Breaking news: congestion in the city centre

"Mike" sends us a note to point out that the Evening Post has finally stopped going on about football stadiums and cyclists in shopping streets in nailsea, and instead focused on the key problem of the city: congestion caused by hundreds of students.

As usual, we got our coverage in days earlier. If somebody is now surprised that it takes a while to get out of town by the M32 at 17:00, they don't know the secret routes through Broadmead or St Pauls. Tourists.

Bristol Indymedia has some more coverage. While we are against students, obviously, some of them may go on to earn enough to afford decent cars -but with these proposed funding changes, they may be forced to walk, cycle or use public transport for many years after graduating.

Slix Week 2

Documenting Stokes Croft is a full-time job.

Which is why we have a company car, just like anybody with a proper job. And we like to park-up on the pavement outside Bank to monitor the competition.

Not all cars are company cars, though.

There's no way to tell if T31DYA is parked in the cycle lane to grab a legitimate and corporately funded bite to eat in Slix (or Mrs Lovett's), or if it just belongs to a local from City Road picking up a few extra copies of the Big Issue to sell in Clifton.

The same is true for other cycle lane users, J44NUG, T364VCF and R790EDV.

One thing is certain: these cars are not there now, which at least proves that none of the drivers, even if they had their hair cut in 'Anointed Touch', ended up as take-aways from Mrs Lovett's. These drivers are safe.

Slix Week 1

We know that Stokes Croft is the centre of the universe.

And at the centre of Stokes Croft is that most favourite eatery, Slix.

Ignore the fact that it's next to Mrs Lovett's meat pie outlet, ignore any references to Sweeny Todd, or the fact that the Stoke's Croft is full of barber's shops. Probably more barbers than massage parlours. Even the venerable Croft features Harry Blades in the front room once a month at their heady "Barrymore's Pool Party" Nights - buzz cut for a tenner, anyone?

No, the interesting thing about this stretch of inner city Bristol is the way in which users of the Bike Lane here generally form a parked string of pearls on an otherwise unused piece of road.

Also interesting is the wide variety of patrons Slix appears to attract. So this week, in the spirit of a minor contribution to documenting the urban fabric of Bristol in 2010, we'll be celebrating a small selection of the trades that frequent the area.

Reminder :4x4 is useless on ice without studs or chains

Now that winter is here, can we drop a quick reminder to everyone driving around not to believe those "buy a 4x4 and cope with winter" adverts. Without studded tyres or chains, all four wheel drive will do is get you into trouble by hiding the problems on the uphill, only for them to surface on the descent. Here is some footage from Seattle last week:
Lots of these vehicles are 4WD, but once you've hit the brake pedal, that's useless. Winter tyres then studded tyres (legal in Washington State during winter) and chains are what you should be thinking of. Otherwise, stay at home. Don't walk down the sidewalks on roads like this either. If you have a 2WD car with traction control features, when that light starts flashing it means "chains on". No chains? Pull over, park on a road that isn't so steep, walk.

Not driving: parked

While a darkness falls over kingsdown as new yellow lines and pay-to-park machines pop up, Cliftonwood is holding out against the resident parking plans.

As they must! Were resident parking zones to pop up with their neat little white boxes showing where people can and cannot park, the middle of Ambra Vale would certainly not become a "designated" parking area, so vehicles like J6SRY would not be able to keep their car safe in the road, away from pedestrians who could damage it.

Selfish Parents

The same time we were getting a video of one driver, X108YDY, prepared to fight the anti-car city and use the secret rat-runs of Kingsdown, we were also getting some shocking footage of parents walking their kids to school.

Some were clearly going on to cycle to work, so instead of driving their children to school in comfort and safety, they were being forced to walk alongside a bicycle -while the parents push them without even a helmet on!

Others were actually encouraging their children to cycle to school.

Such actions not only endanger the children, they threaten the bodywork of those of us who drive the wrong way down one-way streets as an alternative to traffic lights. Can't these parents see that we are in a hurry!

Friday Quiz

Tesco's in Lower Redland Road re-opened a while ago now.

But it may just be causing a few local problems.

Clifton Problems

Over in Caledonia Mall, Clifton, someone selfishly attacked a car doing a bit of smart-car parking, by pulling up their wipers

Nearby, another car, KL51UUY manages to get by unscathed. We have mixed feelings here. Yes, smart-car parking finds a new space, but it makes double parking harder, and this road is ideal for a bit of double-work.

In Clifton Village proper, we can see the real problem: mud covered bicycles and their rides, taking up the pavement. by leaning them against dustbins.

Apparently the Ashton Court golf course cafe no longer has its "no muddy mountain bikers" sign up. We say every cafe in the city needs such a sign.

Police work over the University

For some reason we could not get our van down Whiteladies Road and over to the M32 this afternoon, so had to divert up the hill and hit the Highbury Vaults for a few beers before continuing. One thing we could see was this police helicopter circling the university quarter, which may be a sign of student unrest.

Students! Yes the government is going to massively increase fees for all future degree students, and take away the attendee allowance for anyone in higher education colleges. But the collapse of the economy implies the chances of you being in the payback part of the scheme is much less likely than you think! Furthermore, this government has abolished all funding for speed cameras! For that reason alone, we cannot come out and support you. That and the traffic jams you have created today!

Double Jeopardy 2

Back in June we covered the unfair persecution of a motorist, purely because they had the temerity to park across a dropped kerb.

It seems this sort of behaviour by uncaring, irresponsible council officials is still going on. Poor old YL04ZWW has been targeted in the same way, with a ticket on two successive days.

Our roving reporter did re-visit the site on the third day, but sadly the Mini had gone. We suspect the evil council took it to the car-pound to be crushed, but it could be (this is Redland after all) that some kindly neighbour contacted the owner, who then flew back from Barbados, and parked somewhere else.

We just hope it wasn't here, where unlucky R125SLB, has also been persecuted for nothing more than inconveniencing a few children on their way home from Redland Green school.

Wot no choc?

I love Christmas. Especially the oversized tins of chocolates that have become so symbolic of the festive season. As soon as Christmas season officially begins at the end of August I always make sure I buy at least three tins. One for the kids and family, one to keep on the passenger seat for those long winter commutes and one to store in the space where the spare tyre used to be in the boot.

So imagine my disappointment when I went to fill in a form to win some "quality streets" and found out it was actually just a devious plot to subvert people into fuelling the war on the motorist.

Save our rat runs. Ignore the following website.
http://www.quality-streets.org.uk/

Fake police warning notes?

We know it's illegal to pretend to be police, but is it illegal to put out fake police warning signs?

Look at this sign here in Cliftonwood, telling off a car for parking on the pavement.

Now look at the car. One wheel up. Over in Monty the fact this car was sticking so far out would merit attention -that it was stopping through traffic, not supposedly interfering with pedestrians. It has to be fake.

We aren't naming names, but we do note that John Grimshaw of Sustrans lives nearby...

Pavement blocking: does it help us motorists

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

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

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

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

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

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

Signs of Recovery

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

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

Waste of space

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

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

The blind bends of Clifton Vale

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

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



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

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

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

YA55VDY pulls out

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

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


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

St Pauls School Run problems.

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



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

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

KTT86LT takes the easy direction on Marlborough Hill

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

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

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



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

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

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

Problem Bus Stops

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

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

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

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