Back to School

Bristol City Council appear to be re-educating their white van drivers and delivery supply chain.

By sending them back to school.

They appear to have reserved some parking spaces for them!

Police Stopping bikes on the downs

We'd heard that the police were stopping bikes on the downs, so nipped up to see if the cyclists were being the good beating they deserved before their bikes were confiscated for not paying any tax.

Oddly enough, this was not happening. Instead the cyclists seemed happy and the police were even there on their own bicycles. What was going on?

It turns out that they were putting RFID tags into the frames, so that if the bikes get stolen and recovered, it's easier to link up with the owners. And perhaps the tags (and the markers indicating tagging) will discourage theft, as it becomes hard to say its your bike when someone else had registered ownership and theft of a bike containing the specific ID tag

At which point a devious idea slid into view. These cyclists are being stopped by people in high-viz clothing, having something stuck into their inner frames, and then fill in some name and address paperwork, before cycling off happily.

If you wanted to get the addresses of bicycles you wanted to steal, this is the way to do it. Rather than follow mountain bikers home from Ashton Court -something thost cyclists are aware of and fear- just wave them down, offer them a free id tag -in reality a piece of plastic- and get them to fill in their address on a form. They tell you where they live, you go back later and grab the bike.

Now, the next question: how can you determine that this is not exactly what was going on on the Downs, and, apparently, will be repeated on the Biggest Bike Ride event on Sunday? Are these really police, or is it just a big bike theft trick?

Bristol Bike Project: A success story

Only a few days after visiting the Bristol Bike Project, and already we can recognise the signs of one of their donated bikes.

It's not the bike itself -there's nothing wrong with having a twenty year old supermarket-grade mountain bike that is still running the original Tioga Farmer John tyres and thumbshifters -retro is back in you know, though ideally with bikes that were actually good in 1991.

The real clue is the way the owner treats it. Rather than as an undervalued utility vehicle, the people that those subversives in the Bristol Bicycle Project have been supporting are so poor, so deprived, that this is about their only possession -so they love it and value it more than anyone else. It's that expression of care that gives it away. Instead of leaving it in the manned bike parking area, this bicycle is so precious that the owner brings it with them at all times.

The other sign is the general unhealthy appearance of the individual. Not only does he have a strange accent from abroad, his body looks as though it has been neglected over the years, with their legs and arms taking on the pallor of someone unwell. It is the classic suntan of someone from a Glasgow or Edinburgh housing estate, the "Trainspotting Look".

This particular individual said that although originally from Wales, he was chased out of his country for his political beliefs (LibDem). He now has to regularly travel to London to seek work. Many local political activists have told me that it is unfair that he should suffer this way, and hope that he will soon have to stop such travel. We in Bristol Traffic have no opinion on the topic, other than to express our concern over the state of his legs. A bit of sunlight will do wonders there. Coming out to the St Werburgh's fair could be the first step in this recovery process.

Bristol Bike Project: the people

We managed to sneak some photographs of the subversives on the Bristol Bike Project. They aren't giving the bikes away, or selling them. They are making the people who want a bike come down and fix one together -under supervision. Here James is showing Mohammed from Ethiopia how to set up the front derailleur/click-shifter.

Nearby, Alfil and Asad are admiring the bike they've just got lights and mudguards on, under Colin's supervision.

The students are even learning how to fix punctures.

This "earn your bike" program is quite subversive

1. It ensures only people who really want a bicycle get one.
2. It gives the new owner a good feeling of accomplishment. Instead of being pushed around by the state, you are starting to gain some control of their lives.
   
3. Once you've put in the effort, you will value it more, look after it more.
4. You are now equipped with all the skills needed to keep a bike alive. You may need to borrow the tools from time to time, but you can mostly fend for yourself.
5. You are equipped to maintain other people's bikes too.
   

That's pretty devious, and by the expressions on the refugees' faces, you can see they are looking forward to getting out on the bikes.


And that's the problem. Right now: refugees, asylum seekers, Big-Issue vendors. The underpeople of the city, despised by we, the Daily Mail reading majority of the city. A scapegoat-group for all our troubles.

But at least they stay out the way. Once they have a bike, they are free to get in the way of us taxpayers, and so become members of a completely different scapegoat-group -the town's cyclists! A group of people more broadly hated in the mainstream press than any asylum speaker would ever otherwise be. They have no idea what they are getting in to.

Parkland at The Hot Wells

Sometimes we feel this site is the only site that speaks up for Hotwells, the under-valued western end of the harbour.

Yet you can see that people travel distances to come and admire the flyovers, with the contrast between the modernist concrete and the Georgian terraces behind.

The old railway bridge, with the mud glistening underneath, is a place of peace and quiet to treasure before the BRT developments turn it into another piece of road.

And speaking of roads, what is this? An abandoned looking track with rubber surfacing, over the parkland?

According to some allotment people, it was put in to get some heavy machinery in, since they left it has been abandoned.

Not abandoned -we say it is the tooling needed to finally implement our vision of a new Hotwells: one with a skateboard/BMX park!

The Adventures of KN56ARO

Bristol can be a bit snobby.

So if you're not in Clifton it's nice to treat your 4x4 to a bit of proper off-road action to make up for not parking in The Mall. Which is what the owner of KN56ARO does every so often

in the Gloucester Road. When not parking on yellow lines...

It's pleasing to see a such commitment, and

so much creativity.

Yellow lines, build-outs, pavements. Ye Gods! It wouldn't happen in Clifton.

St Werburgh's Fair: the transport options

Lot of people chose not to drive to the St W's event, presumably the drink-driving laws getting in the way of sensible travel.

Here see a purple milk float with room for six, behind the three person sound-system bike. The front two are in charge of movement, while the one at the back powers the amplifier and manages the ipod-based music collection. He also gets to eat off a plate.

We see someone on a fixie, and while we are yet to decide whether this is fashion getting in the way of sensible, a discussion with this rider on their downhill-MTB related knee and leg surgery convinced us that some people do it as it is less dangerous than DH work. His daily commute up Park Street is good for fitness, apparently.

That said, he got very wistful when the trenchard street lift was mentioned to him. When will that facility become an official part of a cycling city, we wonder?

Nearby, a mix-yourself smoothie system. Finally, a use for small children.

Just outside the fenced off area -a large, supervised bike park. This is unusual, as even in years past when the Ashton Court festival was free, there was nothing like this. It will enable many people to cycle to the fair, get drunk, and then ride home.

Corner parking extreme

Does this count?

Do I win the Corner Parking Competition?

It's 04:00 am, I've just dropped a child at the 'Unnamed Road' on the downs for a week's trip to France with his school. The blurred photo reflects my perception of the world at this time of day. Notice the dimpled paving carefully aligned with the 'faux' pavement that crosses the road.

The photos below, however, show why I should win! (I'm not biased, of course).

Not only have both the Audi and the 'Bespoke Building Contractors' van - AK03YYL - parked in extreme parking conditions, but they are also performing a real service to all road users by protecting them from the famous lion-topped post of Cambridge Park.

Pedestrians suffer slightly, of course - requiring them to make a small detour from the desire-line of the pavement itself, but at 04:00am, that's hardly of real concern for anyone, is it?

High-Viz Fetish? No, more a lifestyle choice

On our previous post on Bristol Cycling Chic, we got some wonderful feedback from the Copenhagen cycling chic team, who accused us of having a high-viz fetish; that our interests in bright green outer wear was somehow unhealthy:

And your fetish for hi-viz and other gear is odd and by promoting it you are merely stunting the growth of bicycle culture. Where are your photos of pedestrians in hi-viz or your calls for them to wear these things?

Good point. We haven't been covering the pedestrians properly. Consider this posting a correction.

Interestingly, since we were denounced, traffic to the site, indeed that post has been fairly high. The initial thought was that our philosophy had taken seed across Europe, and soon even in Amsterdam and Copenhagen people would be riding round in hi-viz tops and budget Lidl waterproof trousers.

But no, that turns out not to be the reason for the sudden surge visitors. A quick look at the search keywords that bring people to the site shows the real driver. If you type "High-Viz fetish" into your favourite search engine, Bristol Traffic comes out on that first page. Clearly enough people have been doing exactly that, that it's been bringing a whole new audience to the site.

We can but welcome these new viewers, with their special interests, and invite to Bristol, where they will blend in, on foor or bike.

Those who are about to put on High-Visibility clothing, we salute you!

The Farm Pub Path: open to samba and other marching bands

The Farm Pub Path has long linked Muller Road with the village that is St Werbugh's "under the tunnel", a village which, unlike many rural villages, still boasts a decent pub and a thriving agricultural industry, albeit one not considered legal by this nation's drug laws.

You've been able to get from Muller Road/Horfield to the pub and back again on foot or by bike -but the one thing you have not been able to do is cross the allotments while travelling in a samba band. This has severely inconvenienced some potential path users, who like to travel in such a format for safety, and for the social aspects of travelling en-samba.

This weekend, the offical path opening took place.



As you can see from the video, the first testing of a sending a samba band along the path did prove successful, and the path is now open to all marching bands, be they samba, brass or bagpipe.

To celebrate the event, many people came out to enjoy the beers and cider on sale by the Farm Pub, the city farm and some local residents, before staggering home.

Anti-car subversives -in our own city!

Anyone who follows this blog will know that we think pedestrians and schoolkids should be banned, and as for bicycles, well, their owners should be made to pay an annual tax, and even then not allowed to ride their bike on roads or pavements, but only on a small bit of path where a bus runs alongside it, a path where they are required to wear helmets and hi-visibility clothing.

As such, we follow the party line of the Association of British Drivers and the Daily Mail, as well as its local sibling paper, the Evening Post.

It comes as a shock to discover, then, that none of these prestigious organisations have picked up on a growing scandal in our midst - a small group of subversives who are actively trying to make things worse for car drivers in the city -by giving bicycles to people who cannot afford them!

These people, the Bristol Bike Project, are being quite open about it. From their bunker somewhere in Stokes Croft, they are fixing up old bicycles, and giving them away. They are even begging for anyone in the city who has an unused bicycle rusting away to bring it down, to donate it, and they will fix it up or use it for parts to fix up the others.

What is most shocking is that people in this city have really been doing this! We can understand why fellow citizens would have a bike rusting away, after all, once you grow up you don't need it, but to give the bikes away, so they can be used? Do these people not realise that by their generosity cars, taxis and buses will be held up, while pedestrians are endangered?

We couldn't believe this was true, so snuck down on the pretence of being there to donate some parts -in reality we'd just stolen them from a bike outside, so ensuring there would be at least one less bike in our way today, then while the project team were distracted, we took some photographs with our hidden micro-camera.

Look, a whole production line of machines, waiting to be built up and in the way of tax-payers! Apparently they've built up sixty already, to refugees, asylum-seekers, big-issue vendors and other non-tax payers -out there, getting in our way. And there are more on the way. After positive press in some bike site, and Bristol Indymedia, more have been coming in.

And not just adult bikes, kid bikes too! So children will be getting in our way!

Are these subversives satisfied? No they are not! They are still asking for more bikes! for more spare parts! From tyres to brakes! Adult bikes and kid bikes!

This is a scandal -yet the mainstream press haven't picked up on it, not even the socialist papers like the Independent, that will probably praise its goody-goody-ness.

It must be stopped. But what to do? The solution is simple.

Nobody should even think of donating old bikes or old bike parts to the team down on city road -the team whose email address is thebristolbikeproject at gmail.com. To do that would be madness, it would only encourage more people to get out on their bikes and get the way of decent, tax-paying, daily-mail readers like us.

Food for Thought

Customer parking at its best!

TomTom: Schoolchildren can slow you down

Continuing our question to Brizzleize the rest of Europe, a quick look at TomTom, Amsterdam-based makers of SatNav toys for cars.

This is their office, near the train station and and tram halt

Next to the parked bikes and the pedestrians

And round the corner from the flat rate 1-euro stop/go bus service.

This company is a little part of Bristol, in disguise. How so?, people ask.

Take a look at their marketing blurb.

Their business model is built around selling satellite navigation tools to car drivers. With new cars building it in, and a lot of old cars already fitted with existing models, TomTom need to sell boxes to the hold-outs, those people who drive around with a 1993 A-Z in the glove compartment, they need to convince everyone with an existing TomTom to upgrade. Yet the rate-of-obsolescence of old products is determined mainly by the rate-of-change of road infrastructure: new roads, new road restrictions. Predictable and generally manageable by people who can upgrade every fiew years -no easy way to switch to a subscription model for timely updates on one-way systems.

As for drivers who don't even have SatNav, maybe they don't believe they need it.

TomTom need to come up with a way to convince everyone they need SatNav; they need something to fear. What have they come up with: schoolchildren. As in "schoolchildren or shopping crowds can slow you down. "

To ensure that you can drive across the city at the fastest speed the city allows, even if there are schoolchildren around, you need a new TomTom device, one with a subscription to "TomTom IQ Routes", that knows about traffic. Presumably, then, it laughs at you if you want to go up to the lake district on a Friday evening in summer, or shakes its virtual head if you try to bring up any route on a Saturday in July and August that involves the M5 motorway bridge over the Avon. Implementation details aside, however, the key point is that this company, based in Amsterdam, whose staff appear to walk, cycle, bus, train or tram into work, are selling products to our city's drivers that claim to help navigate them away from peak pedestrian schoolkid densities on their journeys. Which is clearly a little bit of Bristol, lurking in the centre of Amsterdam.

One question though. If it does aim to steer you away from schoolkids walking around, what does it do when you ask it for a route on that morning school run?

The Georgians in Clifton

It's difficult owning a car in Clifton. Commuters, students, shoppers, and tradesmen, as well as residents, need somewhere to park. As do the Clifton Jet-Set with their 4x4s in The Mall.

So we can forgive the Purgeot R102OHT for just giving up and parking half of itself on a double yellow line. Probably a frustrated resident.

However, these Tradesmen, such as BF55OTL, are parked (only slightly on the pavement, and more on the double yellow lines) doing valuable work inside a splendid Georgian house. Or student dig.

But they couldn't get any closer to where they were working, because Georgian tradesmen used horses, not vans. Which lead to an interesting design choice when building their roads. Very car unfriendly, and not at all in keeping with the spirit of Modern Bristol.

This then begs the question - did Georgian Tradesmen park on the pavement, too?

Portsmouth: hitting the beach

Portsmouth is more than just a cycling town, it is a town with a beach: Southsea.

Do people cycle to the beach? Yes, some do.

Even unfit ones who have to hang on to their friends.

Once they get there, the people can lie in the sun. They cannot swim, on account of the water being ice-cold.

And they cannot cycle along the seafront, as there is a bit of a hold-up in the plans to make cycling along the seafront safe. But as long as you know a direct route to the seafront, you can get your bike to the water's edge. But not along, oh no.

The bicycle death lane of the Bearpit

While looking at the enhanced cycling parking of the Bearpit, we missed out on the cycling opportunities of the area.

Here, then, is the safe cycling option for this multilane roundabout.

1. There is a line of buses waiting in the left hand lane to turn into the bus station.
2. There are two cars who have mistakenly followed the road signs to get stuck in this queue.
3. The correct route in car is to go into the turn-right lane then slide in to the left lane after getting past the bus queue. The lane markings are only there for visitors.
4. Bicycles can go along the pavement, where it is signed with a white blob on the floor.
5. The bike lane ends precisely at this white marking, at which point the bicycle is forced out under the bus.

Nobody uses this path: it has no value whatsoever. It lets you skip past a traffic light, only to die under a bus. The correct way to negotiate this roundabout is to avoid it completely, or to go through underneath, through the Bearpit itself.

On the topic of the Bearpit itself, the People's Republic of Stokes Croft are trying to gentrify it.

DVLA does Montpelier

Again, we see the DVLA at work in Montpelier

This time, only one vehicle is being penalized, R308FKO.

The owner of this vehicle is not only not paying road tax, by continuing to drive a car that is probably over 10 years old, instead of buying a new car, they are failing to keep the country's economy afloat. This is inconsiderate and selfish.

Brizzleizing Amsterdam

We are hoping that our solutions to EU traffic problems will get picked up, and so are pleased to see this pic of a SmartCar variant on the streets of Amsterdam.

SmartCars transform city's parking problems, by increasing the places you can park a vehicle without endangering its wing mirrors or body work.

Taxis and ASLs

Some people think that ASLs are just for bicycles. Others that they are for bicycles and motorbikes.

Actually, they are for taxis such as this one NK53OSB, number 719, and anyone else in a hurry.

This is of course, the junction at Cabot Circus where Troy Atkinson got run over last month. The flowers are down, the markings on the road fading. Everything is back to normal.

Disabled vs Bicycles

Here's an interesting question.

Does having a disabled parking permit, as WK52UWH has, give you the right to block bike lanes?

Technically, yes. You can park on double yellow lines for a number of hours, access to bike paths and lanes is controlled by yellow lines, therefore you can park over them. Furthermore as this is Kingsdown on a weekday, there is nowhere else to park. Without driving all the way round to Dove Street and then up Nine-Tree-Hill, this is the only place anyone with a disabled parking permit -usually due to an inability to walk any distance- can park.

Now, morally? Again, yes. The driver would have to do a ten minute detour to get to the other side of the bike-only-barrier (best route: Horfield Road, past the BRI, then Jamaica Street), and that's a lot of effort. Whereas if you do park your vehicle here and stick the clock up on the dashboard, then only three-hours worth of cycling traffic will have to get off their bike, go over the pavement and then down the hill. Assuming 70% of the cyclists have mountain bikes, then if they have the ability to get their bike over the kerb, then they barely need to slow down. No moral dilemma at all.

Incidentally, from the cycling campaign there is a new handout for vehicles blocking bike lanes. This one says these facilities are best enjoyed on foot or bicycle, and asks the owner of the vehicle so tagged to come back and enjoy it properly on foot or bike. We fear the people in the cycling campaign are missing the point: bike lanes make an excellent place to park and can be enjoyed by cars, with or without a disabled parking sticker. We shall look out for these leaflets on vehicles in future, and try and come up with an experiment to assess their effectiveness -probably one involving Stokes Croft.