Monday 21 June 2010

Hire-it Bristol: what you what, where you want it, when you need it

It's tough being a builder. You get some random schedule made up by management, you are expected to keep to it. When you are on a project with unrealistic timescales, you need all the help you can get. This is where hire-it come in. Not only can you hire whatever equipment you need for your project, they deliver it before you are even on site.

Take this Monday morning, Cotham Hill, 08:20. It's the height of the school run. All those kids and parents who enjoyed the previous days "Bristol's Biggest Bike Ride" and have unrealistic expectations about the city streets will now be cycling to school, on Bike Week. As someone delivering equipment to a building site, you have an opportunity to kill -maybe even literally- two birds with one stone

By parking on the double-yellow-lined bike-only-contraflow of Cotham Hill, the lorry S876CHT manages to completely block the contraflow and obscure visibility for any of those families, without slowing uphill motor traffic, who can easily swerve into the advisory bike lane on that side of the road.

This will give the cycling families a harsh but honest reminder of how unforgivingly brutal the city streets are, and how anyone thinking they could get their kids to school safely on bicycles is living in some fantasy land which they need to grow up from and out of.

As for the builders, they get their equipment delivered, before they even turn up. Here we are, twenty minutes later, and the building staff haven't even turned up, so they can be eating their morning bacon butties safe in the knowledge that whatever deadlines are going to be missed, Hire-It of Bristol won't be to blame.
The best bit: they can be sure that their access to the building site won't be blocked by lorries -because it's already been and gone!

Hire-It (Plant and Tools Ltd) are based in Weston Supermare; for anyone wishing to take advantage of this service their phone number is 01934 418591.

1 comment:

Quercus said...

The first photo could lead to an interesting discussion about... paint. And other things.

Crossing the solid white line of a cycle lane is an offence, although most cycle lanes, even the red ones, have dashed white lines, which means they're only advisory.

But, as this has a solid white line, I reckon the council could save a bit of paint by doing away with the double yellows, here.

After all, only bicycles are allowed in this cycle lane, so I'm sure no-one would park there - would they?