Pavement blocking: does it help us motorists

October's bike park movement on Cotham Hill was apparently to help the local cafe -the one that is being repainted as "manga manga" have some outdoor seating. Well, we don't know or care about that, but one thing that does interest us is whether the newly positioned bike parks do enough to discourage walking?

The combination of some seemingly accidentally badly placed bike racks with some shopping signs put out for passing cars does make it very hard indeed to walk across this road, and so should discourage students from doing so. FirstBus and we motorists will benefit from this, obviously.

But does it work? We can still see people trying to squeeze past all the furniture.

The bike racks make cyclists feel welcome, even if the one we see is heading towards a junction which we hope the GBBN proposals will make impossible for them to cross.

Furthermore the other side of the road is still open to pedestrians, and if they can't skateboard down the pavement, they just switch to the road instead.

It may make walking less pleasant, but it isn't enough to stop the locals and students from getting in our way.

Signs of Recovery

We posted a while ago about the Emergency Services, and we're pleased to be able to report that the Manor Park emergency service has now acquired a second vehicle.

The addition of M758XWS to this essential 24 hour service must be a good indicator that the economic recovery is well underway.

Waste of space

Whilst we are always happy to park anywhere we want, there is a downside, as WU58ZFR demonstrates.  This is the Downs, where thankfully no cycling is allowed.

The problem is that if you can park a car on the grass you can also put a bin on the grass, which is a real waste of parking opportunity.

The blind bends of Clifton Vale

We love taking visitors from the US through Montpelier at speed, watching them in teror stamping the ground where the brake pedal should be, as we drive our van through at 40 mph with millimetres between us and the parked cars on either side while texting ahead to our destination. But sometimes we like variety, and other fun place is Cornwallis Crescent and Clifton Vale. That blind Z-bend/T-junction when you are coming up the hill is fantastic. No visibility, you have to get the line exactly right or you get stuck.

This week we are making it more entertaining by making our US visitor cycle round, so watching someone from "cycle-friendly Oregon" encountering urban UK roads, so we took the opportunity to take them down this and see if they'd survive.



The first issue here is that one of the cars in front gets its line completely wrong. For reference, here are the tactics

1. Descending from Goldney Ave: hold back until you see a gap, then commit, but swing out before turning in, Alpine style. This early swing out ensures that you finish the turn on your side of the road, which is better for bad visibility situations, and here, ensures you can get round.
2. Coming from Cornwallis Crescent: head through, don't show weakness.
3. Coming up from Clifton Vale: head up, keep left ready to swerve right into Goldney Ave.

After the entertainment of a car having to back up twice, our U.S. tourist gets the give way markings wrong and almost loses out to the car on Corwallis Crescent. More importantly, by waiting where he is, he's lost visibility of what's happening on Clifton Vale, which can be tactically unwise. This time, he survives as the cars in front have stopped motor traffic heading up, but next time may not be so safe.

YA55VDY pulls out

People have been mailing us, where is the Yoghurt Van YA55VDY? Has some disaster struck Bristol's supply of dairy goods. The answer is no, the clocks changing just altered its schedule.

It doesn't pull off without indicating from the buildout by Whiteladies Gate until 08:10 now, helping to remind the driver of the honda SUV why buying a vehicle that may survive a collision with a white van was a good decision that makes school runs safer.


Note how the driver actually waves our (sadly cycling) reporter. The proposed GBBN changes may make it harder for this van, as the buildout may not be so large. While we can't see from the design whether or not bollards are planned, we fear the worst.

St Pauls School Run problems.

By way of the Legacy Printed Press, we see this video of a car being forced to push a Ford Ka out onto the road by the school entrance to Cabot Primary School.



The comments on the E.P. Article are pretty polarised.

On the one hand, this is someone exerting their right to get their car out of the garage despite the selfish actions by lazy parents who themselves park on the keep clear zones just to drop the kids off faster. On the other, this is someone potentially endangering children who if not walking to school, are being dropped off by their parents outside it and expected to walk across a road. It's hard to say who is most wronged here.

KTT86LT takes the easy direction on Marlborough Hill

The Bristol Traffic Project is a Big Society project, a community database of those people bold enough to stand up for their rights in an anti-car city. Today we are pleased see it at work.

This is Marlborough Hill, "nominally" one way. We say "nominally", as it is wider than most two-way streets in nearby areas. While over in Waltham Forest, Freewheeler complains that one-way streets increase traffic speed, our niggle with it is that it increases the expectation by cyclists that they should be on the road.

Look at this video of the polish-plated BMW KTT86LT heading doing a bit of contraflow on Marlborough Hill.



The driver is giving way to cars coming up the hill, on the narrow one way bit he even slides to one side to let the bicycles up this 1:5 hill. Yet are the cyclists grateful for his generosity? No, they abuse him. At least he is generous enough to laugh politely while shaking his head, but then he is probably in a hurry. Why else take this contraflow rat-run on a Sunday morning?

Returning to our community database project, note how we always omit spaces in registration numbers. This makes it easier to index them in large distributed column tables and other fancy servers, which makes it easier to find them in the search engines of our strategic partners, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo! included. Today we can see that KTT86LT has already been seen in Stokes Croft. We are slowly building up our dataset on who is prepared to stand up against the oppressors -and who the little people are.

If you have not yet had the honour of being on our site -you are probably one of the little people.

Problem Bus Stops

Our commentary yesterday hinted at bus problems in Crow Lane, as a result of criminal activity in the area.

Over here leafy Redland Road this is less of a problem, and the brave owner of EF59VBA is even comfortable leaving the Volvo half on the pavement. 

The problem here is not muggers, but bus stops. This bus stop in particular, and the one nearly opposite it, where poor people, the young, the old, students and those awful busy bodies from Transition Bristol stand and wait to catch their sustainable transport down to Temple Meads.

This means that those of us with a proper job, and car to match, have to suffer huge tracts of perfectly good parking provision removed from use, just to accommodate a bus stop. Just how selfish can these people be?

Bus work in Henbury

We see a bus, here on Crow Lane, Henbury

Why is that unusual? Well, FirstBus are stopping buses coming past here from 18:30 onwards as it is too dangerous -the drivers keep being robbed. They may go through the area, but they won't stop. On the back of this bus is a mural encouraging people to walk. Sensitive that.

The Bloomsbury Problem

Another issue we had with the Russel Square area is that this marked a clear attempt to bring cycle-friendly infrastructure into the inner city, rather than, as in Bristol, leave it places where we hope it doesn't get in the way of anyone important.

First, signs, encouraging cyclists to find their way round

Full green bike paths, with raised kerbs to make it slightly harder to accidentally park in them.

Junctions for the bicycles themselves, with no cyclists dismount signs

And here, worst of all, an "except cycles" get-out clause on a one way street. Not "except cycles, taxis and van drivers", but cycles only.

What is really depressing here is that the Camden council staff behind such schemese visited the proposed GBBN Whiteladies Road development, the one that will help motorists driving in to town by removing the zebra crossings in our way and making cycling more dangerous. We know this as we infiltrated the event, keeping track of what people were saying, and whether complaints were being dismissed -as expected- or actually listened to, and tried to slip our own ideas in to distract them.

On the topic of that camden council cycle team visit, can we extend our apologies to the woman driving the green nissan micra down WL road who was held up for fifteen seconds by the funny bicycle people. Yes, you were right to beep your horn at us for not being in the bike lane, even though cyclists don't have to cycle in them, they can cycle two abreast legally, and the traffic jam ahead meant you weren't losing any time. Yes, you were right to complain that eight people on bicycles at 08:50 on a weekday were causing utter chaos, which is why the local council had arranged the cyclist visit to during the quiet period mid-morning.  Sadly, some of the cycle troublemakers had spotted the flaw there and pressured for a rush hour visit, which is why you were held up by three people cycling two-abreast down whiteladies road.

Because we were trying to blend in with these subversives we did have to come up and argue with you while you were stopped at the traffic lights, as anything else would have aroused the suspicions of the rest of the group.

Sorry!

We didn't really mean to call you a selfish idiot who would clearly benefit from getting out of their car and trying to do some exercise! It's your right to get fat and stay unfit by driving to work and back, stopping only in the supermarket to buy ready-to-fry fast foods.

We didn't really want to dispute the niceties of the highway code and the fact that nowhere in it does it say "bicycles should be banned from our roads"  -because like you, we think it ought to! It was just something we had to do to blend in!

Walthamizing Russell Square

Crap Walking and Cycling in Waltham Forest recently popped over to inner London to denounce the area for having a parking space.

Interestingly, this bit of the city exists in our database, but it was actually so depressing to us we hadn't bothered to put up. Look at this, Malet Street, the heart of the student area, just E. of Russell Square.

1. There is only one free parking space for electric vehicles. 
2. You are limited to parking there for 2h only, which is barely enough for a family-funded arts student to finish three cafe lattes.
3. The fast moving bicycles endanger the paintwork on these premium vehicles. 

Yet to the left of the EV parking space, there is clearly enough space to put in four or five more charge points, enough to make a greener city. Yet it is taken up (even on a saturday) by a vast collection of bicycles -parked on our road tax funded roads- and a zebra crossing, again, tax dodgers stealing Road Tax space.

Slightly south, a row of borisbikes on a pavement buildout.

And in the university itself, some bicycle lockers for staff -even they are being encouraged to cycle.

Paul Dirac -Bristol's greatest physicist, apparently moved from Cambridge to Florida in a dispute over allocated parking spaces. When are the London universities going to realise that the only way to attract and retain the best staff, and the most well-funded students, is by providing parking for motor vehicles?

Today's the day

Last chance heads up.

If we don't get out and complain now about the Greater Bristol Bus Network (GBBN) proposals for Whiteladies Road, we could end up with this:



How, exactly, do we get our White Van from Cribbs Causeway to Baldwin Street if we allow something like this this to happen?

Pedestrians with priority over cars? Just plain wrong.

Keiths Driving and Parking School

Along dovercourt road, we see a member of Keiths Driving School and a paying customer getting their paveparking right.

Note how

• the wheels are all aligned
• it is further in than the nissan micra, so should avoid being scraped by passing traffic
• the driver has left enough space for a pedestrian to pass

Learning such skills are what makes the difference between a low-end driving school and a high-end one. We just hope that the driving examiner recognises the harsh truth about Horfield's parking problems, and doesn't live a noddy-land world where people park on the roads and even then not opposite junctions or within 50 feet of a corner.

Secret Cliftonwood Parking

Everybody knows that there are no parking problems in Cliftonwood, and that is why its citizens recently rejected the imposition of a CPZ. However, what fewer people know is where the "secret" parking slots are - the ones that are normally free and you actually have to seek out. Here we see two cars demonstrating two of these slots - DY52OLC at the end of Randall Road, and NY54EWP at the bottom of Ambrose Road.

What these camera angles don't show is that both of these cars have bits of paper stuck under their windscreen wipers. They were probably from admiring local residents congratulating the drivers on locating these hidden parking spots, but we'll never know - sadly, the rain has rendered them illegible!

Concerned of Cliftonwood

PS: In the case of DY52OLC it could be to apologise for the fresh dent in the back right hand corner. Whilst admiring the honesty of the perpetrator, we say: next time, use indelible ink! Unfortunately, the wronged car owner will never know who you are.

Intermission

Whilst we all get hot under the collar about the problems that putting Bus Lanes up Whiteladies Road are going to cause, and the onerous parking restrictions that will be put on us as a result, here's something to think about:

Tax dodgers, parked for free, making their own entertainment.



We can't do that, the best we've got in the X5 is sat-nav and Jack fm.

Here at Bristol Traffic, we like leaving the 4x4 outside Somerfield all day, whilst walking into Clifton, pretending to be pedestrians. Unless we complain by 12th November, that'll all be over and they'll give our parking spaces to bicycles and buses, at least in rush hours.

If you want to keep the free, 24 hour, inner city parking in Whiteladies Road you'd better get over here and make some comments. Quick.

2nd2none shows how it's done

Yes we've seen this car before. The miracle that is an internet-scale index/search engine tells us we saw WR08HXK in exactly the same place in Chedworth Road, Horfield, back in March.

Well, before your customers are ready for the pavements of Monty, you need to teach them how to get on and off the kerb safely, and quiet roads like this with plenty of dropped kerbs are ideal. One issue though: six months? And their customer is still learning? That's not good.

Alloy wheels are for outsiders

Footage of someone on Cobourg Road managing to get their car out safely.

This is why in inner city Bristol you don't want alloy wheels. They may be a status symbol for some drivers, but they are clearly not people who have to drive round the anti-car parts of town, where getting on and off pavements and skirting kerbstones are a regular part of every driving journey. They are a luxury for outsiders.

Hail the Rebel! X108YDY

We celebrate people who stand up against oppression, who fight an anti-car council in and anti-car city. This why we are proud to celebrate the driver of X108YDY as he drives down Marlborough Hill, from Kingsdown to Jamaica Street.

For some reason he didn't seem to appreciate that he was on camera and thought it was a stokes croft weird person who had come up the hill, rather than a member of the Bristol Traffic reporting team. The parents walking their kids to school through Marlborough Hill Place and then the hospital car park were giving funny looks too, hence the explanation at the end that it's on camera.

It is only by driving the wrong way down this street that motorists can get rapidly from Kingsdown and without getting stuck in traffic on Horfield Road. It should be made two way. Admittedly, there isn't room for two cars, but it's wider than your average Montpelier street, so why the problem?

Dark Times in Montpelier

Look at this shocking footage of a cyclist making their way into Montpelier

There it is, just near the end of the sequence. A big 20 mph sign on the road. And it's not just here, on Picton Street. The zone begins here, but spreads all the way to Easton. Even Ashley Vale is 20 mph in the bottom half. The high speed rat-runs like St Andrews Road will never be the same again, now that some sanctimonious cyclist or smug prius driver can pootle along in front and not feel guilty about holding our van up.

Whiteladies Road, Weekday, School run time

One more video from our tax dodging cyclist, who we sent on a mission to get crushed by a bus on Whiteladies Road. For some reason they survived.

Anyway, here is the video. Whiteladies Road from Lower Redland Road down to the triangle, Park Row and then towards Jamaica Street and Stokes Croft.


This just reinforces our previous conclusion: that during peak hours the causes of delays on our route are not pedestrians, they are in fact the big traffic jam around the Triangle. This time, continuing past the Triangle, we can see that the traffic sources there are in fact vehicles heading up Park Street or those coming in down Park Row. Which we believe is our inalienable right to do, and even with this bus network, we will continue to do.

Why then, do they want to mess around with the pedestrian crossings, the left turn by the downs into Redland Hill, or the right turn out of Cotham Hill -one that actually works well in peak hours because the pedestrians are triggering the crossings? That doesn't mean they shouldn't need a license, pay road tax and be insured, but that sometimes they have a place in our world. We just think there should be slightly less of them, and we should be exempt from stopping for them at zebra crossings.