Bristol vs Self driving cars

One little sighting over by our strategic PCSO-state partners, Google, are their self driving cars.

They are utterly not-ready for Bristol. You can see this at a glance

Not only is there a bollard on the roof, there appear to be sensors coming out of every corner.

Here in the city centre we have a word to describe vehicles with wing mirrors attached: visitors.

While having wingmirrors helps you in certain out of town operations, primarily changing lanes on the M4, in town it actually hurts you: it makes your car about 30 cm wider so significantly reduces your choices as to where to drive. And, as their presence broadcasts that you are not a local —but instead have a vehicle you care for— you lose every negotiation that takes place, be it a junction or a "who will give way first" interaction. And, when parked, you don't have to bother looking out the window when you hear the sound of a car-on-parked-car interaction, unless it is so loud that you fear it may be some damage needing bodywork repairs.

Now put something on every corner of the vehicle whose presence is actually critical for the self-driving feature to work. Sensors attempting to detect what is too close, so the multi-layer neural network that is is google self-drive program can make a decision as to what to do next.

It's doomed.

That's before even looking at what complexity of road the cars are exposed to. This road, "Castro", is a complex environment on the basis that it actually has people walking. Yet it is wide-enough for oncoming vehicles to pass each other, all junctions are nice simple right-angled crossings, and visibility is reasonable.  Now imagine taking a car trained here and trying to drive down Clifton Vale, the one with the blind z-bend you have to share with oncoming traffic. The car would just give up. And it would share the experience with every other google car, saying "avoid this road". Before long whole swathes of the city would be blacklisted by Google cars, cars who give up on account of their paintwork and external mounts being valued.

Which, when you think about it, could be no bad thing

where are the speedo-watching crashes?

Here are the two petitions to look at

Speeders: Scrap the 20mph limit in Bristol and restore common sense  now at 8045
Keepers: Keep and extend 20mph limits now at 1680

One claim in the Speeders' petition is

"roads will only be made more dangerous with frustrated drivers and people watching the speedo rather than where they're going!"

We haven't noticed that ourselves, as we have a special speed limiter in our car called "the gear stick". Put it into "speed band 3", or "3rd gear" as it is sometimes known and it burbles along quite happily at 20-24mph, except in the special case that someone drives so close that you can see the driver's nostril hair and you slowly lift your foot of the accelerator to drop to precisely 19 mph just to see the expression on the driver's face in your rear view mirror.

Anyway, it may be that the speed petitioners don't have manual transmissions, or are somehow unable to determine road speed, and do have to look at the speedo all the time.

This is something we can test now that the central 20 mph zone is over a year old. All we have to do is look at the data.

One irony here is that if they do occur, the fact that they will take place at 20 mph means the police aren't likely to get involved. Any crash involving pedestrian, cyclist or stationary object will be less likely than at 30 mph to injure anyone, so they may not get called out. Indeed, even the insurance companies may not get a look in if people care about their no claims discount. head-on collisions will still have 40-50 mph of energy, so are more likely to show up. This means official data sources: —police and insurance— may show a reduction in RTCs even if there has been an increase in RTC events.

We ask the speeders, then: where are the speedo-watching crashes?

1. How many crashes in 20 mph zone have you personally been involved in where you or another participant was looking at the speedo at the time?
2. Have you heard of any such crashes —and do you have the contact details for us to follow up on this?
3. Is there any other evidence for an speedo-watching crashes in the central bristol zone?

We've had the zone for 18 months now, with millions of journeys in it by now. If speedo-watching crashes are a risk in 20 mph zones, we should have seen some. 

If we don't have the any signs of speedo-watching crashes, then, it could be due to

1. They are happening, but the massive lower energies in the collisions cause them to be unreported
2. That whole claim about "watching speedos causes crashes" is bollocks.

#2 is the null hypothesis: 20 mph limits do not cause speedo-watching crashes, is the one which has to be disproved to a significant degree of statistical confidence before it can be believed.

We put it to the speeders then: show us the data.

Now, assuming, on the off-chance that there is the data, that speedo-watching does cause crashes, hence 20 mph zones are more hazardous than 30 mph zones, why do the petitioners still propose lower limits by schools?




Either 20 mph zones are more dangerous due to speedo-watching or 20 mph zones are safer round schools.

So if that claim "20 mph is more dangerous" isn't utter bollocks, then, if the speed campaigners really believed it, they should be pushing for 30 mph zones round schools "for the children".

Speeders: show us the data —you've had 18 months to collect it.

(photo: kid scootering to school outside Christchurch School, Clifton, pre-RPZ)

Unhappy speeders

In our ground breaking analysis of the geographic distribution of the speeders and the 20 milers in the city,  we were picked up on for our statement "They must live very unhappy lives."

Good catch. Judging by the reaction to the post, we should have concluded "they are very angry people"

It's as if they spent a lot of time in traffic jams or stuck at the lights -blaming George Ferguson for every minute of their wasted life

We were particularly called out on our assertion that the 38% of out of town petitioners on the "right to speed" campaign don't count.




Specifically, the accusation of misinformation came about because of the T&Cs of the council's petition policy, which states

If your petition has received 3500 signatories or more from people who live, work or study in Bristol it can then trigger a full council debate [see page 5] and if this is the case we will discuss with the lead petitioner the options for enabling this to take place.

We are not attempting to misinform anyone. Look at what we wrote

Of the speeders, 38% of them don't live in in Bristol. Which means they are, as far as Bristol elections are concerned, as relevant as residents of the Isle of Wight. They don't have a vote, all they have is a whine.

See that? If you live outside the city, you are electorally irrelevant. Which may or may not transfer into the decisions about the region and its transport policy.

If you lived out of the city, you wouldn't have got a bit of a paper asking if you wanted a referendum on having a mayor —you didn't get a say. You wouldn't have got a bit of paper saying "who do you want to be mayor" —again: you don't get a say.

The fact that the council has a policy for petitions is something to cherish. The fact that they even let people from outside the city add their names shows that we do value those people who live out of town. But when it comes down to whom the council has to prioritise, it's the residents who vote for the councillors and mayors.

Everyone outside gets to make a whining sound, either in their own home, the BEP web site or their car sitting on the M32.

Is that fair? Maybe. Is it functional? Not for a region wide transport policy. But here's the problem: the N Somerset and S Gloucs councillors like their little kingdoms too much to share them.

Here we see Elf-King App Rees switching from demanding that the Clifton RPZ be removed

...to screaming that George F is trying to dictate parking policy in Leigh Woods.

He loves being a small fish in a very small pond, and any attempt at having a broader region for  democratic governance as a threat.

Is S Gloucs any better? Well, they are very proud of the the fact that they are not quite Bristol, even to the extent of having a "Welcome to South Gloucestershire" partway along the Filton Road weekday traffic jam. Because Filton is, after all, distinct from its neighbours. But they do ask staff at the N Fringe of the city for their input on the latest bit of random roadworks.

What is not clear, though, is Why is Filton out of Bristol? . Same for those bits in N.E. Bristol. Emerson's Green, Rodway Common, etc. Part of the featureless hinterland of the city. And yet: you don't get a say —only the right to get angry about things happening in a city nearby.

Those pro-speed petitioners: do their opinions count? Not for 38% of them, no.

We've stated repeatedly we are Bristol's premier data-driven transport new outlet, compared with the evening post, which is driven by "what gets the most paper sales to our dying customer base" and "what generates the most page hits". Controversies involving parking, cyclists and speed zones hit all three.

Sadly, we don't have access to the BEP customer dataset or the details on commenters they extract from their linked-up google accounts. What we do have, however, is the python code needed to convert the published signatory list into a CSV file, with some extra flags to indicate whether or not the petitioner is in a 20 mph zone or not.

            20 mph ward  rest of BRS  CUBA    other 
Pro            920         305         116     201
Speeders      1552        3365        2289     705

As a graph, showing the numbers by area, things become more obvious

Of the speeders, 38% of them don't live in in Bristol. Which means they are, as far as Bristol elections are concerned, as relevant as residents of the Isle of Wight. They don't have a vote, all they have is a whine.

Looking at Bristol itself, we see a marked split between those people in wards with 20 MPH zones vs those which aren't.

Even though the pro-20 MPH petition is a fraction of the size of the speeder's one, it is not far off having 40% of the total petitioner count from the 20 MPH zones themselves.

This implies some things

1. The people who get most worked about 20 MPH zones don't appear to live in them.
2. Many of the people who get worked up about Bristol's 20 MPH zones don't even live in the city.
3. They must live very unhappy lives.
4. A lot of the people in the 20 zones seem pretty happy with the zones and their lives.

We'll collect some more data next week, and make up some new conclusions. Until then,  get out there and get some signatures for whichever petition you care about.

PS: the code.

The 20 mph war on our council web site

There's now a battle of petitions up on the council web site


The scrappers: , "scrap the 20 mph limit and restore common sense",

We love the use of "common sense" in the title. "Common sense" means "obvious to the person making the statement". Yet, as we look throughout history, "common sense" meant the sun went round the earth. Galileo's Heliocentricity hypothesis was considered so heretical the common-sense regime at the time (Catholic Church) sentenced him to death. That's what common sense means: superstition over rational thought.

The retainers, "Keep and Extend 20mph limits"

These want the limits retained, extended, and maybe even enforced. We will call these "the people who believe Newton's equations about momentum and kinetic energy".

There we have it then, two factions: those who reject the physics of RTCs on the grounds of "common sense", and those who care about people walking and cycling round the city.

It will be interesting to watch the numbers. the flat-earthers have the support of the local paper, and a three month head start in the petition.

As of June August 23:

Flat earthers: 7421
Progressives: 1053

This is something we'll be keeping an eye on.

Traffic Cameras: they don't shoot black americans

One of the recurrent themes in the UK press, with the Daily Mail-esque "Speed Cameras steal from motorists" story also recurring in the US,

Usually there are people quoted demanding instead real police, in real police cars, catching people "really" breaking traffic laws —by which presumably they mean "people other than themselves"

What doesn't get covered, though is how scary it is to be stopped by the US police compared to those in the UK. In the UK you get pulled over with some opening gambit like "is this your car, sir?", or "how much have you had to drink this evening?".

In contrast, in the US the lights go on so bright, with such a loud siren that you look up from your phone with a jerk, to see the police car filling your mirror and pull over in fright. Only here, the police officer (almost invariably a white man) walks over with their hand near their gun, ask you to wind down the window and then keep your hands visible, all the while standing a bit behind the door so that you are in front of them and its easier for them to shoot you than vice versa.



It is frightening, and you have to be so careful not do to anything not to make them overreact, and reach for the gun. And that's just as a white adult male in a nice car in a nice part of the US.

Now imagine you are an 18 year old black american being stopped at night. You know the police have a track record of shooting black americans even when pulled over for "minor traffic misdemeanours".  This is a country where failing to indicate as you change lanes has a death penalty.

You are going to be scared whenever you get pulled over, if you look at the statistics from places like Ferguson, you will be pulled over a lot more than white americans, and the is a small but tangible risk of you not getting out the stop alive.

In contrast

1. Traffic cameras don't pick on drivers because of their skin colour or age/state of vehicle.
2. Traffic cameras don't shoot black americans. Or any american, to come to it.

While in suburban americans may scream about unjust and unfair traffic cameras, you might find some locals with different opinions. Ask black americans kids whether they'd prefer being stopped by the police with a risk of being shot or having traffic violation fines sent in the post —you may find more support for the cameras. Now ask their parent, those parents who worry about their children going out for drives at night in the US, and they may give a very different answer.

Traffic Cameras: they don't shoot anyone

Visiting our strategic partners in Mountain View, California

We've stated before: with our strategic partners Google and Facebook we are building a PCSO state, one where people pay month for the privilege of being monitored, such as the how your Android phone reports in your movements 7x24.

We do of course have to visit our partners sporadically to brief them on developments, hence a short trip to the US. Expect some commentary as well as insights from Silicon Valley, which is now the hub of the future automobile. Even watching people gives us a profound vision of the futre

First, how to carry furniture in a "convertible"

The correct approach, clearly is to stick the chair in upside down, with someone on the passenger seat to keep an eye on it. The driver themselves gets some information on the chairs status: if they look in the wing mirror and see daylight then the chair has gone. If they hear over their music the sound of brakes and crash, they may also get an audible cue of the "chair loss event"

Until then, luggage transportation at work.

We just have one outstanding question though. We've seen them carrying a chair. What are they going to do with the Sofa?

Cyclists please dimount

We don't know what dimounting is, but given the incident near Bristol where a woman crashed her car while playing with an entertainment device, we have our suspicions

This is Temple Back East from Temple Back bridge heading for Temple Meads station from Old Market roundabout.


It could be a mis-spelled "cyclists dismount" sign, except there's no reason to dismount, not when there's the hatching to the left.

Dimounting, then, must mean something else. Our theory: riding a saddle designed to entertain your entertainable bits while on a ride.

Daylight running lights: the helmets of cars

It's been mandatory since 2011 for cars to have daylight running lights ("DRLs"). Is this a good thing? Or just it just up the arms race between motorcyclists, cars, pedestrians and cyclists?

For a change, there's actually some research on this topic, in the form of a 2008 study from the US government, "The Effectiveness of Daytime Running Lights For Passenger Vehicles". Bear in mind that the sample set of this study is of course US drivers, who are a lot more common than US ones to drive round at night without lights on. DRLs partially mitigate for this inattentiveness —or it may amplify it if drivers don't notice they have their lights off, on account of the DRLs illuminating in front of them.

Abstract

The analysis evaluates the effects of daytime running lights (DRLs) against three types of target crashes: (1) two-passenger- vehicle crashes excluding rear-end crashes, (2) single-passenger-vehicle to pedestrians/cyclists crashes, and (3) single- passenger-vehicle to motorcycle crashes. Each crash type was examined at three crash severity levels – fatal, injury, and all severity. The basic approach is a control-comparison analysis of real-world crash involvements for DRL-equipped vehicles and non-DRL vehicles. Ratio of odds ratios were used to derive the DRL effects. A 95-percent confidence interval was used to infer statistically significant conclusions. The Fatality Analysis Reporting System and the State Data System were the crash data sources used for this analysis.

The analysis found that DRLs have no statistically significant overall effects on the three target crashes. When combining these three target crashes into one target crash, the DRL effects were also not statistically significant. When examined separately for passenger cars and light trucks/vans (LTVs), DRLs in LTVs significantly reduced LTVs’ involvements in the target two-vehicle crashes by 5.7 percent. However, the remaining DRL effects on these three target crashes were not statistically significant. Although not statistically significant, DRLs might have unintended consequences for pedestrians and motorcyclists. Particularly, the estimated negative effects for LTVs were relatively large and cannot be completely ignored.

The final two sentences are the highlight: from the survey done 8 years ago, it appears that daylight running lights may make it more dangerous for pedestrians and cyclists. And what are LTVs? That's pickups and SUVs.

The study was conducted by looking at crash statistics and seeing if those vehicles with DRLs were in crashes more or less. It wasn't a randomized sample (give people cars with DRLs on or off), which could skew the numbers (drivers of volvos are safer than drivers of ford mustangs, etc, older cars have worse brakes, etc.). Furthermore, as whether full lights were on or off wasn't recorded, the impact of DRLs at dawn or dusk can't be established.

Going in to the details, skip the maths unless you want to learn more about statistics., go to P4.10

based on the combined PC (Passenger Car) and LTV (Pickups and SUVs) results, DRLs seemed to have no overall effect on daytime target crashes.

See that? No statistically significant affects whatsoever. They are the helmets of cars: useless, yet designed to make you feel bad for not having them.

Now, P 4-14

For all crashes, again the estimates were not statistically significant. However, based on the combined State data, DRL effects for both PCs and LTVs were negative. Overall, DRLs seemed to increase Single-PV-to-PED/CYC crashes by 5.6 percent.

There you have it then. A feature which does nothing for overall safety rates, but which actually appears to increase risk for pedestrians and cyclists.

And on P 4-16, motorbikes

DRLs seemed to increase daytime Single-PV- to-Motorcycle crashes by 1.2 and 17.3 percent for PCs and LTVs, respectively. Overall, DRLs seemed to increase daytime Single-PV-to-Motorcycle crashes by 5.0 percent. None of these effects were statistically significant.

There you go then: daylight running lights appear to slightly increase the risk to vulnerable road users, while delivering no benefit whatsoever for the occupants of the car themselves.

Given this data: they do nothing for cars and endanger others, why offer it, and then why mandate it?

Offering it in cars could be assigned to a belief that it does make a difference (possibly even some unpublished data that it does).  Or, more cynically, because if possible purchasers ares somehow convinced that DRLs improve their safety, then they would buy that particular model of cars, possibly paying a premium. If you are a car manufacturer who discovered that spending £1 to ensure your car lights stayed on all the time could earn you £100 —you'd do it.

But why mandate it? That would remove all differentiation between vendors?

Some hypotheses(*)

1. Politicians also mistakenly believe there is a safety benefit, and that by mandating it they can improve safety.
2. Politicians don't care where it is beneficial or not, they just want to be seen to be doing something that they can take credit for and doesn't cost much.
3. It is used as an excuse to avoid fundamental changes in road safety. Here the car manufacturers would be lobbying politicians. Unlike other features (ABS, Airbags) which actually cost money, DRLs are cheap to roll out. You'd push for them if the alternatives cost money.

Whatever the reason, its motorcyclists, pedestrians and cyclists who appear to lose out.

(*) There is also the theory that there is some other work that through some controlled A/B test shows that it does make a difference, and furthermore politicians have read and understood the details. This hypothesis is considered significantly unlikely.

RPZ comes to Monty: Oh the Inhumanity!

• First they came to Kingsdown, and everyone celebrated.
• Then they came to Cotham, and nobody complained
• Then they came to Redland, and the main complaints were from people just outside the zone.
• They they came to St Pauls, and people were upset about the cost, rather than the parking
• Then they came to Clifton and the shopkeepers who wanted to drive to work were more focused on their convenience than the revenue gains on having customer parking, they paid for tanks to make their point, still lost —and now have signs up everywhere saying "30 minute parking is free, please come and shop despite all the horror stories we put out"

And now: Monty

It's fascinating to see how the Evening Post has finally managed finda an agenda they can get people even in the inner city to care about. Up till now, what the BEP wrote about was irrelevant. Like who cares about congestion in Westbury on Trym or what's happening in Stapleton.

No more. Instead they've managed to stir up horror stories and build a whole agenda which everyone wanting to be elected as a mayor is using as their core election theme.

It's almost as if the paper has found a way to stay relevant in an era of free news over the internet.


Well, unlike the Evening Post we've spent time in Montpelier and have a dataset going back years. On a road-by-road basis, such as Richmond Road.

This is what it used to look like




A road where the pavement was exclusively used for parking, yet still so tight that only the bold drove down it.

If you were, say, trying to walk your kids to school, you'd be in the same roadway, keeping a tight rein on your four year old in case they ran ahead and ended up under an oncoming van or a car pulling out from their parking space on that pavement.


It was essentially a "shared space"

Yet look now? Someone has painted double yellow lines up one entire side of it! You can now drive up this road without fearing for your paintwork!



Incredibly, you don't have to commit to that journey hoping you wont meet anyone coming the other way —as if that did happen, one of you would be reversing up a road so tight that you had to get it spot on or hear a scraping sound.

1. It is now possible to drive up and down Richmond road safely.
2. It is now possible to walk up richmond road on the pavement, and even send a small child to run ahead of you without worrying about it being run over.
3. It is now trivial to for a car and a bicycle to pass.

That is what the RPZ has brought to Montpelier: not just white lines, not just yellow lines —but pavements people can use.

Anyone who says "its destroying Montpelier" clearly has a vision of the area where nobody walked, where scenes of two drivers out their car shouting at each other as to who was going to reverse were viewed as quaint traditions.

And what does the Evening Post do? Rather than highlight how it has now become safer to walk or cycle, how it has become more convenient to drive through, they've pointed to the yellow paint that someone has thrown onto the ticket machine at (00:48). That's the machine on the pavement which was never visible before.

And while the BEP condemn the vandalism, they don' t really, they are proud to report it —and blame the mayor for making the protesters do it.

So for all this "evening post represents the people" fuss they are really fighting to preserve a time when pavements were for parking and children couldn't walk round Montpelier safely.

Why should we, the residents of the inner city care? We are just being mislead by a paper that is happy to manufacture controversy, and happy to find it in the lives of people who are unable to adapt to change. Tough.

At this point the RPZ-haters will be going "So where did the cars go, eh?" The answer there is: the council added extra parking spaces round the corner by marking St Andrews Road for echelon parking.

In this photo you can just about make out a car coming up behind the parked van blocking the view. Which highlights the issue with echelon parking: its got a higher collision rate, and is particularly bad for cyclists.

In order to make the RPZ rollout less controversial, the council chose to make cycling on St Andrews Road more hazardous.

That's something for the haters to consider.

HD06NZY texting school runner

You can spot a car when the driver is texting. Rather than pootle along with the car in front, they leave a gap, then, when they look up and see it, finally jerk forwards, before repeating the manoeuvre one SMS interval later.

Here you can see HD06NZY doing precisely this in the oncoming lane, a queue on Cotham Road to get to the roundabout which is blocked by school parents.



It being school run time, our expendable reporter opted to turn round and ask them to stop it. As you can see, they're a school running parent themselves. Presumably one of those parents who thinks it is too dangerous for their kid to ever walk or cycle to school -so instead they drive. And as anyone who ever has to do that school run by car in Bristol will know: its not fun. It's slow and boring. Hence the need to do something other than talk to a small child in the back.

The mum doesn't seem too happy about the other school parent telling her off. It's bad enough having to sit in a traffic jam without having some sanctimonious tax-dodger complaining that they are endangering all children trying to walk or cycle to school. People like that should,

If those parents who let their children walk or cycle to school really loved their children, they'd drive them to school. It's too dangerous to do anything else!

Leigh Woods: nicer cars, more polite twats

One of our Bristol Traffic expendable tax-dodging reports was tasked to head over to Leigh Woods on a weekday morning, to see what all the fuss about the Clifton RPZ destroying the prestigous mock-rural suburb. It doesn't appear to be.

Watch this video and consider that all inboud traffic is paying £1/vehicle to drive into Bristol. The Clifton RPZ rollout does not seem to have discouraged this flow of traffic from the "nice but dull" parts of N. somerset, and the "simply dull" parts like Portishead. All the vehicles here will have come down the A369 from Portishead/Gordano M5 junction, or from Clevedon via Beggars Bush Lane. Yet despite the inner city waging a war on the hard-working motorist of the mock-rural suburbs, there's still a line of cars heading in.

What is notable, compared to inner Bristol, and even more so the Glasgow of Magnatom's videos, is

1. All the cars are nice, shiny and relatively new, with a bias towards the overweight SUV.
2. They all have their wingmirrors. This shows that they neither drive nor park in much of the city. These vehicles do not cross Whiteladies Road to points east.
3. There's nobody texting except P277FAL. This implies the flow rate of the traffic is higher than Gloucester and Whiteladies Roads.
4. When the self-important twat driving Mercedes EH03DHJcomplains to a cyclist that they are holding them when there is a bike lane, it's done in a genteel, polite, "could you use the cycle lane", rather than the stream of Glaswegian abuse or a screaming fit of the kind you'd see in Richmond.

That said. EX03DHJ is still a self-entitled wanker. He's just pulled out from the residential side road and is immediately on the horn because the cyclist is in the middle of the road in the line of slow moving cars, then comes up with the "I'm a cyclist myself, you see" cliche, while politely asking the tax-dodger to please use the cycle lane. It being nice sunny morning in Leigh Woods, the cyclist politely says no, rather than telling them to fuck off, the way you'd be expected to do in inner Bristol.

For those residents of the inner city, we have provided a translation

101 uses for a nearly dead Ginkgo tree

We've noticed 4X4 drivers often have to deal with the problem of street trees when they park off-road in Bristol. Even in RPZs. Even in 20 MPH zones. Even near schools.

Fortunately many of these trees are now stumps and some of the stumps have been there so long that they are rotting into the ground and the removal can be accelerated by a little nudge. In time they will be tarmaced over but in the meantime the tree pits provide a little offroading experience.

 

Unfortunately some of the street trees that are planted, such as London Plane trees, grow quite quickly and rapidly provide the amenity and canopy cover that "environmentalists" love to promote at the expense of proper off-road pavement parking.  

 

However... Not the humble Ginkgo tree. It's a relic of the age of the Dinosaurs (and a conifer to boot - don't let those weird leaves and the fact it sheds them in winter fool you). 

 

This particular specimen has hung between life and death and remained the size it was planted for about a decade. 

The question as to whether urban trees have any purpose is maybe too philosophical for this blog. But in a very practical sense this particular tree has finally found its purpose and meaning in life in modern day 20 MPH Bristol.  

 

It is providing security for a traffic counting and speed measuring device.

Speeds on 20 MPH Redland Road are, of course, consistently well above 20MPH, so this tree may finally contribute in some small way to the urban fabric by helping Bristol City Council to calm the traffic down this very steep hill where even cyclists regularly exceed 20MPH whilst car, van and lorry drivers overtake them with gay abandon, because they Must Get In Front.

 

We are struggling to come up with a single other use for this or any other Ginkgo so finding a further 100 uses may be a tall order.

Who to vote for? Some of the above

As Bristol's premier data science organisation —and one of the few press outlets people trust— people ask us: who should we vote for?

Our answer: anyone you like —but.

Which is where our game theory work comes into play.

First though, consider all the members of Clifton Tank Command who kept on saying "but the nurses!" and "but the schoolteachers!", when arguing against the RPZ.

1. It's probably the hospital porters who have the worst job. Ask them how little they get paid for a 10-12 hour shift? It's just that "but the hospital porters!" doesn't conjure up those Florence Nightingale scenes of the selfless nurse —so doesn't get used when seeking sympathy.
2. Ask the nurses, hospital porters or other staff what is the worse thing to happen to them in the last five years. The Clifton RPZ or Jeremy Hunt's "reforms"? Because it won't be parking (probably).
3. Similarly, ask the school teachers: "what is worse, the Clifton RPZ or Michael Gove's 4+ years in charge of education"? Because it won't be parking (probably).

All those people who were citing teachers and nurses in opposition to the RPZ now have a choice: do they vote for the parties that made things worse at a national level, or do they not. Because if they do vote Tory or LibDem, they abdicate the right to pretend to care about the wellbeing of all public sector employees.

What about the rest of us? This is where it gets interesting, especially in Bristol West.

LibDem.

1. In 2010, the fact that the Conservative Party could gain an outright majority by working with the LibDems meant that they needed them, either in a coalition or on a vote-by-vote basis. 
2. The LD team went for coalition. This gave them a seat at the table —but in exchange, they gave the Cameron government the majority they desired. 
3. In exchange for that majority, the LDs got support for two referendums: electoral reform and house of lords reform. They got promised them, but then had the Tory party actively opposing them, and plans fell through. If electoral reform had gone through, all the smaller parties would be happy this election, and the LD would stand a chance of counting MPs in double digits next week. As it is: they lost. And in doing so, lost all that they could have gained from the coalition.  They've made their play —and lost.
4. Theymade the mistake of promising support for five years. Once they'd done that: all negotiating power was lost.
5. This week, they are arguing that they can be good for either a Labour or Tory government -but to negotiate hard with either party, they need to be absolutely prepared to work with the other party. Which means if you vote for them, you, the voter, don't get any say in who is the government. Only, possibly, the identity of some of the members of that government, and one or two of their actions.

If the LD are to have power next time round, they need to play differently. First: don't trust Cameron to deliver on any promise. You want agreements -get a lawyer to spell out all the T&Cs, not some handshake over tea. Better yet: supply votes on a case-by-case basis, and demand concessions on every single vote. That way lies power.

Labour

They're slowly exiting the Blair era, but following the press too much -making promises about "never forming a government with the SNP" which actually hampers their negotiating options. It would have been better to be vague. 

Conservative

Just move to North Somerset now. We don't need your folk in the city.  

It was only the early 1990s when Bristol West was conservative, but nowadays that's viewed as utterly unrealistic —which is why they can stand up candidates that are quite happy to denounce the Cycling City work as a waste of money, whilst not denouncing the Managed M4 as equally useless for the majority of Bristol W commuters. She's also stopped updating her web site some time in February, showing her commitment to getting elected or an understanding of computers on a par with UKIP candidates.

One thing that is notable is that their agenda has moved from anything forward looking, even from anything about preserving their accomplishments (where is that Michael Gove person? Or Jeremy Hunt?). Instead they've actually focused on being anti-scottish. And while they say "no, anti-SNP": that's not how it comes across. It comes across as saying Scotland isn't welcome in shaping what kind of nation Britain will be in the 21st century. Which a fair Scots find somewhat offensive. A majority of the country did vote to stay in the UK, so why push them away?

SNP

They've moved on from banners saying "Bannockburn, 1314 -we remember". Glasgow has embraced them —and in doing so, they've embraced Glasgow; Scotland's city of the workers, with the history of Red Clydeside and the closest Britain has ever come to a communist uprising. They promise to give Labour the heritage they've forgotten.

Green

Here's some fun.  The Green party appear to be in second place in Bristol West, not that far off from Labour. And they do seem to have some more posters up than the others —though given the general lack of posters, that's fairly meaningless.

Bristol W. is the Green's targeted second seat? Does that mean they will win it? They presumably hope that by repeating it often enough people will believe them and they'll get that majority. At the same time, there's that risk that the anti-coalition vote will be split, Stephen Williams will get in, so giving the LDs more negotiating power, and so the likelihood that Cameron stays in his office.

Independents for Bristol

They exist, apparently. Maybe as local councillors they'll have a role.

Plaid Cymru

They never come over to Bristol to campaign. And there's us with a River Avon. Someone should stand on their behalf. Over in Wales, it'll be interesting to see what happens, and if they can gain that same momentum that the SNP have got.

UKIP?

Emigrate to Spain and spend the rest of your miserable life whining about immigration. For reference, the people in Edinburgh didn't attack Farage out of racist hate of the English: they did it because he's a pillock.

Friday AM will have Labour and Tory short of a majority, 2+ smaller parties trying to have power and influence over them by promising support. The LD experience of 2010 has shown the danger of a coalition with the conservative; Scotland learned about the worthlessness of Cameron's promises the day after the referendum, so won't be sitting down with him.

Tory will be able to talk to: DUP, LD and perhaps UKIP. Hopefully UKIP will be irrelevant. DUP aren't too different from the conservative party, and won't make things better or worse. The LDs? Will they have learned their lessons from last time and negotiate better, or again, give up their ideals for an office with a phone?

Labour is going to have to talk to the SNP, which is why Milliband's absolute refusals to work with them are shortsighted.

Meanwhile, the majority of the press will be saying a government with the SNP in it —or supported by the SNP— is not legit. Well, here's some bad news, since the mid 1980s Scotland has been almost entirely unrepresented by any conservative government (thank the "campaign for a tory-free Scotland" there). That's led to a pretty abusive relationship coming up from the south, the Poll Tax (seen above) being the key example. Having a government with the SNP involved would actually be fairer than those conservative governments from 1988 to 1997: Thatcher and Major.

Anyway, your call. Just bear in mind that if you are voting LD in the general election, there is a high chance you are actually voting for a conservative government. Voting Green you may be making Bristol West stand out as a green city, or losing your choice to have a say in the country. 

Us? A joint SNP+Labour government with a couple of green MPs would be an interesting government to have.

PS: what about their actual manifestos? Meaningless. Why analyse things made up for press releases. Interesting that only the SNP think Trident is an utter waste of money; only the LibDems have raised the fact that our government's monitoring of everyone's emails may be something to question. That topic didn't even make the press. But then neither has the environment. Arguing about whether Scottish MPs could form part of a government take priority over policy, apparently.

The Zone map that Clifton Tank Command Dare Not Show

Of all the maps that appear in the RPZ tank-battles, this is one that does not surface.



Its the map of where the air pollution levels in Bristol exceed the levels that are considered safe.

Look at that map. What stands out (to any resident of the city)

1. The entire city centre is an Air Quality Management Area. 
2. Clifton manages to dodge it, primarily by being above the town -though as it gets into Kingsdown and Windmill hill, height is not enough for the roads to stay breathable.
3. The roads into and out of the city are pollution hotspots. That includes Gloucester Road, Bristol's "most popular" cycle road.
4. The Frome valley pollution zone tracks the M32 perfectly.

We can't split the pollution into resident, business, public transport and commuter, apart from the Rupert Street bus & taxi only road —the one with the worst pollution in the city. Usually.

What we do know from the queues of cars on the A370 and A4 Portway every morning is the number of people who drive in to the city.  Any morning you can walk onto the Suspension Bridge and look down at the queue of cars who have done the portishead-M5-A4 route (and from other places, including Clevedon & Weston) and are now stuck in the Avon Gorge, fuming at the empty lane next to them along which park and ride buses whizz past. Any morning you can go to the footbridge above the M32 and look down at the line of near-stationary cars, all sitting with their engines on.

And in any inner-city area that is not an RPZ, you can watch the cars go round and round in circles looking for somewhere to park.

And now what -we have a  Somerset MP actually surfacing in the county to complain that Bristol's RPZ has had knock-on effects for Leigh Woods. Well, that's unfortunate —but not a reason for Bristol to attempt to do something about their air-quality. And an RPZ, if it actually helps alternate transport options in the area -including N. Somerset- will.

What's not covered here is that Leigh Woods has always experienced commuter parking -which was getting worse with the cost of crossing the Suspension Bridge, even before the RPZ went live. People who lived in the hinterlands weren't prepared to pay £2/day to drive over, and leigh woods became the cutoff point.

Well, Leigh Woods is free to roll out an RPZ too. As is Long Ashton. We can't say "but the roll-on effects" should stop any attempt at trying to make the city better to live and breathe in.

As for the residents of Portishead who say that Bristol is now trying to control where they work? 

Sorry. We are trying to control how people get to to work, to adopt options that aren't so literally poisonous to the city.

And the people who say "hold off until there's a viable alternative?" The residents of Portishead were all happy when the council spent £3M widening a roundabout, to reduce the time they spent queuing to get onto the M5 and then to work in Bristol or the North Fringe. £3M for what: one roundabout? Which, in a manner obvious to those of us who actually understand Queue Theory (it's not rocket science, you know), does nothing except move the traffic jams slightly closer to the city. North Somerset, under the guidance of Elf-King App Rees have spectacularly failed to get the Portishead Railway reopened for passenger traffic. They've actively opposed cycle facilities along their roads,  and actively campaigned against cycle routes through their two-cars-per-household-mock-villages.

It is the repeated choices and actions of the residents of North Somerset that have failed to provide that viable alternative to driving.  Why should Bristol care about those decisions? By leaving the city, these people abdicated their right to influence the decisions the city makes. And, in the hands of their democratically elected council, held back any form of progress. When they do attempt something, it fails so badly it gets ridiculed on national TV.

North Somerset are the hinterland of Bristol, not just geographically, but culturally.

Which is why we in the city can't afford to be held back by them.

We aren't trying to tell them where to work. We aren't even telling them how to commute.

What we are doing is saying "The road space and air quality in Bristol is too precious to waste on free commuter parking." By taking that away, anyone who wants to drive in still can —except they now get to pay for that right, so making the external costs of commuting in what is usually a single-occupancy vehicle tangible. In doing so it makes the now-internalized cost of driving in closer to that of using public transport, including the Avonmouth P&R site. It may even provide motivation for the residents of Portishead to push their councillors to get their thumbs out their arses and start working on this —maybe even setting up a Metropolitan Transport Authority covering the CUBA district, so actually giving them some input on Bristol's traffic plans. And, given there's an election coming up, maybe talk to their candiate MPs and say "will you do something for transport in the area other than staged photos in Leigh Woods?"

What we can't do is stop the RPZs and say "business as usual". Because its not just that everyone driving is causing congestion, they are helping poison the city.

Next time someone talks about resident parking zones, say "what about the air quality zones?". And if they don't have an answer, instead complaining how they have to use P&R instead of queueing to get into the city —you don't have to feel sorry for them at all.

MTB trail: "The Corrie Road"

We've not done much coverage of the mountain bike trails in the area for a while, trails such as Nova, Super Nova of Ashton Court, along with Yer Tiz in Leigh Woods.

To catch up then, lets look at another council-manufactured technical trail through the trees, "Corrie Road".

This trail starts at the local village of "Beddmynster-upon-Avon", known locally as "Bemmy". It can be reached by train from Bedminster Station, or directly from Templemeads via the new Clarence Road segregated path. There also is parking by the local store, "Asda". They sell food and fresh bread there —visit it if you haven't already! Note that while this shop is surviving, the adjacent library is at risk of being shut down and converted to gentrified housing.

As well as food from the local store, you can also buy bicycle spares at that eclectic Bristol chain, Motorman. You can also get waterproofs, footwear and other things from the friendly folk at Taunton Leisure. For anyone planning to make a weekend of it, there is some accommodation right in front of the trail itself. (warning: some of those reviews are a bit negative)

The trail itself is an all weather off-road surface. There are a number of tree obstacles to "work"; making for a very swoopy course. It is probably the easiest to do as a nighttime-excursion, primarily because of the streetlights placed in the middle of the trail itself! You won't be needing any helmet lights here!

It's also flat and straight: no real navigational problems. We'd recommend it as an intro to MTB-ing for children, were it not for the fact that if they get an obstacle wrong and fall left, they will end up going under the wheels of an HGV —this road is notable in that it is still a 30 mph road; the 20 mph zone begins behind it.

Here then is the trail done at near-race speed, though the rider doesn't clear every slalom gate correctly.



Sadly, the trail does peter about rather abruptly, leaving you with a choice of where to go next. Turn right to get to The Chocolate Path, where you can head to the Avon Gorge, the pump trail, or Ashton Court itself via the "metrobus wasteland" —formerly known as Festival Way. Alternative options are head back towards the starting point of the road via the Chocolate path and a non-technical pavement route, or simply return the way you came. Yes, The Corrie Road path is two way —do watch out for oncoming cyclists as you commit into the bend around a tree.

After a ride, we recommend the pub "The Windmill" in Bedminster, or the Nova Scotia at the end of the Chocolate Path—both of which are fine establishments to consume a beer or three.

Our letter to @BristolPost

We've just sent a letter to the evening post. We encourage others to do likewise. This was not sent to the letters@ address -it was sent to the new desk. Its in their part of the web site in which the article is printed, and we want action, not some letter a few days from now.

To: epnews@bepp.co.uk

Subject: April 1st "cyclists and lorries" article

Hello

Some people view our Bristol Traffic site as some kind of spoof.

Our contributors have twice encountered HGV/cyclists collisions in Bristol. One of our contributors lives in Bath, not far from Lansdown Hill, where a four year old girl and others were killed by an out of control HGV. When we cover such things, all notion of humor is gone. We treat the incidents as the awful events they are.

Yet your paper thinks this topic merits an April 1st story.

That is probably one of the most tasteless and insensitive stories you have ever printed.

Here is our response.

http://bristolcars.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/evening-post-not-funny-at-all.html

As we say at bottom of our article: it's not to too late to your article offline and replace it with an apology, one you can reprint tomorrow.

We even grant you the right to use any of the photographs in the above article with such an apology.

Please let us know what your plans will be

Yours,

the Bristol Traffic team.

Evening Post: not funny at all

The Bristol Post has an April 1st story, Cyclists to escort all lorries through Bristol city centre in bid to reduce speed and improve safety. someone thought that was funny.

More precisely, someone thought that was funny less than eight weeks after a tipper truck killed four people in Bath —something local and awful enough that the BEP felt worth covering themselves. A truck crash in which the driver and the company chairmain have been charged for Manslaughter on. Think about that: if the police not only charge the driver with something worse than "Causing death by careless driving", but even the company owner with manslaughter, there must be evidence of a set of wilful decisions resulting in what even the police consider to be killings. Not accidents: killings.

What those decisions are, we are yet to know. Overloading the vehicle? Maybe. Driving with defective brakes? Quite possibly. Driving down a road with 6.6" signs at the entrance and a use low gear sign later on? Again, highly likely. Some papers have been claiming the width sign had been knocked down -but there are two of them, which kind of makes that statement doubtful. A wilful decision to take a shortcut seems suspiciously likely.



Yet the BEP thinks lorry safety is something worth having a laugh about.


Whoever wrote that article didn't look through their archives for keywords like "HGV and life-changing injuries"



They've certainly never heard the scream someone makes as an HGV drives over them.

On a bicycle, what's likely to kill you is an HGV.

And the Evening Post thinks this is funny enough to make a joke out of on April 1.

Anyone who rides a bike and actually pays for the evening post should reconsider their decision from now on

Anyone who looks at the web site should immediately download the Adblock plugin (Firefox, Chrome) so the evening post doesn't get that advert placement revenue.

As for the Bristol Traffic site? After this post we refuse to place any links to Bristol Post articles. Ever.

 

To the evening post, we want you to recognise that this isn't funny. Anyone cycling around the city fears the HGV, fears it coming up behind you at an ASL. Or even worse: a roundabout. If you've ever felt your bike being nudged forward by an HGV at a roundabout as the driver looks to their right, you'll know a moment of cool terror. Moving HGVs are just bad. You fears them passing, as you look to the side to see if its indicator lights are on, warning you that it's about to turn over you. And that's if you are lucky, if they do indicate.

Please pull the article and post an apology for such a tasteless story.

 

As for the author for the article: we extend the offer of a bike ride round central Bristol. The old BEP offices to templemeads should be enough to convince them never to think such an article would be funny. If that's not enough, we'll take them to Bedminster and then down Coronation Road, returning by Anchor Road to the centre, up to the Bearpit roundabout and then Newfoundland Road. If they aren't left a gibbering wreck vowing never to get on a bicycle again, maybe they will write prose so awful in future

Tribars: not for urban use

Following on from our coverage of the fact that its sporty cars that lose from the 20 mph zone, we should look at the impact of the figures on bicycles.

Before anyone points out that bicycles are exempt from the limit, consider that if it becomes a speed that people expect, then going above it would create problems for people assuming you are heading more slowly. Though as any tax-dodger will point out, most people passing your or pulling out assume you are near-stationary and plan their manoeuvre  accordingly.

Even so, fast bikes don't have a place in the city. Stick to 20 or less: and if you can do that on the uphills you've earned those numbers.

What it does mean is that just like fast cars, tribars aren't needed in the city, nor are carbon wheels or polka-dot socks.

Yet here we see someone doing 6-8 mph in exactly that setup.

And while it's nice to see that they are staying way below that 20 mph limit, they do have their arms on the tribars. Which is another way of saying "their hands are a long way from the brakes".

As they reach the end of Kensington Place, they approach the give way point at Lansdown Road, where this lack of braking ability almost catches up with them. Because there's a Range-Rover heading north from Lansdown Place —below that 20 mph— and the cyclist needs to make a bit of an emergency swerve from going into it. Which could have damaged the paintwork on the car as well as written off some carbon wheels.

Bikesnob is always taking the piss of triathletes. It doesn't really apply here, but it does send a message to all: plan ahead, keep your hands near the brakes especially as you approach junctions where you are expected to give way.

Note the yellow lines on the road. This is the Clifton Village RPZ, as you can see on a weekday it is now a wasteland.

Bristol's 20 mph zones: it's the hot cars that lose

The 20 mph zone has been up for a year now, so it's time to review it as drivers

1. It doesn't make things slower. Really. It's the delays at junctions & in queues that increase journey time.
2. It makes things calmer. There's less pressure to put your foot down when you do clear a junction.
3. Similarly, as you approach a junction, you can coast down more gently. 
4. As you are going a bit slower, you can take time to look around, which gives you a better view of pedestrians. This is tangibly better at night.
5. It actually helps you pulling out from side roads to main roads. Why? As everyone is moving slower, the time window for you to do things like pull a right turn with cars approaching from both directions is larger.
6. Fuel economy? No obvious difference. The engine may be less efficient in 3rd than 4th, but you don't have to accelerate so hard, and can coast down. Of course, anyone in a hybrid car is laughing as their petrol engine can work even less, and gain more regenerative braking from the gentle slow down.
7. Keeping track of your speed? Third gear low RPM seems to work. If you feel the need to go to 4th, you are going too fast. 
8. Does everyone follow 20 mph? 22-25 is more realistic daytime speed; at night the speed goes up to 30 until the minicabs come out, when it ramps up 40 mph just when the drunk people start walking home.
9. Increased road rage? No obvious difference. As the average commute speed is < 20 mph in Bristol (TomTom's unverified data, not ours), it's hard to see how it could be made worse.
10. Collapse of businesses due to increased white van journey time. Not obvious. Congestion is the limiting factor, not maximum speed.
11. Passing Bicycles? No harder or easier. It's still irritating to be behind someone going along at 12 mph. But the speed limit doesn't make passing harder. We just want fitter cyclists out there.
12. Then there's the "two shopping trolley" man wandering round the streets these days. We have no idea why he has two shopping trollies full of his entire belongings, but he does, he goes down the roads (not the pavements) at about 4 mph. Again, 20 mph doesn't make a difference.

So who loses? People who spent money on fast cars. You shell out all that cash for a nimble toy, for an extra digit or two at the end of your car brand logo —"i", "GT", etc—, tinted windows and some wheels that just scrape easily.  The key "performance" benefits are tighter suspension, and most of all the ability to accelerate better. 

Which is now utterly wasted, as most vehicle's 0-20 numbers are relatively similar. And pootling around at 20 mph means no need for suspension that lets you do 90 degree turns at 35 mph.

That's enough to drive you to road rage: not the fact that you are doing 20 mph, but the fact you spent a lot of money on your status toy and are doing 20 mph.  Even if you want to go faster, there'll be someone in front who doesn't, who appears to drive at exactly 20 mph on a fast ratrun road  like Ashley Down, Pembroke Road or Filton Ave. It's almost as if some people, on noticing an important person driving a high-end Audi or BMW SUV actually take their foot off the accelerator, dropping from 24 mph to 20. Which we consider unacceptable and strongly condemn anyone doing this.

For those people who have spent the money, they expect something in return.

Fortunately, every so often the opportunity arises. Here is one our instrumented tax-dodgers going down Nugent Hill, Cotham, using the bike contraflow to get to the Arley Hill evening traffic jam, and so on to Stokes Croft. As they join the Arley Hill queue, you can see a green light allowing some traffic to slowly get out to places more interesting.

And here you can see the BMW 3 series YF57KTE getting some return on investment. First they can come off the speed bump while accelerating (suspension), then put their foot down to catch up with the cars in front. Those cars in front who are going through on orange we note.  But as the BMW is now almost joined up with them, it can do the "part of the same group" gambit and carry on through on the red light.

That tactic has given them a bit more speed than the vehicles in front, forcing them to negotiate what is effectively a chicaned right turn fairly aggressively: that suspension at work again.

They then need to put their brakes on, not because of the speed limit but because they've caught up with the car in front.

There: 15 seconds of real driving, out of probably 30 minutes of suffering. Not much —but that's all a 20 mph zone offers, at least during the early evening commute.