More road politeness

On the very same spring day we saw a previous polite note, this car, parked just round the corner in Cotham Road South, also sports one

It says you have parked across a disabled space so we couldn't get our wheelchair in the car all day.

and yes, it does seem to have managed to back up against the disabled car to the extent that it is impossible to move that car or get the wheelchair in or out the back

Again, it's a really polite note. Points out the specific failing of the person parking, makes it clear that it is considered socially unacceptable, and leaves it at that. Any other time of year, it would be a call to the police and parking and shortly later, a towing. Yet on this sunny spring day, nothing but a polite note. Heartwarming.

Illiteracy virus strikes again

The strange parking related virus which causes sudden inability to read signs has struck again (the sign does read Cycles Only)

Road Politeness

Road rage stories make the press, so its nice to see people being polite.

Here is a car HN06ZGG that has moved two dustbins and some bags of scaffolding so they'd have somewhere to park in Kingsdown.

Clearly the builder trying to work there is inconvenienced. But do they get upset? Do they get abusive. No, they leave a nice polite note on the windscreen

Many thanks for parking over driveway and moving bags, but we need access to driveway for parking as working in No3, Any problems knock on door. Thanks.

That is the politest such note yet encountered. Spring must be making everyone feel goodwill towards others.

The next evening, they are defending the driveway with a collection of potted plants.

One of the big arguments about making this street in Kingsdown residents only is that it would be expensive to have builders round. Compared to having to mark out a space in potted plants and still run the risk of someone taking it, that cost may be acceptable to residents. And it will stop that Carol Voerderman coming round to use the Laundrette just round the corner.

Why we need Traffic Engineers

This sign perfectly illustrates the reason why we need Traffic Engineers.

Clear, concise, and to the point. Instantly obvious at 30 mph and properly spelt.

On construction sites, though, the Building Contractor does the Traffic Engineering, and the signs.

Here a sign clearly states 10mph. And it is obeyed. But the other sign is not quite correct.

They ordered "Be Aware of Public", I'm told.

Frankly, I agree with the sign as it stands, especially on Park Street at night at the week-end.

South of the river, though, it's possible for Building Contractors to put up signs outside their sites. Which is fine. And courteous.

But it does illustrate why we need Traffic Engineers.

The secret alternative to Park Street

It's not shown on the latest cycling city maps, but as it as the same bicycle-with-a-red-ring logos as spotted on the Portsmouth sea front, it is clear that this is part of the initiative. The lifts at Trenchard Street car park provide a key service to getting new and unfit cyclists around the city -they provide a route from the centre to Park Row that avoids any hill work

Drop down to Trenchard street, go over to the lifts. Floor 8 is the exit level. If you are unsure, aim high, so you have a bit of downhill to do, rather than uphill.

Vandalism

Those vandals at the Council have removed one of my favourite pieces of Bristol street art. By installing new cycle parking.

North Street will never be the same again. Unless someone reading this still has the stencil.

Cars wanted for cash

Contributor "A" posts in this picture of Autoclick on Church Road, who try hard to get the attention of passers by through the combination of a solid steel gate and a sign.

You might think that a sign positioned in the middle of the pavement would catch the eye of pedestrians more than cars, but
1. people who are walking may have a car at home, and are clearly positioned to sell their car off.
2. The sight of a pedestrian crashing into the gate and sign will attract the attention of passing vehicles. These people may see the sign and later, when they wish to sell a car off, return to this showroom.

50 Acre wood: closed for maintenance

The main MTb trail at 50 acre wood is about to close for two months due to forestry work.

According to the trails group:

The trail will close in mid-April (the 14th has been give as the most likely date) and will re-open after 2 months. The yellow "family" trail along the bottom will remain open as a diversion. Trail days can continue over there in the meantime so hopefully when it reopens it will be in better shape than ever.

One might think that doing forestry work during the wet and miserable months would be the right thing to do, rather than when more people are out using dry trails. But the forestry people need nice weather for their work, which only spring provides. Riding the trails during the spring months -the months where, in 2006, 2007 and 2008, we actually saw dry days for weeks at a time, would make everyone complacent and lazy.

What can be done in the meantime is fix those trails up from the winter mud, the next Ashton Court trail day is going to be on Saturday 11th April; they'll be working on the middle section of the Quarry trail. 50 acre wood work will take place on Sunday April 19.

Wilder Street update

It's all go on the corner of Brunswick & Wilder Streets: Shortly after the Ford Focus was driven away on the flatbed of a recovery truck, a yellow Mini (registration HOT387X) nipped into the vacant space. Alas, within an hour or so, it too was ticketed.

BristleKRS - first with St. Paul's parking violation news

Civic vs Focus

So, that Honda Civic that so loves the corner of Wilder Street and Brunswick Street didn't manage to bag its favourite parking spot this morning. Instead, a black Ford Focus (registration Y818KCU) managed to beat it to the punch.

However, unfortunately for said Ford Focus' owner, it seems to have fallen foul of a morning PCSO patrol and scored itself a Fixed Penalty Notice, sometime around 9am By 10am a winch truck had turned up. The recovery driver was very polite - he checked around to see if the owner of the offending Focus was around, explained how he's not paid per car, that he doesn't really enjoy his job ("but what other work is out there these days?"), and said that if the owner was around he wouldn't stop them from driving it away. He dawdled as long as he could, crane looming over Y818KCU for a good 15 minutes whilst he chatted to a local resident who had recently been ticketed, but with no one returning to the vehicle to park it in a more suitable place, he had no option but to take it to the pound.

Honda Civic KF02CKJ, truly you had a lucky escape. But will you come back tomorrow?

Regards,

BristleKRS

Northern Shores

A "North Shore". An extremely technical mountain bike "freeriding" course, hand made out of wood.

Originating on the North Shore of Vancouver, in the logging country heading up to Alaska, they are a common feature in mountain bike videos -but a rarity in Southern England

This could change. Here, beside a river bank within our city limits, we have all that is needed: wood, fallen trees, and enough of a height differential to let people in heavy DH bikes do the descent. Indeed, the foundation of a route is already in place.

Some people will be worried about the risk of bike/pedestrian conflict on what appears to be a flight of steps, put in to make ascending or descending the hill easier.

They have nothing to fear. The new landowners have fenced off the steps, keeping pedestrians away, and felled enough trees to provide the raw materials for the other components of a complete North Shore. For this is Grove Wood, off the River Frome, in Stapleton. Private Land, to which pedestrian access is denied. Obviously this means bicycles aren't allowed to ride down the steps either, but that has always been the case -what has changed now is that the walkers are kept at bay.

Keep an eye on this Honda

BristleKRS has been building up the database for us on a single car. This is an impressive piece of work which gets dangerously close to stalking, were it not for the fact that the car appears to be following him.

This Honda Civic loves the corner of Brunswick Street and Wilder Street. It loves parking there all day long - on the pavement, on a single (admittedly partly rubbed out - due to persistent illegal parking) yellow line (no parking 8am-6pm), on the corner (defined by the police as dangerous).

Despite the recent blitz of parking tickets and fixed penalty tickets doled out by PCSOs and traffic wardens, this particular Honda Civic seems to have escaped their wrath repeatedly. It was parked there all yesterday - no ticket. It's been parked there all today - no ticket. And that's despite a traffic warden walking past it this morning. That's despite the same traffic warden walking past it a second time an hour or so later (as captured in the second photo). That's despite the same traffic warden ticketing a car parked on the other side of the road to it. That's despite a Parking Services van driving past it shortly before I took a picture of it.

Perhaps Honda Civic KF02CKJ is a magic car; a magic car imbued with an invisibility cloak; an invisibility cloak which only affects enforcers of parking regulations.

Or perhaps Honda Civic KF02CKJ is owned by someone who works for Bristol City Council Parking Services, which is, after all, headquartered just a short walk down Wilder Street in Wilder House.

Will we ever know?

BristleKRS

All we can say is: wait and see. More to come.

Datamining the Traffic

Here's a list of search terms that have brought visitors to this site. These are what userstyped in to their favourite search engine before ending up visiting us at Bristol Traffic. The main ones are fairly predictable, and we are also slowly taking over key street names -these have been omitted. Some of the others are more entertaining.

People who did something they shouldn't

crash while reversing in one way street
parking on a pedestrian crossing
parking on school keep clear sign penalty points
i scraped a car that was parked on double yellow line on a private college campus
parking tickets on pavement near double yellow line
reversing the wrong way up a one way street
reversing in a one-way street legal uk?
reversing car driveway over pedestrian path dropped kerb right of way uk
rta while drunk
Penalty for parking in disabled space, bristol

It's important to remember that browser histories and server logs have both been used as evidence in crime investigations. If you think you have done something you shouldn't, don't tell Yahoo! or Google what you have done, as it may be used as evidence against you.

Crime Questions

where do stolen scooters go?
where to buy stolen motorbikes in bristol

These two may be related.

More unusual Questions

why is oceania always at war
any disasters experiment in physics

We have no answers here.

Tourism

bristol massage parlour
bristol massage parlours
avonmouth massage parlour

The thought of going to Avonmouth to visit a massage parlour may seem pretty odd, but anyone who has ever had to take a small child down to a birthday party at LaserQuest will know there is a limited amount of ways to entertain yourself in Avonmouth Village for 90 minutes. A massage parlour is probably preferable to the Costco restaurant.

On the topic of datamining, can we draw people's attention to a paper and presentation from Cambridge University. It is a bit low-level, as the fact that solving graph certain graph problems is NP-complete is only of relevance to people who know what NP-completeness is and why it is harder than NP-hard. What is important is that by using the facebook developer APIs, and TOR-relayed spidering of the web pages generated for all users unless they opt out, it is possible to build up the complete graph of who-knows-who. You can even start to infer locality, ideological preferences based on which groups they belong to. We aren't yet using these algorithms in the Bristol Traffic project, but it is only a matter of time. Once we know who you are, and how you park, we can start to determined your friends, your interests, and then go on to model you, them, and yours and theirs behaviour. Similarly, there is a new Google paper, The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Data, which argues that sufficiently large datasets, with sufficiently aggressive data mining algorithms are a pretty good substitute for all the machine reasoning/artificial intelligence work of the past. When applied to the Bristol Traffic dataset it implies that we will eventually be in a position to have the machines reliably predict where the congestion, parking, dangerous driving issues will be, without involving people in the analysis. Admittedly, we have a reasonable idea of some of the answers (near any school, at dropoff and pickup times), but the idea of automating all this has appeal.

Free Parking in the CPZ No. 2

Well, that didn't work.

I was hoping to be flooded with suggestions of where to park my Hummer for free in Bristol City centre. Not one comment. Rubbish. I'm beginning to suspect only cyclists and pedestrians read this blog.

Notwithstanding (a very English word - but strangely German), I have to say I'm immensely impressed with the efforts of the driver of Fiat WN08VDF to park for free most days in the centre.

Could it be the same 'Cloak of Invisibility' that seems to affect me at Start The Bus when I'm trying to get a beer? Dunno, but there are definitely places to leave your bit of metal without them being visible to the Enforcers (as the Park Street Traders know...).

Anyway, why not join in? You just need to brave the signage. (image to follow)

Rebel with a cause

Being a celebrity gives you power. Your statements get press, your picture gets recognised worldwide. This is why so many celebrities take up the global pressing campaigns once they become known. Bono: poverty. Sharon Stone: middle east peace. Richard Gere: war.

What about Bristol. Well, we have one problem (ignoring the collapse of the financial system, the running out of north sea oil and other national issues). That problem is traffic: the congestion, the impact of the life of the locals, the impact it has on life in and near the city. Which is why we are so greatful that Carol Vorderman, Bristol's local celebrity, has come out against resident parking.

It must have been a tough choice. There are so many issues in the world. A skilled mathematical celebrity could have gone on air to explain how quantitive easing helped Japan recover from the lost decade, how that the conventional armaments of central government to trigger economic activity -lowering interest rates and cutting taxes- had failed, and that desperate measures were needed. Or she could have explained how uncontrolled population growth was the root cause behind so many problems, from peak oil to deforestation, and that unless we did something there there was bad news ahead. But no, Carol stayed true to the city, looked at what matters here, and came out against resident parking.

Because the right to park your car badly wherever you can get it close to a clifton coffee shop is one of the great freedoms of the city. More than, that -it is what makes Britain so British. The government may be tracking all car movements, wanting to tap into every entry you make in facebook, or detain people it doesn't like without any need for a trial. As long as the core freedoms of the island are retained -and parking wherever you like is one of them- Britain will stay free.

That doesn't mean that people can ignore rules willy-nilly. Below, is a picture of a small child cycling along a path in the downs that bans cycling. That is not British. There are no cycling signs that have been there for many decades, and they should be respected. We are talking about parking, which is a right.

Ever since the Romans built the country's first real roads, important people in big vehicles have been parking where they like -and the little people on the roadside have complaining about the experience. They didn't respect their Roman masters then -they don't respect their tier-2 celebrities today, and how much such people benefits the city. Without people like Carol Vorderman to speak up for us on ITV2 daytime TV talk shows, nobody would know anything of our city other than it is near where the M5 clogs up on your drive to the South West.

We in Bristol Traffic welcome Carol's involvement in this issue and are glad that she has correctly recognised what the true issues are. In order to recognise her contribution, we would welcome any photographs of Carol parking n Bristol. We are also considering the possibility of campaigning for a directly elected mayor for this city, with Carol Vorderman being the official Bristol Traffic candidate for the post. She has the vision this city needs!

Heartwarming

Someone has been teaching their little one how to do the Purdown Camp DH (non-technical, but steep and slippery in the wet, scary in the dark), on one of the sit-and-steer toddler
cars

This is a brave thing for the kid to attempt, and we are impressed. By starting at the age of four, the child will be ready for speed when they get their first mini-quad bike in a couple more years.

Keeping up with the Joneses

Apparently miffed at now playing second fiddle to Carboot Circus, which was designed without provision for cycles, it appears The Mall Galleries has decided to keep up by also removing cycle parking.

Maybe the managers have all just completed courses in estate management at Bristol University?

Nugent Hill Work

Nugent Hill is a regular on this site, as cars running the contraflow are part of the evening entertaiment. But not for long.

At the bottom of the contraflow, where the hill joins Arley Hill, a new island is going up which is positioned precisely to stop cars turning right.

It also provides space for bikes using their contraflow lane to go up, forcing oncoming cars to get to the proper side of the road. Progress.

There's only a couple of concerns here in Bristol Traffic, semi-official docuementary of our streets

1. Why are there no warning signs telling cars about to run the Nugent Hill one-way stretch that they can't turn right at the bottom?

2. What's going to happen when downhill bikes are forced into exactly the same narrow lane that the uphill bikes are using? In the space of a few minutes observation, one of the two downhilling bikes chose that option.

We propose that the traffic island gets a dropped kerb for downhilling bikes, and the space for a lit sign on the downhill side filled in, letting the DH bikes take the corner at speed, pop up the dropped kerb and the jump off into the gap between cars in their traffic jam and bikes going uphill. This would make it fun and reduce the risk of head-on collisions.

SITA Child Protection Team

What are these two hi-vis bods doing?

Helping to protect our children from traffic, that's what!

Persecution

The latest copy of the Bristol Cycling Campaign magazine is out -it appears to be using some of the collected photos of this site. We give them permission, even if the article is somewhat critical of the cars featured therein. More to the point, the article speaks highly of infiltrating the police and community PACT meetings to push a subversive agenda. Kingsdown is one such area -though Bishopston is holding out strong.

Here we see the effects of such an infiltration. The car WR51PFG has a ticket for parking on a corner in Fremantle Square.

1. It's a square, and full of corners. What do they expect?

2. You can hardly notice this car sticking out from the corner. It is perfectly in line with the vehicle in front.

The Cycling Campaign will be having their monthly meeting at the Cornubia Pub, 8pm, Thursday. Perhaps we should infiltrate it, sit in the corner drinking Hidden Quest beers and disrupting their whole plan to overthrow the city by asking questions about helmets and watching the fights.