Airspace

The Kingsdown Residents are a bit worried about plans to land a helicopter on top of the BRI; it's a classic stitch up of mock-consultation (ehere a note acknowledging receipt of the warning is used as proof of consultation) and accompanying documentation, all of which is in the planning application.

The business case document is interesting, the rationales for the 'copter being many:

• the helicopter is funded through charitable donations, so not from existing budgets. Hopefully that includes fuel costs.
  
• it avoids the congestion of getting from Frenchay, Filton, or other parts of the city where helicopters can land.
  
• it makes it easier to bring in RTA and other critical casualties into A&E
• it makes it easier to do by-helicopter transfer between other hospitals
• all the other parts of the country have them.

So, either its a status symbol for other health authorities, a valuable part of the health care system, or something to compensate for all the traffic jams in the city.

What is interesting is the noise study, which shows that Kingsdown and nearby areas don't gain from having the air ambulance. Because although ambulances were noisy, they always came in the front of the BRI, along the main road. Now they will go over your house. As long as you sleep with the windows closed, it won't be "significantly" above the BS8233 noise level standards for noise levels that disturb your sleep.

People who live near the hospital come off worst, but according to the study that's OK, as there aren't that many. "It is therefore considered that the overall impact of the proposed Air Ambulance Service is small and therefore that planning permission should be granted."

What is lacking from this assessment (or the business case) is any estimate of the number of flights a day and their times, and whether there will be a change in the estimate number of ambulance journeys. Without which, you can't say how noisy it will be, what impact it will have on the city. That said, given that every Friday and Saturday night the Police helicopter is out and about, it probably won't add to the noise levels of that part of town. It would be interesting to see a noise level study of that vehicle's travels.

range-rover parking

We do now have a photo of one -exactly one- range rover that is parked in compliance with the highway code. This is not it; this is the range rover G1UYA in Oakfield road Clifton.

The owner has tried to park it in the driveway, but the presence of other vehicles, like a fiesta and a scooter. Inconsiderate vehicles that have forced this one out into the pavement.

Where there is barely enough room to get a bicycle by.

One interesting question about the proposed CPZ parking scheme, is will it increase pressure to overfill driveways. If you pay the #2 vehicle fee for a second vehicle, then you save a lot of money by parking half in the drive, half on the garden or pavement. Indeed, you could probably earn money by renting out such space.

Animal Issues

This is the kind of congestion and animal hazards some of us have to deal with on our journeys to and from work.

Something must be done to eliminate such hazards. Covering the area in tarmac perhaps, possibly even nice semidetached houses.

school runs

Its back to school, and back to the old habits. Any photos of the remaining Parking Services staff actually in front of a school are welcome; until then we get those of 4X4s on the double yellow lines, where the no-waiting cones have also been added, like this Shogun, WP54GBF.

Maybe the manufacturers should come out and admit this is a use of their vehicles in adverts, rather showing rock-climbers driving across the desert to the cliff. In Bristol, the rock climbers move closer to the St Werburgh's climbing wall, and either walk there or drive over to Avon Gorge in a Mark III Golf that's seen better years. The 4X4 is for parents. Parents in a hurry. (I actually got a photo of the mum too, and told her off for skewing the dataset before I pedalled off. I don't think she understood. She doesn't know about the role of MapReduce and datamining in building a better model of bristol traffic. )

Picton Street

And now, photo and commentary from Thomas Guest about the car N934PPG.:

Too tired to hunt for a parking spot but too conscientious to park ona double yellow? By parking entirely to the left of the yellow lines,this car has found a clever solution to a common urban problem -- I mean, it's not actually *on* the yellow lines, is it?

Even better, the pavement on the other side is filled with cars and wheelie bins, so pedestrians can at last enjoy the thrill of an open road.

schoolday

This is Cotham Grammar, the secondary school just near Colston's Primary, the school that now has a "no bikes or scooters" policy while they expand the staff room. The secondary school also has a no bikes sign but it's not as bad

Under the no-bike artwork, it just says "Cyclists Dismount". You are allowed bikes, but not allowed to cycle in the school for fear of causing an accident. For consistency, presumably the car and the van seen in the picture were also pushed by hand

France: zebra crossing parking #2

Here is a follow up photo showing one car that has actually been ticked for parking on a zebra crossing

Presumably, parking so far from the pavement, passing vehicles cannot get past


It is good to see such a dangerous and selfish attitude towards other car drivers is punished. Possibly some form of ticketing system for bad parking is something to consider for Bristol, after suitable consultation.

Do not Cross on Red Man

Across the road from the Bristol Royal Infirmary, there is a sign telling you not to cross when the little red man (man? Surely person?) is saying "stand still". OK, reasonable enough.

What's interesting is this: that sign cost money to make, to install. Why is it here, opposite the BRI, but not elsewhere? Is this particular crossing considered more dangerous than any other pedestrian crossing? Do more people here get run over by not waiting for the green man than elsewhere?

One would think, that given the hospital, the ambulances and the A&E service are on the other side of the road, if you were going to step out and hit a car, bike, bus or motorbike, this is the place to do it. Yet the council felt that in fact, this place merited a warning sign.

Perhaps there is something about the BRI's ability to handle road traffic accidents that is behind the sign. In which case a more accurate sign would be something like "Do not cross on the red man as the BRI can't handle run over pedestrians". That would be more accurate, and be far better at making people behave.

France: motorcycle parking

One recurrent complaint from some of the Bristol Cycling members is motorbikes using their bike parks, and so making it harder to park bicycles. But the motorbikes are forced there because the parking areas allocated for motorbikes are usually full of cars. Unless parking a car in those areas is an enforced offence, motorbikes have to park where they can, which means bike parks.

Here in France, a different approach has been tried.

The reserved motorbike parking area have sheffield-style stands in them, so that both motorbikes and bicycles can be locked in them. This provides a place for both vehicles to be parked, out of busy pavements. Thus even pedestrians are not inconvenienced.

Cars cannot use them, although they can double park in front of them.

This is clearly a simple idea that would benefit motorbikes, cycles and pedestrians. Why then, is it not going to be used in Bristol? Because it would remove valuable car parking spaces in the city. Pushing the bikes and motorbikes onto the pavement saves space for cars. As for pedestrians, well, who cares?

France: enhancing Zebra crossing safety

Another proposal that is hoped will justify the West of England Partnership funded fact finding expedition is that there is a large amount of extra parking capacity on zebra crossings. In Bristol it is the approach to the crossing that is generally viewed as OK for short term parking. But that still leaves the crossings themselves free.

In France, the crossing itself is a parking facility. Yet it still functions as a place for tourists to wait in the hope that a passing car will stop for them.

Possibly, parking over the crossing may warn visitors that these crossings do not provide any safety feature, and that passing cars will not stop.


And so should not be used.

Given that Bristol cars do not stop as often as they are nominally required to do at zebra crossings, adopting this French innovation would have similar safety benefits, and add much more parking capacity to our city. As the crossings are often placed close to schools and shops, parents and shoppers would benefit greatly.

UK Road Sign Revision

On Saturday, the Department of Transport announced a revision of UK road signs.

Some goals of the review will be

• To consider new powers to reduce street clutter - and ensure out of date signs are removed;
•  Look at using new traffic sign technologies that can provide new ways of managing traffic flow;
• Provide better road information - such as up-to-date travel news - to give motorists informed choices about their journeys;
• Demonstrate how effective signing can provide safer roads and reduce accidents;
• Improve road users' understanding of traffic signs and signals.

This organisation looks forward to this, and will make some proposals. A key one is that street clutter can be reduced by removing out of date signs indicating that parking is illegal, as in Bristol it is clear that bus lanes, bike lanes, double yellow lined streets and school areas are common parking areas. Removing the signage will make the streets much less cluttered. Furthermore, the meaning of those few signs that are retained can be communicated to road users by imposing some form of penalty for lack of adherence to the rules. For example, ignoring speed limit signs could be penalised with something we have given a working title of "speeding ticket"; ignoring what few no-parking signs left after a rationalisation could be punished with a "parking ticket". Apparently such tickets have been experimented with in different countries, and been shown to change behaviour.

France: school parking

And why the airport travel? Because the West of England Partnership have recognised that the contributors to this blog are doing more to improve travel in the area than their previous set of consultants, so are funding our trips to different parts of the world. This week, a look at how the south of france deals with their traffic problems.

Look at this. Its a school, with the same car-on-pavement problems as all of Bristol's schools, but fixed.

A set of bollards away from the kerb effectively stop any parents, even if they own 4X4s and are really important, from using the pavement parking area. And you can't park in front of the bollards as that would block the road entirely, which is generally considered bad form.


This is clearly wrong, as it denies these important people the right to park their cars next to the school, so forcing them to park further away and walk, costing the parents 10 minutes, twice a day. With 110 schools in the city (i.e. ignoring nursery and private schools), and room for four cars in front of each, that's 410 cars/day parking in directly front of Bristol schools, a total of 8200 minutes. Which, under the revised NATA road costing rules, means that allowing parents with cars to park directly in front of the school, saves Bristol's drivers lots of money.

No, Bristol should not use such low-cost techniques to stop parking in front of schools, when we can show that such parking saves the city's parents so much money.

Relax before you fly

At BRS airport, there are adverts on the stairs saying "relax before you fly", with a pointer to some site selling access to premium lounges. Which implies that that there may be an executive lounge somewhere in the airport for premium travellers who don't want to experience the tblisi-airport-evacuation experience that most travellers get.

One way to relax before you fly is to avoid using the airport approved checker cars taxi service, at least until they have got their newly-upgraded software working. Because if you book an 05:30 taxi pickup, that means "taxi at my house in Bristol at 05:30", not "taxi driver gets the pickup notification at 0530". Now, dedicated driver that he was, he managed to get from the airport to city and back again by 06:15, but things were still pretty tight. Only the friendly easyjet staff (nothing positive to say about checker cars either) and the vastly expanded security area meant that things worked out. Some discussion with the taxi firm -possibly cc:d to the airport- may be in order. Because when you pay the premium for a taxi over the bus, what you are buying is the option to get there in time. After a near-disaster at a time in the morning when things should be calm, how can you trust the taxi company and their software during peak hours?

Still, it could be worse, I could have been an XL passenger. Which raises an interesting question. How many airlines are serving BRS other than easyjet and ryan air, and what assumptions have they made about fuel costs and passenger demand?

wheel alignment

This is another of the ongoing L-Plate series, this one, interestingly enough outside a church. Maybe parking close to your place of worship is a need of modern churchgoers. Anyway, we don't really want to been seen to be victimising learner drivers, as they are in fact some of the safest drivers in the city. They are the least aggressive, stay at or below the speed limit, and look before acting. In dual-control systems, they also stop well.

But even so, sometimes their parking needs to be worked on. This one? The front wheel is not fully aligned back with the car. They need to learn to just straighten up the steering wheel when parking, so that the wheel isn't sticking out to catch passing traffic, or damage itself against the kerb. Still, a bit of practise and they will be there.
{car:P751LWA; location:sneyd-park}

Greetings from the DVLA

This is Fairfield Road Montpelier. All around cars are parked on pavements, over corners. But the only one penalized is the one whose tax disk is out of date. It is clamped, a nice visual deterrent to anyone who was thinking of saving 180+ pounds/year by, say, printing out a tax disk on their home printer. With the number plate reading vans driving around, checking every car registration number against the database, you will get caught (they say)

While clamping untaxed cars serves as warning message, what message does ignoring all other vehicle parking issues in the area say? It says: all we care about is your cash.

The joy of autumn

Autumn is one of the South West's best times to be on a bicycle. The sun, the dappled leaves and the dry paths after the summer baking makes it very memorable.

Yes, some people may have memories of a nice September. But if you are a mountain biker, this month's rain lets you test out your skills every day, even on normally boring bike paths. Here is the Lockleaze to UWE path, which two days in a row have had a stream running from the new roads being built to the left of this picture, a stream going over the path at 4-5 inches depth, and then draining into the woods.

This makes it an excellent place to safely practise river crossing techniques

Range Rover Parking

As mentioned previously contributions of photos (and links to uploaded youtube videos) are welcomed at traffic at railwaypath.org . One thing we are looking for is photographic evidence that it is technically feasible to park a Range Rover legally on a road within Bristol.

All our content so far shows that range rovers, such as this one, CD57TJC can't park their vehicles without doing any of: parking on the pavement, parking where it is double yellow or school lanes, parking in front of bike paths, or parking near a corner. This one, on Cotham Road just by the St Michael's hill roundabout, is positioned perfectly to inconvenience bicycles heading down the hill to Gloucester Road. Which we can only assume was the plan.

The other possibility is that the van in front is blocking access to their driveway, so the 4x4 owner was forced to park up on the pavement by the junction, as there was nowhere else on this street to park at 6:30 on a weekday evening.

Montpelier: it does have pavements!

This could be some strange organised event, or maybe the photographer was passing through earlier than usual, but here is photographic evidence that under the parked cars, there is actually pavement in Montpelier

This is something that has rarely been seen, and must be treasured.

Question: if Montpelier became a CPZ, would the pavement be marked out as resident parking, or would the parking capacity of the area be cut by 50% by requiring cars to park on the road on one side of the street only? Next question. Would that make it safer for cyclists?

one way parking

Fremantle Square, Kingsdown, has effectively conceded that the one-way signs only apply to through traffic, not parked cars such as this little Honda, WP05BWL.

What's interesting is how the trend is spreading, here to Aberdeen Road, Cotham, just before child dropoff time at the school in the road.

Which is why it is justifiable. As a parent, parking the wrong way and walking your kid to school ensures that you get there in time, reducing the time and pollution costs of driving up to the St Michael's Hill mini roundabout, down Hampton Road and then in on this road in the proper direction. While for commuters, their parking at this end of the road ensures that they do not endanger schoolkids walking down the rest of the road.

Remember, one-way streets are not only put in "to benefit cars", they are there to benefit through traffic. For residents, parents and commuters, two-way streets make it easier and faster to get to your destination. Hence the sign is now considered optional.

Colston School: parents not getting the message

Here we have some mothers pushing kids home from Colston's school, the one that has now forbidden bikes and scooters.

Clearly the purpose of the banning was to make it easier for the school run by car, yet here we see two families recklessly blocking Richmond Road to passing cars. How much more selfish can they get?