Superminis are more considerate

One nice aspect of the mini and supermini categories of cars is that they are narrower. they are easier to pass. Even when parked, they cause less problems.

Here is the car LL08VXJ, for example, parked on the pavement between St Andrews Park and Sefton Park School. Lacking the clearance of a big 4X4, it has had to gently ease onto the pavement on the dropped kerb.

When you compare it with the VW golf parked behind it, you can see the difference in width

This smaller car barely pokes into the road, so leaving plenty of room for passing cars -maybe even two cars to pass, if they too were both such svelte vehicles.

Spring approaches

Spring is coming, making the streets lighter. This is making it easier to photograph cars on their evening journey home

Even at 18:11, a photo of this Honda civic R968NKX clearly shows it driving the wrong way down the one-way stretch of Nugent Hill, whereas a few months back, the photo would have been a complete blur, leaving only our video of the car in the traffic queue round the corner and the voiceover registration number reading as the sole evidence of its discovery of a secret new shortcut through Kingsdown.

Traffic Calming the suspension bridge

Sunday morning is always good for a ride, be it an MTB one over in Ashton Court, or an on-road trip Portishead and then the coast road south. Both routes start with a crossing of the suspension bridge, which can be a source of car/bike conflict. As far as the cyclists are concerned, the lower speed limit and narrow roads means that they have the right to occupy a lane -as far as the cars are concerned there are bikes in the way.

Today, no conflict. Not because there's no traffic -there's a queue behind the camera.
'
The cars, however, are waiting patiently for this car in front, which appears to be parked, to somehow park in a way that isn't making it impossible for the cars to get past. As it just appears to be sitting there, the cars can't move and so the road is free for cyclists only to get out of town.

It was a very pleasant crossing -so much so that we believe this car N954NMW should be invited back every sunday morning, to create a traffic free bike route out of the city. No need for expensive cycle-city infrastructure, no need for mixed bike/pedestrian pavements, just park one or two cars at key road-closure points and and Bristol could become traffic free for a morning.

Branding

We can't come out and say "premium German-branded cars park worse". All we can say is "premium German-branded cars appear a lot in our database", but that's a self-selected dataset and not defensible. What we really need is access to a (suitably anonymised) dataset from Parking Services, say a week's worth of issued ticket data, with all the number plates replaced with random numbers and some other tweaks to prevent de-anonymizing, but with car make/model retained. We'd also need to know the percentage of these brands in use in the city compared to other models, to see if there was a significant variation. Then we'd know.

And, being city-wide, it would stop us being picking on particular schools. Like Christchurch School, Clifton, that appears to have a serious parking problem. The problem being: not enough space for everyone driving in. And seemingly everyone who does drop their kid off there uses Ein Auto aus Deutschland.

X21SJC may actually be a resident's car parked on the school-keep-clear zone, so denying parents their rightful place.


The parents are forced to park round the corner, the red BMW H674HJO narrowly avoiding being scraped by a small child having the audacity to cycle to school with a parent -neither of them wearing a helmet. We are shocked and appalled by the risks these people are taking.

Further along, another Mercedes R116KTC.


At least the disabled parking area is left alone.

Some of these cars could belong to residents. We'd need to audit the street on a Sunday morning to build up a better model of who is parking where round these narrow streets -streets that voted against becoming residents parking, incidentally. Presumably because it was obvious to all that an RPZ would take the pavements on these roads out of play, which would be unacceptable.

Team Psyclewerx

Who is this small child holding a very fancy looking bike outside Psyclewerx?

He is not just any small child, he is the bike shop's sponsored downhiller, Laurie Greenland, age 12. Recently taking part in the mini-DH races in the Forest of Dean, where he came he is 12 years old and he came 7th in his first race in the 12 - 14 years category

It may look too big from the front, but the back end is sized right for a kid, and the travel at both ends is fairly serious.

We don't know what the sponsorship deal covers, but it does apparently include free servicing. Given that the kid could do a wheelie -and none of us at Bristol Traffic can- we don't expect to get any such sponsorship any time soon. Which is a shame, as those brakes look like they'd be good in the wet.

Oregon's proposed bicycle tax

The US state of Oregon has no sales tax; no VAT. It has federal income tax (your $ to the Iraq war), and state income tax (your $ to fund other things but not healthcare). All highway tax comes from cars and their use. Car registration is something resembling background noise, $27/year, compared to the couple-of-hundredish pounds in the UK depending on your pollution levels. Fuel is free, if you drive a european car that does over 35 miles per US gallon (about 4 litres). Well, effectively free: $1.60 in 2000, which was about 25 pence a litre; now it is $3/gallon. And the reason fuel is so cheap? Not much tax. This doesn't help funding for road maintenance, which is a shame, because with their very wide roads, they have a lot of maintenance.

Here is Hood River, Oregon, looking north towards the volcano Mount Adams.

There's no bike lanes here, but there is a 25 mph speed limit. Lots of the vehicles have wasted the benefits of the effectively-given-away petrol, "gas", by driving woefully fuel inefficient V6+ engine'd pickups, many of which only do 12-16 mpg. Which means their cost/mile is a lot worse than it could be, and, with big distances between places, cost/commute is high.

Now, what could this state be worrying about? Could it be concerned that the primary water supply during the rain-free summer months? After all -water for agriculture, the very profitable pacific salmon fishing industry, and for the residents- comes from meltwater from those mountains.

If the precipitation between November-March in those mountains falls as rain, not snow, it won't stay in the hills, it will go out to sea. No water, no agriculture, and, without the hydroelectric power, no electricity. Google have a datacentre about 20 miles to the east of Hood River, hydro powered; Microsoft and Yahoo! are upstream in Yakima, not far from the Hanford Reservation where the Manhattan Project used electricity from those same dams to run the centrifuges of the planet's first nuclear weapons factory. Downstream the big Intel Hillsboro foundries build the CPUs found in most PCs. Again, they are based here for electricity. The state's businesses: logging, agriculture, fishing and high tech all depend on that water. Which means that you'd hope the local state would be copying California and trying to be leading the way in fighting global warming, cutting back on energy wastage, trying to encourage the growing cycle users and cycle industry to move Oregon forward.

That would be a mistaken assumption. This is a state where you can end up harassed just for being in the way of cars. Not for stopping them get past -just for forcing them to swerve into the (empty) oncoming lane to get past. Because it is not only an affront to the car drivers to force them to use the steering wheel, it is a sign that bicycles are starting to win the battle between bikes and cars, even in car-centric countries.

Increasing popularity of bicycles would hurt state revenue from gas tax. They already have a problem: more people have started driving fuel efficient EU and japanese cars, which is not only driving the US car manufacturers into bankruptcy, it is impacting state income. This is why they are thinking of taxing cars per mile, ignoring fuel economy.

"gas tax revenue is down $4.8 million a year compared with 2006.

That drop, caused by lower fuel consumption and a slowing economy, has prompted Oregon to consider a new way to pay for road repairs: Democratic Gov. Theodore R. Kulongoski's upcoming budget calls for a highway tax based on mileage, not gasoline purchases.

A state task force will look at equipping every new vehicle in Oregon with a Global Positioning System to record every mile driven and where. Motorists would pay at the gas pump based on how much they drove, no matter how fuel-frugal their vehicle"

Such a mileage tax would remove the unfair advantage that low-fuel consumption cars have over US vehicles, stop the drivers of the V8 Dodge pickups paying more than drivers of VW Polos (which VW are planning to introduce to the US this year), and stop electric cars dodging paying gas tax entirely. These people are all fuel-tax-dodgers and should be banned from the roads?

What about bicycles? They take up space? They get in the way. They wear down the tarmac. This is why four of the state senators are proposing a paying the same $26/year for a bike as you do for a car. Own more than one bike -pay more -even if it is a mountain bike you never take on-road. Only motorised quad-bikes will be exempt, as they don't get in the way of cars. This will force the bicycles to pay their way, and help discourage more people from using un-american forms of transport.


This is very fair and deserves support. Because once you pay for the right to use those roads, explicitly, you can use them -which means when you encounter conflict issues with a car/pickup, you have someone to call.

We need something like this in the UK, so that the Association of British Drivers will have to stop complaining about unpaying bicycles being in the way. Although we think it should go further -cars, bikes and pedestrians should have different coloured registration plates (yes, pedestrians need to be registered too), showing whether they were a net contributor to the country, or a net expense. It's not enough to measure tax paid, you have to look at how much suppor the government has had to put into keeping your bank afloat, how overcommitted you are on a mortage. All these details need to be added up before the government can decide if you benefit the country enough to get the right of way at junctions.

Also: we need mountains like the ones in the pictures. They are all volcanoes -Mt Adams, Mt Hood and Crater Lake- so could be installed in undervalued country to create new ski resorts and better scenery in England.

[news on this from Crap Cycling in Waltham Forest, though perhaps they support cycling or believe these global warming lies, judging by the way they are critical of the idea]

St John's school, Clifton

We've not visited this school since a sunny day in September, when were were surprised by how most of the kids were walking to school. Surprised, and disappointed, because only by going to school in the secure safety of their parent's cars can the kids be properly set up for a car-centric future. Had the parent's not read the recent Evening Post editorial that argued that only car-drivers brought money into the city?

Swinging by at 0845 on a damp March morning, we can see that those parents who do drive, are busy. Such as the mini WN03HXS and the minivan RX08FMG.

But what's that behind the Nissan micra EO03OXW? A Bristol City Council van ?

Looks like it is the van CN06CJF

With a little renault clio "Papa? Nous allons a'l'ecole?" BT04LBJ, we can see that the parking area for this school is fairly thoroughly occupied.

Even so, there was surprisingly little traffic. Compared to Christchurch, there was less traffic, less cars. Maybe there's less pressure on the pavements from parked locals, otherwise it must be a small enough school with a local enough catchment area that the parents can walk in the kids before nipping home and driving to work.

The range rover competition

We are still running our regular competition for sightings of legally parked range-rovers. Submissions to bristol.traffic at gmail dot com.

First off, one on the keep clear section of Vyvyan Terrace, Clifton. CA56BHJ is not on the pavement, not over the corner, and those keep-clear signs are mostly advisory, so it is in the running. It is better parked than all the parents doing school dropoff round the corner.

Amusingly, while this picture was being taken, there was an impatient car trying to nudge its way into the parking space occupied by the photographer and a bicycle: The smart car WU56YTL. We like pictures of them too, for fairness, and we like to see how innovatively they park. It is notable that SmartCar are running a new marketing campaign, though we are yet to see the advert that shows how they are exempt from road signs.

This car on the pavement in front of the pedestrian crossing on top of St Michael's Hill isn't a valid entry -HY07TXL isn't a range rover.

Same for this contribution by "Libby". RJ51DRD has a Honda sticker on the front. Sorry.


This is our first ever iPhone photo. Not too bad for night-time photography on Cheltenham Road.

More of the Portsmouth Seafront

More on the Portsmouth Seafront, in a cycling town.

This is the Eastern end of the area, Eastney. Formerly fairly navy-centric -the building is the navy swimming pool, now open to the public.

At the end of this 30mph stretch of road -a road which closes due to storms in winter- there's a bend. On this bend, there is a hint of a bike lane. A hint. The dashed line on it means that cars are free to cut across the corner, which is what anyone taking the corner at speed would do.

The safe and sensible action for any fit cyclist would be to pull out, acquire the lane and so have no concern about cars swinging into you, but giving you more exit strategies if there turns out to be something like a parked car round the corner.

Which is not that unusual, given the way the bike lane ends, the road narrows and the first free-parking area near the seafront opens up. If even here, midwinter, there are cars in the way, high summer is going to be worse.

This is a bike lane for those willing to die, or at least injure themselves. Not for commuting, not for leisure work. You can't even bank into the corner at speed, what with the wall on the left-hand side. It has no value whatsoever. The only possible explanation for its existence is to push bicycles out of the way of cars. But even that is less than ideal, as they will still get in the way of taking the corner at speed, and then they will swerve out unexpectedly once the lane ends. Which makes it of limited value to anyone.

Invisible

The back streets of Redland and Clifton can be rather dark at this time of year. At twenty past nine at night. Which makes them perfect for a bit of invisible parking (so long as your car is black).

I almost walked straight into this car it was so well hidden.

I say almost because the owner unfortunately forgot to black-out the wheels, which obviously alerted a socially responsible member of our Police Force to enforce.

Which has real benefits, because seen front-on E005FGX is also nearly invisible - only apparent from its registration plate.

The addition of a white, reflective parking ticket makes it much more visible. Job done.

Quick Everybody!

Quick.

Whiteladies Road is no longer under surveillance... thanks to this parked removals lorry.

The opportunities for penalty-free nefarious car-oriented misdemeanours in 'The Strip' are currently rife!

Signage

In this city, it is important that bicycles know their place and follow the signs

Here, on the downs by the Suspension Bridge, bicycles are not to cycle under the minivan PJ56WNS

But down in Stokes Croft, it is OK to go under this car

Keep an eye on those signs, as they help make your journey safer. And you may get fined for non-compliance.

Mystery Chav Biker spotted

Sorry about the quality of the photo, but I wasn't sure if it would come out at all. In the finest tradition of the Loch Ness monster, UFO's and Bigfoot, the dark fuzzy picture taken in the gathering dusk is the only scientific evidence of the mystery chav biker or to give him his latin name, Homo Arrogantus Stupidicus. This elusive species can sometimes be spotted around south bristol. There's little warning of his approach, just the increasing sound of a motorbike engine revved up, and then whoosh! - he's past you. No crash helmet, no lights, riding an off-road bike on the road (illegal since there's no licence plate) and probably no insurance either. He's not confined to the roads as you can see, but pavements and connecting lanes are also his territory.

I wonder if anyone from Bristol University Zoology Department is reading this. I really think we should mount a scientific expedition to study this wonderfully reckless animal. He's a fine upstanding example to the bikers of the future.

Park-ons!

The technical term for those snippets of pavement that stick out are build-outs, but that's an engineering term to describe what they do, they build a bit of the pavement out. What is more important is why, and there the answer is, obviously, something to park on.

Here in Victoria Square, clifton, you can see a lovely example of this: the car R17KYC perfectly positioned atop one.

There's nothing technically hard about getting up here -as long as they don't have any bollards- you've just got to be convinced that you aren't going to suffer any legal or social punishment for doing so. And as we've seen on previous visits to Clifton, neither penalty appears common.

Note how this car has actually left the dropped kerb of this park-out clear. On those days there isn't anyone parked on the opposing build-out, this ensures this junction is still safe to cross.

Ten Days that shook montpelier

We've been tracking what's happening since the police ticketed cars for parking in Montpelier. The answer is: it's taken ten days for the needs of the locals to overcome their fear of persecution and reclaim their pavements for cars.


We last saw this golf M554KAA, with a ticket on its windscreen for being parked in exactly the same place as it is now. It has reclaimed its place on the pavement -it will not be intimidated!

Why hasn't the Evening Post picked up on this persecution? When will it come out and support the motorists, the one's who really pay the taxes in this city?

The source of all evil

There are two 9pm+ TV series filmed in Bristol running right now, Mistresses and Being Human.

Mistresses is set in Clifton and Redland; Papadelli's delicatessen pops up regularly, and the program focuses on the day-to-day problems of residents of this part of the city, namely who is going to jump in bed with whom while their respective spouses aren't looking. Except. It's just not realistic is it? You don't just drive round on a weekday afternoon for a bit of awayday fun with at at-home wife while their husband is out at work. Not in Clifton, not unless foreplay consists of 15 minutes driving round in circles looking for somewhere to park followed by 10 minutes of complaining about the traffic on the way there. The only way they'd be able to do it would be if the wife's house had a driveway, and she pulled her car out the previous evening or before 0700 -but she'd be left explaining to her husband why she's doing that. No, not realistic. Now, if they cycled round to their liasons, it would be a cycling-city showcase program. And a good use of showers.

Being Human is much better. It is funded by the South Bristol Marketing Board, an organisation sponsored by two estate agents, a gastropub, and some of the warehouse-sized shops in Bristlington. The purpose of the SBMB is to remind people that some of the more interesting parts of the city are south of the river and people are usually friendlier to their neighbours, even when they are in fact vampires, ghosts or werewolves. In the series, the characters all live in Totterdown, not far from the Shakespeare pub.

As part of the plot -approved by the South Bristol Marketing Board-, the enemy is a group of vampires based in a building. The building is in Alma Vale Road, Clifton, a road most well known for the Alma Tavern, a pub with a theatre attached, and just round the corner from Papadelli's, the delicatessen in mistresses where some of the characters work.

In the program, the building appears to be a funeral parlour, but in reality is something else

It is a closed down car showroom.

As far as Being Human is concerned then, the enemy of humanity are car dealers. Hmmm.

Stoke's Croft back to normal

We are pleased to announce that after the intervention of the new city regime, parking on Stokes croft is back to normal -only the bike lane is occupied, here by a 4x4 K215SHR, and a shopping trolley. When will something be done about the shopping trollies?

Meanwhile, over in our local legacy printed press, Bristol is now the worst city (ignoring London) for traffic, according to a new survey.

This survey " examined demand measures – the population density, wealth of the population and the office stock – and supply measures – road density, the transport budget and rail provision.". The result is a list of cities, Cardiff at #1, Glasgow at #3, Edinburgh at #5 and Bristol at the bottom.

Road density = road area divided by the population. Is that really a good metric for good city transport? The amount of space dedicated to gettting between places? No wonder in this list Glagsow comes in at #3 -their M77 motorway to Kilmarnock cuts straight through PollokEstate, the city's park; the M74 tore up the countryside near Uddingston, the M8 cuts the city apart and allows you to get from your Loch-Lomond holiday cottage back to London without any risk of encountering the locals in the much-feared Gorbals. More strategically, the M8 lets you get your non-conventional armaments to the Faslane submarine base from your factory in the South East, without getting lost the Gorbals.

Public transport is more interesting. Edinburgh, in at #5, is a lovely city to cycle round. But you aren't going to drive round as it's had residents parking for 25+ years, making up for it with a council-run bus service -Lothian Buses- that works. Low cost; day buses; night buses. You name it. And there's good mountain biking. It even gets its tram service, even though they voted against congestion, as the Scottish parliament is funding it -no need to go through the TIF bidding process.

The key local comparison has to be with Cardiff, as that is the closest city; apparently it is "better". Whoever did that survey has clearly not included the welsh valleys, with a mixture of rural deprivation since the end of the coal mines is mixed with commuter jams as people drive into Cardiff from ex-coal-towns like Merthyr Tydfil. Cardiff has its problems too, and to pretend that all is well there but not in Bristol is to miss the point, a point that Virgin's survey in 2007
didn't.

So why is the survey so wrong? Well, who did it? Property developers. Bristol has a very high population density. Saying Bristol is at fault for not having enough km of road per resident is wrong -a better measure would be square metres of road per square kilometre of city, measuring the percentage of the city's area that was dedicated to traffic -and adding the area (including pavements) dedicated to parking. Once you do that, given our city's population density, the figures won't look so bad.

But if you are a property developer trying to sell middle-of-nowhere city suburbs (e.g. the Tailspin estate by the MOD), you don't want to push inner city car-free living. You know that the locals aren't going to walk to Sainsbury's then push a trolley full of shopping back, let alone walk to Filton Avenue and wait 45 minutes for a 73 bus to the centre. No, for suburbs to work, you need cars or some functional public transport alternatives, which is exactly what this report is criticising the city for lacking. This feeds well into the EP's the-city-is-at-war-with-cars theme we know and celebrate ourselves. Equally importantly for the developers, you want to get your name in the papers -and you don't do that by some press release that the local papers don't agree with -which again means complaints about traffic are pretty much mandatory.

1. Leicester declared third worst city.
2. Birmingham named worst city for commuters in 2008
3. Cardiff named worst city to drive in by Virgin Insurance.

We should make up some of these ourselves.

Double Decker Parking

Here we see an interesting image. Is the Subaru WJ51ZSY actually a 6x4? Or did there used to be another vehicle on top? Stolen, with just the chassis and wheels left. We'll never know.

But it is lucky that the top set of wheels are there, because the careful parking on a 'safer routes to school' route ensures that every adult head that hits a wheel is protected by a soft rubber tyre. Which is nice.

Another up-side is that children escape Scot free because by carefully parking half on the pavement, the wheels are elevated above even the tallest child's head. If they go to the primary school.

Priorities

The fiat X402EDB may appear to be endangering road users by blocking the exit of a downhill bike lane that corners into Woodland Road, on the popular sustrans-4 route to the university.

It is, however contributing to road safety.

Because it is not just sitting waiting, the driver is on the phone. They have pulled over to make or take a call. And as studies have shown that even hands-free phone calls are dangerous, it is far safer for everyone to have the car pull over than drive round.

It comes down to priorities. Which would cyclists prefer
1. Cars blocking bike path exits on downhills
2. Cars moving around with the drivers on the phone rather than paying attention
The choice is obvious. Stationary hazards are manageable; they can be dealt with. Drivers on phones are a death threat. We should celebrate this driver for the choice they have made.

Stokes Croft Roadworks

We are graced with new roadworks on Stokes Croft, removing the right turn from Jamaica Street, and the left turn from Stokes Croft to City Road. It will improve safety -eventually. But what of the process itself?

Here is Jamaica Street at 09:32 this morning. The bike lane is occupied by a car W964XLG with driver -mate in shopping at the corner store- and a organic milk van making deliveries. Nothing unusual there.

Opposite is where it gets interesting. The right turn is closed, the northbound route gone, a place has been retained for pedestrians (see the sign "Pedestrians <-->" in the bottom right of the picture)

That pedestrian space is the ideal size and location for one of the contractor's cars, WR06NAA. We know it is one of theirs as they were fairly unhappy about someone taking photographs of it. Sadly, the right of Bristol Traffic to take photographs of any car in a public place we feel like and then index their registration number is another way that NuLabour is infringing on the that greatest of British freedoms, the right to park where you like. (Having attended the Bristol showing of the Convention of Modern Liberty this weekend, it was disappointing to see that this freedom was not discussed at all. Given the organisers had also turned down our offer to talk on the infrastructure of a modern datacentre state, we had nothing to do but entertain ourselves by helping code the Apache Hadoop datamining infrastructure during the sessions. )

In theory, Jamaica street has a width of 2.5 Motor Vehicle Widths (MVWs). The car in the bike lane drops that to 1.5 MVWs; the contractor's car half-on-the-pavement subtracts another 0.5 MVWs. This leaves 1.0 MVWs, which is not enough for two lanes of traffic.

What does this mean? It means that the van turning right off Stokes Croft is going to get stuck.

Nobody is happy about this. The Mercedes is trying to get out the way to avoid being scraped, the van is sounding its horn, there is a tailback of turning vehicles to the left of the picture, and everyone is getting upset. Except for the gentleman sitting serenly in his ford fiesta. He must be listening to radio 3 or something else serene.

What to do?

1. The bike lane there needs to be marked as no parking at all, perhaps enforcement even of loading/short stay rules, at least for the proposed five weeks of work.
   
2. Contractors need to be told to stop parking here. If they want to park on double lines, they should know about Dove street and Nine Tree Hill, where they won't make the junction any worse. They are only round the corner, it won't add more than 200 metres of walk to the day's schedule. Parking over the dropped kerb of the only open pedestrian crossing in the area is not a good contribution to the area.
   
3. Contractors should be advised that it is legal to take photographs of pretty-much anything in a public street, and that arguing about someone photoing their cars parked over a bike lane sign and double yellow lines is not going to have any effect other than to add copy to our articles.