Monty Road Rage

A reader "S" writes in with some breaking news

"do you do road rage coverage?"

Yes, but we'd rather things were peaceful out there.
they continue

I was chased by a van through Montpelier today, I had to hide in someone's house to get away.

That's scary

I have a photo of the van

In that case, your contribution is welcome.

I was cycling up Stokes Croft, waiting to do a right turn onto Ashley Road. We had a green light but there was two lanes of cars heading in to town, so I just stayed where I was -in the right hand lane waiting. Suddenly this van that was waiting behind me swings left and then goes in front of me, almost turning on top of me. This is not only dangerous, as there is still two lines of traffic, pointless. I go forward, shout "what the fuck are you doing", get in front of him, and then, when there is a gap, cross the road. I then turn off onto Picton street and carry on. Before I do that I look back, and there is the driver of the van swearing and shouting at me. I carry on.

As I get to the end of Picton Street, past where the famous Range-Rovers live, I look right down the road to Herbert's Bakery (ed: Wellington Ave) and what do I see? I see the van coming up the road. The driver of the van was now chasing me into Montpelier. That gave me a fright. I was wondering if I should turn round and use the shortcut to Richmond Avenue to avoid the van, when I saw someone I knew getting their bike out of their house. I ran up to them and tucked my bike inside.

The can driver stopped, got out the van and was screaming at us "not so brave now, all words, come on then!" -he really did want a fight. But I don't understand why. All I know is that I was waiting at the lights to turn, he swung round and over me, and when I got upset at that he chased me round Montpelier.

We said we were calling the police and waited inside, then, as he got back in and started to drive out, I grabbed a photo.


Here is a photo of the van (ed: T455LBO) -it had Roman Windows written on the side.

This was very frightening. My journey only has one bad bit -Jamaica Street and Stokes Croft- and then I'm the safe quarter of Montpelier. I was good to pedestrians and didnt cycle through the pestrian crossing period, instead I waited patiently. And this is my reward -a mad white van driver chasing me through Montpelier.

Our local contacts reassure us that David who runs Roman Windows on Stokes Croft is really nice, and they checked this out. The vehicle is actually being borrowed by A&M motors this morning. So this incident must be because one of their drivers is having a bad morning or something, going off the deep end. Possibly they felt that you weren't waiting patiently for a green light, but instead blocking them, so while you were happily waiting, they were getting more and more worked up -so when you pulled past them and asked them WTF they were doing, they finally exploded. That doesn't excuse his actions, only gives us a possible explanation.

We can understand why this scared you, it must have given you a fright to see the van coming after you instead of going on to wherever it was going. In situations like that it is good to have a good "exit strategy" -you were lucky you know people in Monty. Otherwise, any bike-only option is good, as is doing a full U-turn on the road and heading off in a random direction. This can leave you with a new problem: how to get where you are going when there is a chance that somebody mad is after you.

The thing to remember though, is there are people like that. If someone does something aggressive like overtake you while you are waiting to turn right -it may be easiest to let them. Take a photo (discreetly), think of something witty to say, send it in. Rather than escalate the situation, which is exactly what you ended up doing, sadly.

Returning to the van in question, it's being driven dangerously by someone from A&M motors, known for their war-on-trees in St Werburgh's. We shall chase this up.

It's OK, my car has a disabled sticker

This car is not parked completely across a pavement in S. Gloucs near UWE , it is in fact parked completely across a shared bike path/pavement. You can just make out some tyre tracks underneath, leading up to the entrance of the bike path in the fence, an entrance slightly obscured by the vehicle HY03XEW. That path leads to Stoke Park and then Eastville; to the left of the picture is the path to UWE, behind the camera the path to Lockleaze. This vehicle, then, is blocking a three way junction of what is a key route in the Northern Fringe area of the Cycling City infrastructure

Some people may view blocking what is part of our new cycling city plan as an inordinately selfish activity. But this vehicle has a disabled sticker on it, from Bristol City Council. Which would make it OK -accept of course this is S. Gloucestershire, not Bristol, and we aren't sure if the disabled permit applies. Furthermore disabled parking normally has a time limit on it, which a vehicle that was here at 10:00 and still there at 14:30 would normally exceed. So there is the argument that disabled sticker or not, it would be OK to ticket or tow this car.

Except, the legal status of this road has been up in the air, as it was the HP Gate 2 entrance, now sold off and ultimately to become a public highway on the route to the tailspin housing estate. Thus the appearance of this car completely blocking the road is something to be grateful for, as it has provided incentive for everyone to come up with a plan for dealing with it. As the email from S Gloucs. council says

"at present the Police still have the power to deal with this type of issue using laws of 'Obstruction'. Apparently under the traffic management act of 2004 some local authorities have taken on this role but not SGC so far."

So there you have it.

1. The number for South Gloucestershire Parking enforcement is 01454 868000.
2. The phone number for Avon and Somerset Police is 0845 456 7000

Rather than have people try and remember this number, some people have -thanks to the actions of this very car- now created a quick reference sheet with these numbers. In fact, it is a quick note to put under the car windscreen warning them that you will be doing this, so that even they turn up and drive off before parking services or the police turn up, they get notified they were doing something wrong. The phone numbers on the sheet are there for the cyclist.

You are illegally blocking a bike lane or path

Starting in the next few days, we will be reporting vehicles doing this
to the local councils' parking services groups —for ticketing and towing!
To avoid cost and inconvenience, please stop parking here.

Bristol Parking Services Control Room: 0117 903 8070
Bristol Parking Services General queries: 0117 922 2198
South Gloucestershire Parking Services: 01454 868000
Avon and Somerset Police: 0845 456 7000

Versions of this handout will be presented at all forthcoming events where the Bristol Cycling Campaign has a stall, but there is nothing to stop all interested parties in the area from printing their own copies and distributing as they see fit.

Signage

This pedestrian/bike sign not far from Emerson's Green shows not only some distant destinations, but "public house", directing you to a nearby public house

This is of course "the bridge inn"

Prior to the transformation of this quiet greenery into a ring road, this pub was a dull, rural pub. Now, overlooking the ring-road, it is remiscent of one of the 1960s service stations overlooking the M6 (i.e. like Chernobyl B services just N. of Lancaster). Cyclists can have a rest cycling alongside the ring road, sip a beer, and admire the passing cars, while shouting to each other over the traffic noise.

St Werburgh's to Muller Road - "The Farm Pub Path",

For people curious about the status of the St-W to Muller Road path, which should really have a meaningful name like "The Farm Pub Path", it is not yet ready for pedestrians or bikes.

Except near the Farm Pub, where you can go along it for a bit and back again. Here then is the first video of a bike doing the path. The film stops suddenly at the end as the cameraman had to stop filming and go for the handlebars to negotiate the corner.

You can see the path is smooth and wide, and just calling out for FirstBus. It is clearly easy to pass the person pushing their bike up the hill without them diving away, but at the same time, the path radiates one concept: speed.

It is going to be so much fun when this opens. We could have a time trial that includes the time to down a pint of beer at the farm. A run-beer-ride triathlon, starting at the Miner's Arms, running over the narrows, having the second beer at the Farm, then heading to Muller Road and back. Start training now.

No left turn?

The sign, here at the bottom of St Andrews Road has collapsed and the VW polo parked over it, against the traffic cone. Without lifting the sign up, there is no way to tell what it says.

Yet the fact that the car is preventing the van from turning left into Richmond Road without reversing backwards and forwards 3 times gives a hint as to what the sign could be saying. Is it perhaps a no left turn sign? One that was being ignored, until this car owner bravely decided to make the rule enforcable by parking so as to prevent any left turns?

A bold decision, and look they provide room for passing pedestrians.

L-plate work

The L-Plate database has been getting a bit sparse, showing that the driving schools are failing to teach their customers how to park properly in this city -when and how to make effective use of corners, pavements, double yellow lines and school keep clear zones. Pedestrian activists may celebrate this, but it means that the students -the paying customers- are not being taught the skills they need to drive and park in the city.

This car WU55XGA is showing that Micro Driving School gives their customers the skills they need, by teaching them hill-start double yellow line work right in the city centre, on Colston Street. Brave.

Bishopston Enforcement Priorities

Bishopston. Site of the infamous Gloucester Road bicycle enforcement program. It is also near to Elton Road, where the need for residents to park forces them to double park in front of the entrance to the Elton Road bike lane, as these cars X393DMR and V885EYA have done.

Some people -and we know who they are- have expressed concern that it is somewhat hypocritical for the police to enforce pavement cycling at one end of a road when it is not possible to use the road option due to the car lane in the way. These people are also of the suspicion that it is the probably the same people who park this way that attend the local PACT meetings and push the anti-cycling agenda, one which -correctly, in our opinion- tries to prevent bicycles from using either the road or the pavement.

Indeed, the spring newsletter from the Bristol Cycling Campaign, contains an article on the PACT meetings which does say these things, highlighting the difference between the Kingsdown PACT area -police stopping cars driving the wrong way down Nugent hill- with the Bishopston PACT area -say no to bicycles-. The article finishes with a call to action to attend the PACT meetings, and after infiltrating the meetings, steering the police away from the Evening Post's approved agenda to one that tries to support cycling city through police enforcement of anti-car rules.

Is the attempt by those subversives working? Well, If you look at the latest Bishopsworth PACT priorities, you can see that they are trying to have their way -but failing.

1. Inconsiderate cycling - Gloucester Road (A38)
   

   Request to continue action to promote safe cycling on Gloucester Road, particularly the junctions with Ashley Down Road and Sommerville Road, where failing to stop at red lights has been identified as a danger. (Also requested to continue action against cycling on the pavement and cycling at night no lights).
   PCSO Faulkner will conduct two operations a month on Gloucester Road to issue safety advice, educate cyclists about offences, issue ASB forms and prosecute if necessary.

2. Vehicle offences - Tortworth Road (parking, tax disks, contraflowing)
   
3. Obstruction of cycle routes - Gloucester Road (A38)
   

   Cyclists and residents requesting that the Gloucester Road cycle route, a main arterial route into the city, is kept free of parked vehicles. Parked vehicles obstruct the cycle route, making the route redundant and increasing the risk of cyclists being involved in collisions with moving vehicles.
   PCSO Faulkner to conduct a one hour daily patrol on Gloucester Road at varying times, ensure that the cycle route is kept clear and issue tickets for 'failing to comply with indication given by a traffic sign namely a cycle route sign' or 'unnecessary obstruction of a cycle route' if a cyclist is seen to be obstructed.

They also note that the cycle enforcement has been successful:

Response from the public has been positive with coverage in the Evening Post.

It looks like the bicycle subversives tried to infiltrate the PACT meeting. Fortunately, enough residents managed to attend to achieve some kind of balanced enforcement on Gloucester Road, and no mention of the bike routes that carry bicycles to and from the A38, which can stay as resident parking. No doubt the next edition of the Bristol Cycling Campaign newsletter will contain more subversive propaganda, more calls to action urging in the Bishopston area -which is clearly becoming a flash point in the clash between car+walk and bicycling citizens.

But look at this video. This family negotiating the parked cars on their Saturday morning Gloucester Road chocolate croissant run do not have any difficulties.

They just swing out in the oncoming traffic lane before curving in to the bicycle contraflow area. If the mother at front felt that these cars were somehow endangering her children, she would be driving them round to the Saturday out-of-school engagements, rather than trying to cycle around the city. The presence of families negotiating this route by bike shows that there is no hazard, and that the focus of Bishopston enforcement should be bicycles on pavements on Gloucester Road.

Bishopston says no to bicycles!

Parking enforcement changes at schools

This event made the E.P. last week, although this photo dates from the week before: it's a sign up outside a school warning that the parking rules will be changed according to plans CAE/MLS/P/586, listing half the primary schools in the city

What's interesting is that this plan is not up online. An email to the planning people came up negative. A quick email to the planning people got bounced over to traffic management, and since then, silence. Perhaps they too don't believe in this email thing.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: customerservices ptsd
Date: Tue, Apr 28, 2009 at 9:18 AM
Subject: Re: School stopping order proposal CAE/MLS/P/586


Hello
I have forwarded your email to Traffic Management as I believe they arrange stopping up orders. You can contact them on 0117 9036822 email traffic.management
regards
Claire
Customer Services

>>> 27/04/2009 18:58 >>>
Hello,

I'm trying to find out about the School stopping order proposal
CAE/MLS/P/586, whose details I have seen pinned up outside a school. I
can't seem to find it under the planning portal Does it exist
somewhere else on the web site?

Since then, the string "CAE/MLS/P/586" does turn up one interesting article, namely a discussion in the Bemmy Forum on the topic. The schools will be going from a voluntary yellow zig zag to something enforceable.

Judging by the discussion, everyone in Bemmy thinks it is good, though it may inconvenience people driving to George Ferguson's Theatre down there. It will be interesting to see what the reaction elsewhere is.

Incidentally, there is also the problem that "theoretically enforceable" does not imply "enforced". Most parents quite happily park on double yellows near schools today because they know that unless they see a parking services team standing there, all is well. If this enforced school parking plan coincides with rollout of CCTV enforcement from passing vehicles, it would become possible for BPS to do a drive-by enforcement of these zones at dropoff and pickup time of every primary school once or twice a fortnight. Which would be frequent enough for the markings to be considered real.

Bristol Uphill Cycle Chic

This is a classic scene of the city: someone pushing their bike up a hill.

Some people may sneer at this, "be fitter or use lower gears", but those people haven't had their GP or knee expert sit down and give them the famous "Golf Conversation", in which they are instructed to take up less strenuous sports.

Pushing bikes up hill means that you don't need to be as fit, yet still get round the city, or so willing to suffer going up one of the many climbs. It also leaves you less sweaty, so you don't need a shower at your destination. It even stresses different muscles.

The hard part is finding the nice roads to push up. Nine-tree Hill is a classic, and far more pleasant than Cotham Brow. This one, Brook Hill, is in the middle of Montpelier. It's quiet and pretty.

Get out there and push your bike up a hill!

Pete Taylor

Continuing a week of bleak news, we are saddened to forward the announcement of the death of Pete Taylor.

Here he is, presenting a petition against building houses on Railway Path parkland to one of the local councillors, Faruk Choudhury, who is wearing a genuine Bristol Traffic approved high-viz top to walk down a footpath safely.



Josh Hart says

I'm afraid I have some very sad news for those of you who knew Pete Taylor, the Easton activist responsible for the 'thank you for not driving' signs around Bristol. Pete died yesterday at home- it appears that his bad and worsening asthma finally got the better of him. I didn't know him that well- I moved in down the street 6 months ago, but I do know that he had a really good heart and I always looked forward to seeing him chopping wood outside for his stove. He could be brash, condemning our car culture and lashing out against pavement parkers, but his activism sprung from love- mostly a love of our planet I think (he was the one behind the 'i love my planet' bike stickers).

Pete would literally spend all day writing letters to MP's and councillors on issues of traffic and quality of life and this persistence paid off with the city council's adoption of the thank you for not driving signs and stickers. He told me proudly the other day that he had successfully got the diesel generators banned from Broadmead after a long campaign. Undoubtedly Bristol is a greener, more livable place because of his quiet, diligent efforts.

On a more practical note, if anyone knows his next of kin or any close friends and family, please contact the Bristol coroner. If anyone knows anything about a funeral or wake, please post it here so people can pay their respects. Really we should all get together and have a big street party in Pete's honour. He was a really good guy.

I went to lay some flowers in front of his house earlier and his whole end of the street was clear of cars- no doubt that would have brought a smile to his face....

Rest in peace old friend.

Josh

Pete Fryer, of CREATE, has this to say

I was very sorry to hear the sad news that Pete Taylor had passed away over the weekend

I worked with Pete Taylor over the last ten years on campaigns to promote responsible motoring such as the 'Switch off' and 'thank you for not driving' campaigns. Pete was very active as a deep green in earlier years until asthma got the better of him. He was responsible for introducing recycling at the Glastonbury Festival and planted many thousands of native trees during the 90's. He was awarded the Lord Mayors Medal for his environmental activism in these fields and that of promoting cycling.

Peter didn't just talk green he lived green. It would be hard to find anyone in Bristol with a smaller carbon footprint (and lower energy bills) than Pete and many of us will miss his generosity of spirit and generosity of produce from his allotment - a real love of his life.

Pete made sure that bureaucrats such as myself kept our promises and kept moving in the right direction even if we couldnt move with quite the urgency or speed Pete felt was necessary to save the planet. He produced many ideas and challenged both officers and councillors on a regular basis.

I will miss him as an activist and as a friend.

Pete Fryer

Peter Robert Fryer
Environment Manager
CREATE

I met Pete in the railway path and greenbank campaigns, where his willingness to get out on the path and corner people to get them to sign petitions and come round to our way of thinking was invaluable. In this time of networking, facebook groups, twitter and the like, there is still no substitute for people who will go out there and argue their cause in the street, who will put in the hours needed to get things done. Pete was such a person, and without him. the city is poorer.

Like Josh says, time for a party.

Troy Atkinson memorial walk, 7pm May 5

At 7pm tonight (May 5), there's a memorial walk from where Troy Atkinson was killed last tuesday, at exactly the same time.

The friends and family are walking down to Hartcliffe, and everyone is donating £5 to help cover funeral costs.

At the Lower Castle Street memorial, there's more flowers, more graffiti remembering him, more photographs from family and friends.

There's also a set of markings showing that the car driver came from Penn street. Which raises the question: why are vehicles allowed down here, and why do they have the right of way over all the pedestrian crossings? If the route was made bus-taxi-bike only, except for a delivery period in the mornings -and every crossing was uprated to a zebra "vehicles come second" crossing, there'd be no need to sprint across all these crossings as cars try to force their way through. There's also a lot of disabled parking along Penn Street, but we could retain access there, or improve/expand the disabled parking in the Cabot Circus car park, making it the location of choice for disabled shoppers to stop. That disabled parking provides a lot of temptation to everyone else -especially taxis- to come down here.


7pm, tonight, Cabot Circus to Hartcliffe. That's the "Troy Atkinson" junction, Cabot Circus, to give it its new name -one by which he can be remembered.

Eastfield Road: view from the hill

Eastfield road isn't much fun by bike; there's a steep hill by Westbury that is the most hazardous: narrow pavement, downhill cars and bikes at speed, uphill cars trying to accelerate out of the Westbury congestion. This would seem the obvious place for a crash.
When we heard about the tragedy in Westbury, we assumed that is where it was. But it isn't, it's further back, towards the Southmead/Henleaze mini roundabout. This isn't a fun stretch to ride down, as cars are often impatient, it's hazardous (bends and side roads), yet sufficiently wide that can't easily control the cars behind you by occupying the lane. Even if you are in the middle of the lane they will go past you, upset, causing problems for you on the downhill when you need to get past them.

Here's the view from the pavement looking towards Henleaze and Horfield -where the car came from. Despite stories in the press saying the car "lost control", it looks from this angle that the car driver failed to turn the car into the bend, but instead skidded in a straight line onto the pavement and the adults and children on it.


Google streetview gives you shows what it is like to approach from from the Horfield/Henleaze mini roundabout.

View Larger Map

There's a a traffic light protected pedestrian crossing (sign of problems in the past?) and then a straight stretch with a bit of a rise.

If you follow the road along, you come over the hill, and reach a bend. That is where the crash happened.

While not a police "traffic forensics" expert, they have marked the road up with the same awful painted annotations that Cabot Circus now has -a history of someone's death, painted on the road and pavement. Those markings seem to indicate that the car didn't try turning either before or after it was skidding -it just went straight onto the pavement, going fast enough that the brakes couldn't stop them in time.

If the driver hadn't put the brakes on and skidded, if they had instead followed the turn of the road, then Sam Riddalls's parents, friends and family wouldn't be mourning his loss. So what happened, where did things go wrong?

We aren't skilled to judge, but it certainly appears that speed was be a significant factor in the incident. The skid marks are long, and you wouldn't end up having to hit the brakes and go up on the pavement unless you were going so fast down that road that the bend came up unexpectedly, you couldn't steer the car round it, and using the brakes was the only option that sprung to mind.

As we said at the beginning this doesn't look like a car "lost control", as the local paper is describing it, any more than it would have picked up excessive speed by "accident". This is a car whose driver chose to drive too fast for a city, way too fast, and as a consequence, killed a child.

The dark pavements of Westbury on Trym

For the second time in a week, we find ourselves visiting a roadside memorial to a pedestrian killed by a car. Last time, Troy Atkinson, age 15, killed at Cabot Circus. Now, Sam Riddall, 11, killed on the pavements of Westbury on Trym.

Everyone should go and see both their memorials, to spend a moment watching the traffic carrying on, while on the ground, yellow paint show the police marking up what they saw on the ground, as they try and determine what happened.

Here, the car slid down the pavement, after having clipped the wall. If cars were parked on the road, as it sounds like some were, then there would have been nowhere for anyone to run to, no way to escape, in the little time they had.

Further up the hill, you can see where the car mounted the pavement. You also get a hint of the energy involved in the collision -hitting a kerb like this could have destroyed the wheels, yet the car kept going.

Everyone knows that you can estimate vehicle speed from skid mark length; a full document on the topic gives the specifics. To really know, you need to conduct experiments with a similar car, and know the condition of the brakes. What is clear is that the car did skid a long way.

At the top of the hill, the police are asking for help: 0845 456 7000 is the number. Someone out there killed a schoolboy on Friday, and is now hiding.

No photos of the flowers and their messages -go and see them yourselves. And the ones in Cabot Circus. Last week was an awful week for the city -the loss of its children must not be forgotten.

11 year boy old killed by a car in Westbury on Trym

The police are reporting that an 11 year old boy was killed on Friday evening when a car went up onto the pavement in Westbury on Trym and hit a group of kids -the (female) car driver then ran off.

This is a really bad week on Bristol's roads, with two children, one 15, one 11 killed by hit and run drivers, as well as someone on a bike injured by another hit-and-run incident. A trend perhaps? It's too early to say. What is clear is that there is a single unified cause: a car. And there seems to be a unified decision by the drivers that the best thing to do is run off. Perhaps the drivers felt they could get away with it, or maybe there was enough alcohol in their blood that they didn't want a breath or blood test at the scene of the accident. Certainly when someone tried to run off from a car crash we were reporting on, alcohol was probably a cause of both the crash and them trying to run.

Everyone in the cycling/walking/street activist community will be pretty unhappy about this -as will, presumably, be the police and other emergency services. Every death of a pedestrian or a cyclist represents a failure of everyone's efforts. Yet what can you do if some people in the city are going to drive round in big metal boxes?

1. It would be useful to know if (enforced) 20 mph speed limits would have saved lives. That would make for a better argument to have wide-area 20 mph zones, instead of leaving the main roads at 30. In particular, would Eastfield Road -the narrow hilly route between Westbury and Horfield, have counted as a main road?
   
2. The Evening Post needs to keep an eye on the comment sections of any article involving cars crashing with bikes or pedestrians. The paper has put a lot of effort into pushing a bikes-are-the-enemy theme, and whenever something like this happens, the comments by some of the readers are appalling. They do eventually delete some of the comments, but by the time they do it's much later, when the damage has been done.
   
3. In fact, we wonder if maybe it is time for the E.P to back from its bikes-are-the-enemy theme, as it doesn't appear to be true. The vehicle that kills people on pavements is called a motor car.
   
4. When we look at the traffic logs of the web site, news of someone being killed on our streets brings a lot of traffic to this site. We'd rather that people didn't get killed out there; so that people didn't have to go to the web to get news about another tragedy. That web traffic is something to mourn.
   
5. There's a good case for setting up a serious web site alongside this one. It's hard to mix satire that argues in favour of helmets and high-viz clothes for pedestrians with reporting the death of people walking down the pavement. Something that carry's the city's cycling news and events and not much else. Volunteers to help with this would be welcome.
   

This is the second time this week we've had to express our deepest sadness and condolencies to the parents, friends and family, yet we know that nothing we can say will ever take the pain away, especially for the parents. When we said on Wednesday that it was a dark day for Bristol, we didn't know how bad the week was going to turn out. It has been a dark week.

All scheduled postings that were indended to be entertaining have been postponed for a week. There's nothing funny to say.

Bristol Tree Festival - Today, May 2

Today, then, is the day of the tree festival itself.

After swinging through Cotham Park, the tree turns onto the A38, the ancient route between Somerset and Birmingham, before finishing on Horfield Common

The organisers say

on Horfield Common, at the end of his journey, Jack must die, to release the Spirit of Summer. Come and witness this spectacle, and take away a few leaves and a little of Bristol's history and culture.

We aren't sure whether that event involves burning a virgin alive, but since the little one seemed overexcited about fillowing the procession in his scooter, it was a concern last time it was encountered. Hence the finale was avoided. Maybe this year...

Well, there goes Chrysler

I owned a Dodge minivan for a year. That was in the US, at a time when fuel was $1.60/U.S. Gallon, about 30p/Litre, so with a vehicle that did 27 mpg long-haul, was much cheaper than running a small car was or is in the UK.

It was convenient for those long journeys. Automatic 4 speed engine, cruise control, oodles of luggage room in the vast back. And in a country with big drive-in/reverse-out parking bays everywhere, the fact there was no rear window visibility was fairly unimportant.

However, I don't miss it, and I am not surprised by Chrysler's departure.

• It was a barge, refused to corner, and had a stopping distance measured in kilometres. Why? Too much metal.
• It was mindnumbingly cheesy inside. Want pockets in the door to keep things? That would be in the premium model. For something so big, it was very inefficient in its space usage. Compare with EU vehicles like the Renault Megane, that has pockets in its pockets.
• Depreciated really badly over that year. Even though it was cheap to buy second hand, it was hard to sell later on, which made the cost of ownership pretty harsh.
  

One of the weird things about it was that one of its "features" was, apparently, the ability to detect you'd been driving for 10 minutes with the indicator on, and apparently the car would beep loudly to tell you this. This says a lot about their target market: people who drive round with the indicator on.

Even in the US, this vehicle sucked. Which is why Chrysler have filed for Chapter 11 Bankrupcy today. Their target market abandoned the minivan the myth of the SUV, the belief that you were safer in a prone-to-flipping 4x4 truck-like monster, and then, come the 2007-2008 oil and financial problems, stopped buying cars altogether. Oops.

Some people think this site is anti-car, and that we don't like car drivers. That's up to the individual contributors,. When I see someone driving a Dodge/Chrysler minivan round Bristol, I don't just think "oh look, these people are bravely trying to fit a vehicle designed for US suburbs around a city and streets that is way out of its design specification." No, I feel sorry for them. Because they have to drive round in a Dodge Caravan.

[Photo: Hell's Canyon, between Oregon and Idaho]

Billboard Campaign

We have teamed up with central government to produce this new advertising campaign for the Bristol Traffic web site, one that makes it clear that anyone walking or cycling is a potential subversive who should be reported to the police.

Expect to see this being rolled out across the city centre soon. First location -the bottom of Arley Hill.

[credit to this application]

Bristol Walk like a Tree day - May 2

An early warning that Saturday May 2 is the Annual "walk like a tree" festival, which is really some form of pub crawl, just one with the participants dressed as vegetation.

It starts at the Arnolfini, goes up St Michael's Hill, pops into the Highbury Vaults pub then drops to Kingsdown, that area we've long suspected has practised pagan rituals on the solstices. A mayday event probably ends with something dark.

Bike parking for St Michael's Hill Somerfield

Somerfield supermarket, at the top of St Michael's Hill, is the primary place to buy food to take home. They have a good discount beer collection, and reasonable petit-pain-au-chocolat. No bike parking though. There is car parking, but as we have seen before, it overflows.

Two racks are planned for Somerfield, which, if placed on this build out would be ideal for bike parking that does not get in the way of pedestrians. There is one bike locked to a lamp-post here already

Only, are two racks enough?

If a cycle city is to succeed, more people will come home from work or college by bike, hence more bike parking. A supermarket with no bike parking is an ideal place to add some. How many is appropriate?

These photos were taken on April 29, 18:20. This is the peak way-home-from-work-or-school shopping rush, when many city supermarkets run out of hand baskets, and you have to carry your 6 bottles of UK-manufactured-Kronenbourg-1664 to the checkout in one hand, the box of coco pops in the other.

There is one bike locked to a sign, three bikes to the fire exit from the flats -the final one will block the exit, so hopefully there won't be a fire in the next fifteen minutes.

Across the road, two more chained to a roadsign

And two more on another road sign. Ten bikes! A success for cycling city.

These figures imply you need five racks, even for today's workload. For a doubling in cycling: ten racks. Where to put them? How about they go where cars, like the ones above X81FBN and R738ZNA, park on double yellow lines?

St Michael's Hill Cafe Gusto bike park

Cafe Gusto is actually the cafe in the distance, but as it is the most popular cafe on this stretch (free chocolate croissant with every coffee, and free wifi), this is the "cafe gusto stretch". It is where students come to eat at lunchtime -peak times for these cafes is 12-2 Monday to Friday.

We've seen this bus stop before -as short-stay parking.

You could get two bike racks in here, but the pedestrians and bus passengers may be unhappy.

There's also plenty of room round the corner in Paul street.

This pavement gets used as paveparking by minicabs and others (locals?). But not pedestrians. If a bike rack could go up here in a way that kept it visible to people in nearby cafes (theft protection) but not in the main route to the university, it would be handy.