instead traffic is higher later on in the day. Possibly going straight from work/study to enjoy themselves, coming back afterwards.
• Sat and Sun have later starts, but their mid-day traffic is on a par with weekday midday traffic
• Saturday and Sunday's traffic levels seem the most mathematically "normal": traffic goes up, peaks mid-afternoon, then declines. On weekdays, office/study/school hours interfere.
• Monday is the quietest. Less people out at in the early morning, less people on every hour.

More complex work would break it up by phone: identify who was returning; also do some grouping tricks to identify students by term times and then then see if their phones have a significant different grouping.

Yes, but it's so convenient.

Over at Christchurch school, there is now a sign up.

It says "Parking on the zig-zags is dangerous and selfish"

The Parent driving VW Touran WV06WMO has seen the signs and is safely and unselfishly parked between the zig-zags and the keep clear markings, leaving enough room on the pavement for a small child to scooter into the wing mirror.

And at the front of the school, the owners of the camper van B694YNM are not parking on the zig zags. They are living there!

bluetooth device data

This is an alternate presentation of the data, split by hour by day. Here as a table for anyone planning on doing their own analysis -just paste it into a spreadsheet and create a chart. Citations welcome.

	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday	Sunday
0	19	38	27	47	50	79	107
1	16	34	33	30	43	72	76
2	6	50	15	23	16	49	72
3	3	14	2	11	15	29	45
4	7	12	7	12	9	23	18
5	12	15	15	21	13	20	8
6	57	61	72	59	47	21	16
7	150	180	168	191	188	39	24
8	227	274	261	245	255	78	28
9	179	227	217	261	237	155	54
10	156	211	193	220	225	166	82
11	182	206	218	200	244	173	121
12	213	259	243	232	236	206	146
13	200	243	255	244	235	239	172
14	193	227	237	238	239	220	203
15	252	283	287	311	308	195	228
16	263	297	263	325	291	229	182
17	291	353	329	319	290	220	155
18	183	224	232	245	207	199	143
19	128	167	182	215	209	187	115
20	94	105	147	140	147	170	79
21	87	110	126	94	123	95	85
22	68	84	95	93	102	109	80
23	58	73	78	74	116	103	35

No Mud?

Ashton Court is the official home of mud. Even if you dont go there you can see the people returning, get a feel for conditions, just by looking at mountain bikers on their way home.

Its disappointing, therefore, that Sunday's cyclocross race seemed to choose a mud-free route.


Down the "non-technical" side of the woods, a bit of a zigzag in the trees, then uphill

While not dry, it isn't mud. Not like 50 acre wood or even the entrance to Ashton Court itself. And as for Leigh Woods, well, that's something to fear.

While its more fun than, say, a sunday morning road ride out in that biting wind, it's not really Cyclocross. Here, for reference, is a video from a recent event in Oregon, a video by my friend John "Mud Bath" Wilson, someone who has the luxury of a hot water tap in his back garden so he can hose himself and his bike down after such events, all in one go.

That's what cyclocross is about. Watching grown men wallow in mud. Perhaps at the next event on the schedule things will be better.

Triple Lines!

Southville Parking forward over this snap of the Range Rover M22MAX on North Street, on triple lines.

Presumably triple yellow lines mean really, really no parking. Maybe. Unless you really want to.

Smart Cars for smarter parking

SmartCars can park in ways normal cars caren't. Here the Smartie WN58KEJ is only taking up half the yellow-line space in this junction off Cotham Hill

It's only half blocking people crossing the road, and not reducing visibility or access for turning cars as much. If it were to get ticketed, its fine should be reduced.

Datamining the streets

This site is a documentary. Normally: photos and commentary, but today here's something different: 6 months worth of scanned Bluetooth devices from somewhere near the Highbury Vaults. This is the "Highbury Dataset". Which is legal to collect, provided you don't do things like take photographs at the same time as logging the phone "MAC addresses"; numbers that are phon- specific and not related to the SIM card or phone number.

The Bath Experiment implied that one adult in 6 had a phone that could be logged -a Bluetooth phone set to "allow others to see my phone", a phone set to be discoverable. That would be interesting if true, as there were just under 30K phones sightings, which maps to 180K adult pedestrians. Regardless of that, the relative numbers provide insight of their own.

Here's the spread over the week.

Sunday, least popular. Tuesday to Friday most. Less on a Monday. Assuming that a big weekday group is the commuter and students, there could also be a big evening group, in which case less people are going out on a Monday. Or less students go to lectures on an Monday.

More interestingly: breakdown by hour of day

Big rush after 0900 - students again? And look at that evening rush, peak visitors between 1600 and 1700, with a gradual drop off.
Breaking down by half hour slots would show more, then there is flagging which phones have already been seen the same day; this would let you identify who was heading back.

For the paranoid, this experiment is no longer live. Disable bluetooth to avoid participating in similar experiments. And do not feel fear -not from this. Central goverment's plans to track every phone call and email is far more invasive. This project, "Georgian", is a community police state. It also means that Bristol Traffic is rapidly becoming the holder of more accurate data than anyone else. We know who you are and where you are going -stop it.

New bike parking in Gloucester Road

If you look on Bristol Streets, people have a lot to say about cycling along Gloucester Road. That could be a measure of its popularity - a lot of people cyle down it. It's flat, has bus lanes to ride in in peak hours, and has lots of shops.

Parking for bikes has been a bit patchy though; three stands by the Prince of Wales pub, stands so close to the wall they were useless. Looks like some more are going up on the wider start of the street. Two new ones next to two existing stands

And four more outside Pembury cycles.


Admittedly, the ever-popular bread store and various pubs -Prince of W, Hobgoblin- are on the other side of the road, but that is a very narrow road; this side has room for the bikes and now, bike parking.

Dangerous Dropoff

Parents care for their kids. Here is one who is trying to do everything right. He's bought the 4x4 for its extra safety. He's driving the kid to school, not walking. He's parked the car right on the keep clear markings on the corner outside the nursery school so the distance between car and school is least. All designed to maximise child safety.

Yet right at the last minute: gets the kid in the truck V054EVP out from the roadward side of the vehicle. On the corner. Now, a 4X4 is wide enough you probably can't reach across from the other side, but surely this dad takes their little one to nursery regularly, and would know what to do. You park the car in the same place it is now -the keep clear zone on the corner- but facing the other way. You just need a drive-to-school routeplan which pulls the car up outside the school with the kid's door on the pavement side -better yet, up on the pavement itself.

Just as Transport for London has a web site to plan walking routes, we need something that shows parents the safest way to drive their kids to their schools

DVLA at Work

Here in Clifton on a weekday morning, we see the DVLA road tax vehicle auditing the streets. With its cameras on every corner and a computer with a list of every car registration number and tax expiry date, it can detect when cars are untaxed. We've seen them at work in Montpelier, clamping untaxed vehicles.

In clifton, DVLA van BF06WKS is making sure that this keep-clear marked corner, and the associated pavement, are free of untaxed vehicles.

Fresh Winter Mud!

It's been a bit dull out there recently -no good rainfall since August, leaving mud conditions in Ashton Court/Leigh woods a bit boring. Summer mud that was collecting into ruts

But here in Bike! is someone bringing the good news that with this week's rain, we've got fresh winter mud to get out and enjoy

The CX races begin at 10:30 am for the sprogs, later for juniors and grownups out by the quarry. Conditions will be ideal.