South Gloucestershire bollards: who are the subversives?

Yesterday, we showed photographs of militant cyclists taping reflective strips to camouflaged bollards by the MOD Abbeywood site. Today we see some more photographs, showing hi-viz tape going up too!

Like we said, we don't suspect anyone associated with the Bristol Cycling Campaign to have done this, as S Gloucs council has a process for dealing with those people:

1. There is a monthly cycling forum, to which the activist cycle and the area's cycling advocate drives.
2. The cycling campaigners complain while the council staff nod and draw doodles on their notepads.
3. The campaigners' complaints get ignored.
4. The council staff drive home to their nice houses, laughing.
5. The cyclists pedal home in the rain, wondering what went wrong.

No, this was done by criminals out there, acting without control, without checks and balances, without morals. 

Who could it be?

According to the anonymous supplier of the photographs it was the People's Cycling Front of South Gloucestershire

They are not to be confused with the South Gloucester Popular Cycling Front, who was shopping at the Sainsbury's superstore nearby at the time.

We are disappointed that such clearly dangerous people could get close to an MoD site without being arrested.

Have any other subversives been taking to the street in our fair city, harassing motorists, taxi and lorry drivers on their important missions, parents trying to get their children to school by car safely, street designers trying to improve the streets for all these people? Reporting of such outrages to the Bristol Traffic site are welcome, so we can document the fall of our city into lawlessness.

Criminal Attacks on the Abbeywood Bollards!

We've been watching the Egypt uprising in fear. Pedestrians, taking over the flyovers, pushing vans and arguing with tanks. They do not know their place.

We've also been reading Cities and Insurrections, which covers the problem of how to design cities to prevent popular uprisings in them from working. You want distribution and better routes for police/army control than for the troublemakers. That's why we recognise that the goal for Northern Ireland's ongoing work to force cyclists to wear helmets isn't for safety, it's to stop the subversives being so mobile. NI has always been the cutting edge of UK policing, so progress here cheers up.

It's also why we understand the strategic goal of the North Fringe: a place so anti-walking and anti-cycling that no ukcuts projectors will be out hassling the shops here, or protesting anything. But to make sure, we have to discourage those people who do walk and cycle round here -for the safety of the state.

Which is why we were horrified when some anonymous person emailed us these shocking photographs of militant cyclists adding their own reflective and hi-viz markings to the new bollards at the MOD abbeywood site, the ones that achieved national fame after someone cycled into them in the snow.

Now on a flash photo, you can see that it (and the newly added blue bicycle marking) is visible. One query: why doesn't that sign properly say bicycles keep left?

Looking the other way, you can see at least a bicycle going up and down has been painted on one side of the pavement, and it is segregated.

And turning 180 degrees we can see how much less visible the old bollards were.

What to say? Just because you don't think the bollards are safe, doesn't mean people should take actions in to your own hands like this.

Since the crash and the negative publicity, S Gloucs council have put the blue signs on. Now if anyone crashes in to it it's their own fault for being in the wrong part of the path, going to fast, or not paying attention. 

Yet as these photographs show, some people, even up in the North Fringe -our part of the city, as you get a hint of from the vast MoD car park to the side of the photos- there are troublemakers out there trying to make cycle city facilities somewhere where cyclists actually welcome.

We suspect the Cycle Embassy of Great Britain, or one of their minions.

Who else would threaten the safety of South Gloucester and Filton Town councils, and hence the whole country?

Abbeywood: West Side Bollard Run

We sent our expendable cyclist up to Abbeywood again to see the other side of the MoD site/car park. Sadly, our fellow traveller, Kayla Maratty, would have been on her four week holiday, so if she's a UWE student, she wouldn't have got a chance to run this cyclist over.



Note how the cyclist swerves out of the cycle side before the first corner. After we took them into the MoD site where we got them to confess to being an enemy of the economy, we asked them about this. Apparently going round a blind corner on the wrong side of the path is stupid. Maybe, but S Gloucs has put the signs up, so follow it.

Further on, you can see the new bollards. Some now have coloured tape on, some reflectors. But it's moot. Their existence is now known and widely publicised. Nobody else is going to run into them, even in snow -unless the council moves them or adds some more -perhaps on that first corner?

Knowing of the existence of the feature, does our test subject obey the signs? Follow the approved lanes? No they don't! Instead they treat it as some kind of opportunity to go through them as if they were some kind of obstacle course, "practising singletrack manoeuvres at near-race-speed", they said, whatever that means. Such actions were wrong before the bollards went up, now that bollards are in, it should be a crime. And to think that the S Gloucs bollards actually encourage such action -that simply appals us.

Notice how we say S Gloucs bollards. We thought initially that these were MoD features, it being Ministry of Defence land and all (which is why cycle campaigner Terry Miller got detained by their site police for behaving suspiciously and taking photographs here last week). Yet as the video shows, the signs and bollards go on out of the site, right up to the A4174 Ring Road, one of the two proposed Ring Roads we actually got part of. That means it came from the council, presumably out of their cycling budget.

This is what introduces such a moral dilemma for us. It makes cyclists feel less welcome -good, and it doesn't take away any driving options -great. But is it enough? Apart from that one person who crashed into one, how many cyclists are going to give up their commute from this feature? And it stops us driving down the bike path here.

This is an ongoing topic and we will cover it more. Our experiment to see if anyone in S Gloucs is capable of reacting to reports of vehicles parked on the bike path is going well, so far, no reaction from anyone. But more research is needed.

Abbey Wood Bike/pedestrian path changes

We've sent the team to the North Fringe for a few days, to see what the fuss is about regarding Abbeywood and Bollards. In order to cover this accurately, we have had to recruit someone on a bicycle, for which we apologise. If it makes the audience feel better, they think they are being paid to be a courier for paperwork. Normally we just pay them to carry old phone books around, as it slows them down, and about once a week they have to deliver high-strength home-grown Montpelier herbs, an action which would get them put away for 20-25 years if they were caught with them, a thought which always cheers us up when we send them out.


Returning to Abbeywood, some people may recall the fuss made last year when someone cycled into a bollard that S Gloucester council stuck in. These are white bollards with a white stripe, no hi-viz markings, and on a path that is only intermittently illuminated. Well, yes, a crash was inevitable. Yet we agree with some the comments made in the Evening Post and Daily Mail -while we sympathetic to the lecturer's injuries, they have only themselves to blame for being on a bicycle.

We actually saw some of the bollards going in, but didn't think it was interesting enough to cover. Now that we see it is, we can go through the back records and find the video.



Now that the bollards are here on the eastern side of the MoD land, we are disappointed to see that it does so little to discourage cycling. Instead our courier can travel down the bike path at speed, slow down for the road, where apparently off camera someone driving a car actually gives way to the bicycle, hinting this green paint is giving some mistaken impression about rights of way to MoD staff.



Last year, this path had a proper anti-bicycle gate, which the subversives used to ignore by going through the vegetation, forcing the MoD deployment of an anti-vegetation-cycling feature, before they went and removed it, eventually adding this new bollard.

The bollard does not stop people cycling to the North Fringe. The only way to prevent that would be to improve A4174 traffic by widening it and banning bicycles from the ring road, while downgrading any adjacent bike paths. We may have some good news there, in a week or two.

For now, this side of Abbey Wood does little to discourage cycling. We shall visit the other side, which was where the crash took place to see if it is any better.

Keeping the Abbey Wood shared use paths in good condition

Drainage Services are busy up by the MOD Abbey Wood area in the North Fringe, keeping the drainage in a bit of S. Gloucs well drained.

Some people might think that it is somewhat antisocial blocking an entire bike/foot path when the dual carriageway alongside has almost no traffic, at least not until the tailspin housing estate sells some more houses.

But think about it. Badly drained bike paths force cyclists into the road, where they could interfere with us.

Furthermore, this particular path enables a combined bicycle and supermarket journey, in which the shopper cycles to the A4174 Sainsbury's and pushes both the bicycle and the shopping trolley home. This is not possible on on-road, vehicular cycling routes. These people should be grateful for getting such an open bit of pavement to share with pedestrians, even if we hate them on the other pavements.

MoD Abbeywood cycle path access issues

Remember how only a few weeks ago we wanted to turn the back bike path to abbeywood into a proper road. There may be some good news there.

First, note how the bike barriers are down.

The fence to stop cyclists dodging the barriers now looks lonely, the path put in by people dodging the fence may even recover.

The cyclists may be happy, but not all. Not Clive, whose email we picked up.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Clive
Date: Wed, Jun 16, 2010 at 10:39 PM

Car access on MOD Abbey Wood Cycle path


I was amazed to see a car coming down the MOD Abbey Wood Cycle path (between the gated end of the lockleaze rugby grounds and the MOD gatehouse.


The Driver, Mr Blair, was quite upset that cyclists were impeding his 'Right of Way'.
Mr. Blair apparently lives in the house at the top of the path and claims that the route past the MOD has been 'his' right-of-way for 300 years .


When I arrived at the scene, he was arguing with a student who he claimed was blocking his way. During his 'discourse', he caught a girl with his car door as she tried to get past.
Not a happy chappie.


Now, he may indeed have some access right to his property via the cycle path ( I don't know, only S. Gloucester Cncl. can answer that) but does this mean he has vehicular access via this route?


If he does, than S. Gloucester should signpost the track to warn cyclists and pedestrians that it is a shared thoroughfare, as most people will not expect to find cars on the path.
(travelling at the national speed limit)


How do I go about progressing this (from a safety perspective) to find out if Mr Blair is allowed to drive his car through this section of the cycle path, and if so, ensuring cyclists and pedestrians are aware of the danger.

This is interesting. It's why we put the maps up last week. First, let's assume that the Mr Blair is the person by the rugby grounds who has an interested in old vehicles, many of which without tax or insurance. Driving them on private roads is the only thing he can do.

The MoD roads on Abbey Wood are private, so if he has a historic right of way to get there then yes, he can drive down the bike path. That way he can drive his old cars without all the pesky government regulation, health and safety nonsense about seat belts and brakes working. Road tax, that stuff.

One funny thing though, which the maps raise. Does the right of way extend to access to the MoD roads, or does it go to the woods and hence to the HP site, which has been fenced off since the mid 1980s? Is his claim for 300 years access is right, by our estimate this would put them within 50 years of end of the English civil war, some time before the Jacobite rising in Scotland, and therefore possibly predate Britain coming into existence.  As ancient as nine-tree hill.

If there really is car access on this path and to the MoD roads, then it shouldn't just be a luxury for one person. No, it should be something we can all enjoy: a new road between the A4174 Ring Road and Lockleaze, an alternative to the always congested, speed-camera enabled Filton Avenue.

More investigations -and maybe some experiments- are needed.

Before the war on motorists began: Splatts Abbey Wood

This is a before and after map series, full details of why to crop up later in the week.

First, the North Fringe, 1987. Congestion on the A4174, running through the middle of the photo: minimal. The roundabout centres on gridref ST6135787, apparently with trees on it. To south, a large blank space -the remains of some quarry or something. Crossing it, three power lines, one phone line, and a footpath from the sports grounds in the left side to some fields just E. of Splatts Abbey Wood, then roughly north. All of the area was under the control of Avon County Council; there are still some signs up in the area if you know where to look. In the S.E corner, just S. of Bonnington Walk, Sta (dis) remembers the existence of some station? Lockleaze Station? (no: Horfield Railway Station)

What is clear is this: No congestion on the ring road. No cycle lanes from the sports grounds to the ring road. Less traffic lights in the city. Not a coincidence.

Now, map two, printed in 1997, in the time the socialists were in power, and things were bleak.

The A4174 roundabout has moved to ST61607880, though not with the trees. South of it, the wasteland for motorbikers is now MoD abbey wood, with a moat on the NE side to eliminate the risk of anyone driving a truck full of explosives in, parking to the east and south-west and positioned to reduce the damage caused by anyone getting a car/truck full of explosives in there and blowing it up. Although the NI peace process was making progress, the tendency of the Provisional IRA to mark some kind of stalemate by blowing up prestigious targets on the mainland meant that these things were considered important. The disused station has been supplemented by the Abbey Wood railway station, which apparently has direct connections with Wales. The former Filton Junction station, north of the A4174, is now marked as Sta (dis) to indicate its new state.

South of the MoD facility, just north of where the Tailspin housing estate is still being built, a bike path. And what else has changed? Congestion. Is it any coincidence that there are traffic jams on the A4174 now that a bike path connects Lockleaze with the ring road, and that the new roundabout and the one by the M32 have traffic lights? We think not.

The final item of this note is the rights of way, the footpaths. These two maps imply that there was never any right to cycle through the rugby grounds, even the footpath doesn't go direct from Bonnington walk, but instead via Landseer Avenue. And here's the best bit: the right of way finishes by going through the MoD moat, through some of the building, and out the other side. We think pedestrians wanting to walk from Lockleaze to Sainsbury's should be made to walk this route, as it will reduce the number of them pressing the cross button on the pelican lights at the ring road.

Abbeywood Week: Mod Abbey Wood Bicycle Access

Someone warned us about changes at Abbey Wood, with the famous "gated" bike path, the one where whoever designed the bike path wasn't in touch with whoever was designing the gates designed -during the 1990s- to stop an IRA-class of attack. The gate would prevent militant cyclists from attacking the car park, and while this may seem unlikely, it is folklore that on the day Michael Portillo and the Queen opened the facility, there was in fact a cycle police unit spotted fixing their puncture on this very bit of tarmac.

We drove over there and yes, someone had closed the gate, so pedestrian and bicycle access was now possible. This worried us, as it could imply that S. Gloucs cycling city money was actually being wasted on encouraging cycling, rather than forcing them out of our way on convenient rat runs.

We waited for a cyclist to come by, and rather adopt than our usual technique of setting a pitbull on them while shouting "It's OK, he just gets a bit scared by bicycles!" as our pet dog, Roadkill, savaged their lycra-clad legs, this time we filmed the tax dodger who could well be the first person ever to make use of this bike lane. That is, if you consider cyclists to be people.

Sadly for this particular government-funded tax dodger, because the gate was closed, he was unable to enter the Abbey Wood MoD facility, that being his place of employment. We left him there -pleased that by closing the access route to work, the cycle lane was still without any value whatsoever.

Since this path opening event on April 8, the gate has been reopened and the path has returned to its normal state. You cannot walk or cycle out of it, but if you could, you could get into work.

Abbeywood Week: Filton Abbey Wood station

While visiting the abbeywood area (we drove, obviously), it seemed appropriate to check out the Abbey Wood station. We had heard of this, MoD backed station put in for commuters, offers fast travel from Wales and templemeads. Fortunately, no functional connectivity from the Severn Beach line, as that would actually make it possible for commuters in that part of the city to get in by train rather than by car -so threaten the entire economy of the city.

There are some signs of it being used, and that bicycles are a problem. All along the signs up to the station: no bicycles, and cycles dismount.

Coming down the hill, in the other direction, the same signs, in case bicycles come from that direction.

what kind of criminals do people here fear?

Ones who ignore police warning signs, although the fact the 1835 law they cite is about pavements beside public roads, doesn't cover footpaths, railway bridges and probably not even the bit of railway car park by the sign may be one cause.

There are also cycles dismount signs on the footpath signs, again, presumably disregarded.. We were not aware that cycles on pavements were such a threat to society in this corner of the Abbey Wood sprawl, but clearly it is. 

After a bit of research, we identified a potential cause. If you look at the abbey wood area on the council-supplied map (large PDF file), it's clear all the footpaths and footbridges are marked as green, places bicycles are welcome. There is a small note "Bridge please walk", but it doesn't say how far, and it doesn't cover the footpath with the cycles dismount sign.

The fact that the councils are giving away maps encouraging cycling is leading to this problem of bicycles on pavements, one the police are left to deal with.

All money enforcing cyclists dismount signs should come from the cycling city budget!

Fixing the MOD roundabout traffic jam problem

We have a solution for the MOD traffic jam problem: turn the bike path between Lockleaze and abbey wood into another road, one that is one-way and whose direction changes morning and evening. Morning: vehicles heading to the MOD, evening, cars heading to the city.

Right now it is wasted on students and here someone walking a bike full of shopping from Sainsburys. Students are fit and cycle up the hill instead, shoppers can get their stuff delivered by truck.

Look at it, its not a path that's going to be defended by the cyclists; no family recreation route that is loved by anyone on the city. Just MOD on one side, and an apparently abandoned Marketing Suite for the Tailspin housing estate on the other.

No, the best use for this is car traffic.

Come on WoEP, stop faffing around with the Railway Path -you've lost that battle, move on! Fix the real problem, which is driving to and from the North Fringe when the Ring Road is blocked! Use this bike lane, one that nobody knows about or loves. Even the eight cyclists who use it every day will be glad to see the back of it.

Ring Road problems

Anyone who says that a southern ring road will solve traffic problems never goes to the Northern half of the A4174 on a weekday.

This is the MOD car park approach to the A4174, not even the RR proper, yet the road is blocked by cars

Here they are stuck, waiting to get onto the ring road. What is wrong? Don't know. When will it be fixed? Don't know. The BMW to the far right of the pic knows a sneaky solution, an "exit strategy" that works. Too bad the MOD don't have viable exit strategies for other problems, like wars in Afghanistan.

Looking north to the roundabout you can see the BMW way ahead in the left lane. Instead of trying to turn right at the car park exit roundabout, it went left as far as the abbey wood nursery, did a U-turn there where the lane separation goes away, and snuck up the left hand lane for vehicles heading west. The congestion is mostly for vehicles heading east towards the M32.

Whatever happened, it spreads. Here is Muller Road, fifteen minutes later. Same thing: no movement of motors towards the M32.

South Gloucs. council needs to recognise the problem and widen the A4174, while Bristol Council needs to listen to us, and widen Muller Road. Cut down the trees, take away the unused pavement. Job done.

Trouble at the MOD Abbey Wood parking facility

We are busy documenting the theft of a parking option from South Gloucester. First the MOD ticket people they feel were interfering with bicycle crossings. Now someone else is putting a note into all the cars claiming the road is private.

We would kindly ask you NOT to park on this PRIVATE road
With effect from 22nd February 2010 any unauthorised vehicles will be
immobilised or removed at a cost to the owner
We thank you for your co-operation
MASS Ltd.
0117 902 3339

Question is, why persecute the cars? This dual lane leads to the HP site which is nowhere near as busy as it was before, and to a housing project on the edge of survival -but one on which traffic problems on this slip road aren't going to be the cause of people opting not to buy a house here.

The only conflict here is bicycles and car owners walking to work on the bike/pedestrian pavement. We propose a speed limit on the bicycles or banning them from the area.

Anyway, Feb 22 is today, we shall watch what happens.

MOD Persecution at Abbey Wood

The Ministry of Defence is cramming an extra four thousand people on its site at Abbey Wood (up from 6,000 to 10,000) by building a new office block and creating new 'Flexible Workspaces' (that's hot-desking to you and me), as a consequence of this and their policy of encouraging people to drive to work by paying them a handsome mileage allowance, the MoDs two huge car parks now don't have capacity to accomodate all those who want to drive. This means roads and car parks in the vicinity have now become full with MoD parking, including on the newly built access road to the Hewlett Packard site - since they flogged their entrance to UWE.

The owner of this Citroen Saxo, W797OJH thought they'd found a nice free car parking space for the day and parked across the dropped kerb blocking the shared use cycle and footpath, but what's this? The Ministry of Defence Police have issued them with a ticket! What are the roads for if they are not for parking on? Why can't cyclists get off and walk around cars parked in their way?

If there is one redeeming feature, the MOD parking tickets -which may not be legal on this bit of road- also have space for "cycle frame no". This makes up hope that if more than four people cycle into the MOD facility, and park somewhere other than their two sheffield stands, those cyclists will also be fined.

MOD Abbey Wood Alternative Transport

Someone draws our attention to the two sheffield racks for cyclists on the MOD Car Park, some distance away from the entrance to the offices themselves.

For some reason, these bike racks are never used. That is despite the excellent CCTV coverage of the area. This so called alternative-transport parking area is removing the option of secure car parking from one MOD staffer.

We are reliably informed by way of FOI requests, that whenever you are relocated by the MOD, if you choose not to move, you can receive a relocation allowance of up to £8000/year to cover the cost of driving in. You don't merit this allowance if you car share, or if you cycle. This means these two bike racks are not merely inconveniencing an important commuter, if they force them to not drive to the site, they are denying this person many thousands of pounds of well-deserved Money.

Abbey Wood MOD site parking

10:00 on a weekday morning and the MOD Abbey Wood car parks are full. Really full not as in "I can create a space at the end of a row" but full as in "site security have blocked the entrance and are standing outside, possibly armed."

The non-motoring options to getting to the site are pretty limited

• firstbus buses 
• U1-U5 to UWE and then a walk
• Train to parkway and then a walk
• Train to abbey wood and then a walk
• Cycle along segregated paths

These might seem a lot, but they all involve effort, and they don't substitute for the presence of the A4174 ring road, the A38, which is dualled from the M4/M5 interchange all the way down to the ring road, and the M32 a short distance away. S Gloucs commuting is optimised for cars. Except the haven't provided enough parking, not since the MOD expanded their staff here from January 2010.

Fortunately, there is a bit of space round the corner. Up until December, this was an empty dual lane road leading to the ill-fated "tailspin housing estate", housing for the 21st century, and what's left of HP. Now it has found a new use. Overflow MOD parking.

For those people cycling to HP, this is beneficial as it turns the slow lane into a bike-only lane. Well, until the end of course when the cars turning left are now in the lane to your right.

For people trying to use the bike paths between abbey wood and UWE, not quite so good. The kerb dropoff they used to use is an invaluable parking space that saves the first person to grab it five minutes of walking. It is a premium location, and not double yellowed or anything to imply its use  for parking is somehow forbidden.

We are disappointed, therefore, to hear news that the S Gloucs. Parking Team/MOD police were on this road the very day these photos were taken, ticketing this Saab S904SLK and vehicles further up the hill, the ones parked on the roundabout. Do the parking officers not realise that once these commuters have driven into the area, there is nowhere else for them to go! They had no choice but to park here! They would have liked to use the MOD Abbey Wood Car Park B, but the traffic cones and enforcement staff forced them up this back road, adding time to the journey and now the risk of being ticketed. This is persecution of commuters in the cars-come-first part of the city.

Abbey Wood Cycle Facilities

Those subversives are at it again, complaining that the government, by not letting NHS or MOD staff get tax-relief on bicycles is not helping cycling. So what? When the government gives someone a thousand pound rebate when buying a new car if you hand in an old one, you are creating a new revenue stream: someone who pays VED and fuel taxes. That money comes back. But a tax return for bicycles? What is the ROI?

Closer to home, we do have evidence that the big MOD facility is very pro bike.

First, a big sign promising new cycle routing.

Second, the right of every driver -to park where you want -has been suspended. A sign warns you that unattended vehicles will trigger security alerts, and even vehicles with drivers in them get limited to 10 minutes -no-returns. This is stricter than at Bristol Airport.

For all four MOD cyclists there is something that all eight UWE cycle commuters can only dream of. Secure bicycle parking. A fence, two CCTV cameras, with the one on the right backed up by IR sensors. And security guards, all to look after those two sheffield stands.

There is even a bike path all the way into -and we do mean into- the entrance gate of this parking area.

All is well here, no changes needed. Move along now.

Green and Pleasant Land

Isn't Google Earth Wonderful?

Every day, snaps of pavement parking, stopping in yellow boxes, on yellow lines and other sundry demeanours are recorded by the satellites above us. And some of these images make their way onto Google. But the technology doesn't add to the Database, yet.

However, Google Earth can also help us understand many other things. Like just how much land we give to surface parking north of Bristol.

This is a random screen grab and a totally un-scientific Jackanory-style exercise in colouring the land available for the storage of cars. There's no funny punch-line to this post.

MOD Abbey Wood

It turns out that if one cycles up through MOD Abbey Wood before 0900 local time, there is in fact a very large traffic jam of cars waiting to get into the secure car parks.

Unlike Bristol City "secure" car parks like the infamous Trenchard Street car park, where you clearly have to have your name and date of birth tatooed onto your neck to get arrested for stealing from cars, this MOD facility is pretty locked down: guards, ID, and a covered bridge to get to the offices. The Abbey Wood setup is to avoid car/truck bombs: it was built in the early nineties when the Provisional IRA were regarded as a terrible threat, rather than a terrorist group to fondly reminisce about. All parking is a long way from the offices, instead it is close to the ill-fated Cheswick development.

Getting through the security checks to park is pretty slow, hence the tailback all the way to the A4174. Hence also the cars blocking the bike lane. Perhaps we should demand hatched yellow junction markers here, if only to make the junction more slippery and entertaining in ice.

Fringe Path

This is the bike path between the MOD Abbey Wood site on the West and the new "Lockleaze North" development to the east.

The MOD are about to add 600 new desks to the site, with an extra 2200 scheduled to arrive over the next four years. To mitigate congestion in the area, there is this bike lane, the Abbey Wood station -which has excellent connections to everywhere but suburban Bristol- and plans for nearby housing.

Here is the nearby housing; expansion of this site appears to have halted. If that is the case, these houses will be less part-of-a-village and more middle-of-nowhere. They will be handy for the MOD, UWE, HP, and other North Fringe employers.

To the south, there are the local rugby clubs and a nice route to town. This is the West side of the railway line, which Josh Hart is proposing to turn into the North Bristol Cycle Expressway. If this doesn't come about, if the cycle city plans do not lead to a step change in commuting, then the migration of 2800 MOD jobs to the area is going to add even more congestion to the A4174 ring road/M32 route -though not as much as if anyone were to extend the ring road round to the south.

MOD path improvements: MTB race training

Mountain Bikers will be pleased to see that the MOD have just added a race training obstacle to their course; a left hand bend where you arc through the vegetation before hitting the road at race speed:

Overtaking through vegetation is actually an effective race technique, though you have to have speed before committing as you shouldn't pedal during the operation -too much risk of plants getting into the drivetrain.

For those cyclists who do the Filton-city centre run on a regular basis, this is welcome. Currently only the Lockleaze to St-Werburgh's route has anything in terms of offroad entertainment; making the through-MOD route more technical would make it less dull. Some people may argue that in fact South Gloucestershire Council, as part of the Cycling City initiative, would actually want to make the route better to cycle, but they are missing the point. Bike lanes are not for bicycles. They are either to keep bikes out the way of cars -by putting them in the way of pedestrians- or they are part of section 106 inconveniences which companies have to pay for when they build big things.

(thanks to Shawn for this photo)