Gateway to Clifton: The Christchurch Mini-roundabout

Today we celebrate the Bristol School run week, now combined with the FirstBus failure week, with very unexciting documentary of the "not quite a roundabout" junction at the end of Suspension Bridge Road. If you are expecting to see anyone nearly being run over, people on phones, etc. Look elsewhere. Sorry. This video is here just to look at what transport issues Clifton has which the Clifton BID and resident groups never seem to cover.

Clifton likes to be known for its village, its Bridge and one or two of its pubs. The real Gateway to Clifton is something never discussed: a mini roundabout at the top of the village, just by the church.

To get an overview without going to Clifton, look at it in streetview and rehearse approaching the roundabout doing a right turn in a car from every road. Work out: when you should give way, when are you technically "in the roundabout and so should expect others to give way", and "is it actually possible to do all the turns legally". The answers being "no idea", "don't expect anyone to give way" and "no".

If you are cycling over the bridge, or driving near it, you have to negotiate it. It's disconcerting on a bike, especially with a child, as you cannot predict what anyone can do. It's a collection of random actions, vehicles coming in at speed, nobody knowing who to give way to —or even what side of the roundlet(*) to drive on. It's not great on a car either. There may actually be some protocol for the locals, but if so they it isn't widely known. We don't know it, certainly. What the locals and regulars do know is not to expect anyone to treat it as a roundabout —and never assume that you have the right of way.

You can see all of this in this unedited 9 minute view of the junction. Keep an eye out for the black Range Rover coming out from the left, and count how many times it does it.



This junction is fundamentally the wrong shape for a roundabout, it has two left turns, one hard, one soft, with the hard one's give way markings about 90 degrees to the roundabout itself. No visibility for anything coming off Suspension Bridge as to what vehicles coming from their right are doing —vehicles which don't often slow down, and hence won't see any cars coming from the left until they pull out. Two manoeuvres can only be executed by driving completely on the wrong side of the mini roundabout. There's one car coming the wrong up the one way street, though it does execute the junction safely. Lots of vehicles going through without pausing, including one of the cyclists coming off Clifton Down. And a couple of times cars on the roundabout have to give way to vehicles pulling on in front of them. Note the lack of tension though —regulars are forgiving of what
happens in a junction of such ambiguity.

Meanwhile that Range Rover coming off the left hand side does it five times in a row: our reporter got bored and went off while they were still doing it.

Before the video recording started the RR driver had stopped in the middle of a zebra crossing to let someone out —presumably they were now waiting for that person to return. But why were they driving round in circles given that with the RPZ roll out there's enough free parking, parking they'd have driven by? Unless they enjoy driving in circles and don't pay for diesel, the only other possibility is they had/planned to use up the 30 minute free park elsewhere. But why not just pull over with your hazard lights on? This is just a sign that some Clifton residents really are different from the rest of the city. The rest of us have mobile phones to co-ordinate dropoff and pickup operations, and to offer something more interesting to do while waiting than making right turns at this mini roundabout.

Finally: consider what it is like to try and cross this junction on foot. While it's not near the centre of the village, at the end of Manila Road (where the BMW drives out from the wrong direction of a one-way street), there's a primary school, some other ones nearby. And at the end of Suspension Bridge road is of course, the Bristol Suspension Bridge —one of the key tourist attractions in a city after Stokes Croft and the M4/M5 motorway interchange. As part of "beautiful suburb of Bristol, tucked away from the hubbub of city life and located just a five-minute drive away from the centre." we'd expect more. Maybe the shops sell postcards of it or something.

(*), Yes, Roundlet is a real word.

Gateway to Clifton: The Christchurch Mini-roundabout

Today we celebrate the Bristol School run week, now combined with the FirstBus failure week, with very unexciting documentary of the "not quite a roundabout" junction at the end of Suspension Bridge Road. If you are expecting to see anyone nearly being run over, people on phones, etc. Look elsewhere. Sorry. This video is here just to look at what transport issues Clifton has which the Clifton BID and resident groups never seem to cover.

Clifton likes to be known for its village, its Bridge and one or two of its pubs. The real Gateway to Clifton is something never discussed: a mini roundabout at the top of the village, just by the church.

To get an overview without going to Clifton, look at it in streetview and rehearse approaching the roundabout doing a right turn in a car from every road. Work out: when you should give way, when are you technically "in the roundabout and so should expect others to give way", and "is it actually possible to do all the turns legally". The answers being "no idea", "don't expect anyone to give way" and "no".

If you are cycling over the bridge, or driving near it, you have to negotiate it. It's disconcerting on a bike, especially with a child, as you cannot predict what anyone can do. It's a collection of random actions, vehicles coming in at speed, nobody knowing who to give way to —or even what side of the roundlet(*) to drive on. It's not great on a car either. There may actually be some protocol for the locals, but if so they it isn't widely known. We don't know it, certainly. What the locals and regulars do know is not to expect anyone to treat it as a roundabout —and never assume that you have the right of way.

You can see all of this in this unedited 9 minute view of the junction. Keep an eye out for the black Range Rover coming out from the left, and count how many times it does it.



This junction is fundamentally the wrong shape for a roundabout, it has two left turns, one hard, one soft, with the hard one's give way markings about 90 degrees to the roundabout itself. No visibility for anything coming off Suspension Bridge as to what vehicles coming from their right are doing —vehicles which don't often slow down, and hence won't see any cars coming from the left until they pull out. Two manoeuvres can only be executed by driving completely on the wrong side of the mini roundabout. There's one car coming the wrong up the one way street, though it does execute the junction safely. Lots of vehicles going through without pausing, including one of the cyclists coming off Clifton Down. And a couple of times cars on the roundabout have to give way to vehicles pulling on in front of them. Note the lack of tension though —regulars are forgiving of what
happens in a junction of such ambiguity.

Meanwhile that Range Rover coming off the left hand side does it five times in a row: our reporter got bored and went off while they were still doing it.

Before the video recording started the RR driver had stopped in the middle of a zebra crossing to let someone out —presumably they were now waiting for that person to return. But why were they driving round in circles given that with the RPZ roll out there's enough free parking, parking they'd have driven by? Unless they enjoy driving in circles and don't pay for diesel, the only other possibility is they had/planned to use up the 30 minute free park elsewhere. But why not just pull over with your hazard lights on? This is just a sign that some Clifton residents really are different from the rest of the city. The rest of us have mobile phones to co-ordinate dropoff and pickup operations, and to offer something more interesting to do while waiting than making right turns at this mini roundabout.

Finally: consider what it is like to try and cross this junction on foot. While it's not near the centre of the village, at the end of Manila Road (where the BMW drives out from the wrong direction of a one-way street), there's a primary school, some other ones nearby. And at the end of Suspension Bridge road is of course, the Bristol Suspension Bridge —one of the key tourist attractions in a city after Stokes Croft and the M4/M5 motorway interchange. As part of "beautiful suburb of Bristol, tucked away from the hubbub of city life and located just a five-minute drive away from the centre." we'd expect more. Maybe the shops sell postcards of it or something.

(*), Yes, Roundlet is a real word.

where are the speedo-watching crashes?

Here are the two petitions to look at

Speeders: Scrap the 20mph limit in Bristol and restore common sense  now at 8045
Keepers: Keep and extend 20mph limits now at 1680

One claim in the Speeders' petition is

"roads will only be made more dangerous with frustrated drivers and people watching the speedo rather than where they're going!"

We haven't noticed that ourselves, as we have a special speed limiter in our car called "the gear stick". Put it into "speed band 3", or "3rd gear" as it is sometimes known and it burbles along quite happily at 20-24mph, except in the special case that someone drives so close that you can see the driver's nostril hair and you slowly lift your foot of the accelerator to drop to precisely 19 mph just to see the expression on the driver's face in your rear view mirror.

Anyway, it may be that the speed petitioners don't have manual transmissions, or are somehow unable to determine road speed, and do have to look at the speedo all the time.

This is something we can test now that the central 20 mph zone is over a year old. All we have to do is look at the data.

One irony here is that if they do occur, the fact that they will take place at 20 mph means the police aren't likely to get involved. Any crash involving pedestrian, cyclist or stationary object will be less likely than at 30 mph to injure anyone, so they may not get called out. Indeed, even the insurance companies may not get a look in if people care about their no claims discount. head-on collisions will still have 40-50 mph of energy, so are more likely to show up. This means official data sources: —police and insurance— may show a reduction in RTCs even if there has been an increase in RTC events.

We ask the speeders, then: where are the speedo-watching crashes?

1. How many crashes in 20 mph zone have you personally been involved in where you or another participant was looking at the speedo at the time?
2. Have you heard of any such crashes —and do you have the contact details for us to follow up on this?
3. Is there any other evidence for an speedo-watching crashes in the central bristol zone?

We've had the zone for 18 months now, with millions of journeys in it by now. If speedo-watching crashes are a risk in 20 mph zones, we should have seen some. 

If we don't have the any signs of speedo-watching crashes, then, it could be due to

1. They are happening, but the massive lower energies in the collisions cause them to be unreported
2. That whole claim about "watching speedos causes crashes" is bollocks.

#2 is the null hypothesis: 20 mph limits do not cause speedo-watching crashes, is the one which has to be disproved to a significant degree of statistical confidence before it can be believed.

We put it to the speeders then: show us the data.

Now, assuming, on the off-chance that there is the data, that speedo-watching does cause crashes, hence 20 mph zones are more hazardous than 30 mph zones, why do the petitioners still propose lower limits by schools?




Either 20 mph zones are more dangerous due to speedo-watching or 20 mph zones are safer round schools.

So if that claim "20 mph is more dangerous" isn't utter bollocks, then, if the speed campaigners really believed it, they should be pushing for 30 mph zones round schools "for the children".

Speeders: show us the data —you've had 18 months to collect it.

(photo: kid scootering to school outside Christchurch School, Clifton, pre-RPZ)

Clifton: last days of Christchurch School paveparking

Royal Park is yet to get its markings, so we can view the invaluable space the council will be taking away, ruining with ugly yellow lines

Here, by Christchurch School, the lines already exist -but as they can be ignored, they have a beauty of their own

Round the corner, there's more pavement space. Its inevitable the council will put down double yellow lines here —just so schoolchildren can get to school safely

Yet look at our archives: we've evidence back from 2008 that there's enough space for cars and children!



Given that small children on scooters can already squeeze past parked cars, there is no justification in adding more ugly yellow lines —or even enforcing the ones that are already there

Christchurch school, Clifton -no yellow lines here, yet!

While looking for places where yellow lines can be removed from Clifton "for traffic calming", we say, with a knowing smirk, we are pleased to see that the roads by Christchurch School, Clifton, as seen here at 08:30 on a schoolday, have no such problem

Residents are free to park on the pavement without fear of harassment.

So can parents who were forced to drive here early due to the congestion problems caused by a city that failed to provide a city-wide motorway scheme like Glasgow. This family is stuck waiting 15 minutes for the playground to open, so have no choice but to park here. It would be dangerous to let the kids out to play on the pavement.

Now: the bad news. The council is proposing putting some parking restrictions in. No worry though -as our coverage of other schools in the area will show, it's completely unenforced, so provides a lovely parental drop-off zone -provided there aren't any pedestrians in the way. The careful parking of residents and parents alike here ensure that there are no schoolkids on the pavement. That said, the school has just won a Sustrans Award. That was for the kids, not the parents or residents, obviously.

Paveparking: it's greener, you know

We don't normally read the Evening Post; there is little point, but we are pleased to see that they are only ten days behind us in denouncing 20 mph speed limits.

As usual, some of the best insight comes from the comments; it is reassuring that many other people out there blame pedestrians for being in the road where they can get run over; and blame the parents who can't afford houses with back gardens for endangering their children by letting them out the front door.

Our favourite comment has to be from one Rob Green of Bedminster, whose insight deserves more coverage:

We've only just started parking on the pavement to keep the traffic moving - and make less pollution.
Why slow the cars down at this stage?

You see that? We thought it was to protect your mirror and paintwork, and help discourage pedestrians from walking round, as they will only slow us down later on. But now we see that there is environmental benefit too.

By eliminating stop-go motoring, we reduce fuel consumption costs and reduce pollution.

These vehicles in Freeland place, Hotwells, are parking here for the environment, including car WV56OCW.

Yet as usual, in this anti-car city they come down against those drivers who, in a selfless attempt to reduce pollution in the city, parking up on pavements outside schools on weekdays like the mini WP05VHM. It's for the kids! The lower the air pollution, the better it is for them! When will the politicians realise this!

N Somerset school parking

This is Northleaze primary school, long ashton. There is a road between this school use only car park and the school, but there is a zebra crossing. This gives the kids the walking to school experience without the parents schedule being too badly disrupted by having to walk the kids to school and then run home to drive to work.

Why doesn't anywhere in Bristol have decent parent parking like this?

Becoming a Redland Mum

Everyone was pretty shocked when that Panorama expose of Bristol racism came out. In most of the city, when somebody new moves in, the concern isn't their race, nationality or sexual orientation. It's: how many cars have they brought? Will they bring in enough vehicles to tip this street over the edge? Will one of them start to park in Our Space? That's all that matters.

In this Bristol, egalitarian Bristol, anyone can be a Redland Mum. You don't have to live in Redland, you don't have to be a mum. All it takes is quite simple:

To be a Redland Mum, getting to or from school in your car, on time, is more important than the safety and wellbeing of anyone else in Bristol.

That's all: drive aggressively to school and you too are a Redland Mum.

A video comes anonymously to our inbox proving that a dad driving a Malik's Hair and Beauty van can be as much a Redland Mum as any mother driving her 4x4. Notice how the vehicle comes out the side road without even a hint of attention to the give way sign, to come screaming to a halt at the last bit of build-out before Cotham Grammar, so ensuring their child will make it to school on time. The man driving this -he is proud to be a Redland Mum.

The road he came from at speed is interesting as it's part of the area where residents have been complaining about cycling and skateboarding on the pavement. It's simply not safe to have kids on the pavement, on wheeled toys that could suddenly skid out in front of a parent in a rush to get to school. The sheer presence of children walking, cycling or skateboarding to school will force other parents to drive more cautiously -and so be late for school!

Even if the pedestrians, skateboarders and cyclists are not in front of the car, slowing them down, their very presence in our streets slows us down on the school run and makes us late. We are glad that the police are doing something about the skateboarders and cyclists, and hope that the school can do something about the pedestrians.

Finally, for whichever cyclist took this video, all we can say is: if you felt that this van pulled out in front of you from a side road dangerously, then you were clearly cycling too fast! You should be grateful that we do not report you for cycling fast near a school!

Lane Markings

Following on with the thought that bike lane markings are bad as they create unrealistic expectations in bicycle riders, can we also complain about that other bit of road that is taken away from us road-tax-payers, the pavement? Again, there are subtle cues - raised kerbs, the texture of broken paving stones underneath- that create the belief amongst tax dodging walkers that the pavement is for them.

Which it isn't. Not here in Cotham Hill. Here it belongs to the vehicles that pay for it -car CW55EUA and van HV53SFE

In the Avenue, Clifton, at school pickup time. It belongs to the parent's whose cars pay for it.

Elsewhere in Clifton, the pavement is shared by the cars LS51YWD and W359YBW.

While on the fringes of town, out near UWE, the pavement provides the ideal space for a small car  like WR03HXU. At least in the new developments they drop the kerb to make its role for cars more obvious.

If the pavement wasn't available for the car owners to use, they woudln't be able to commute by car -so generating tax revenue for government, and it would be much harder to pick up children.

Yet there are activists out there, Living Streets Bristol, who are trying to take away our right to park where we need to, saying the pavements belong to pedestrians, and streets are to be lived in! This is nonsense! Roads are to drive along, pavements let you park near to your home or destination without walking. These people are only whining because they can't afford a car. They are jealous.

There is a living streets meeting on September 14. We need to infiltrate it. They are our streets, and the pavements are for our cars. Here is what we know so far.

14th September 2009 7.30pm
Stag and Hounds upstairs room - Old Market/ Temple Way Junction (next to Evening Post)
Neil Harrison will be coming to talk about the forthcoming Council's draft walking strategy.

Anyone who wants to preserve Bristol's way of life needs to get down there and stop it before it gets out of hand.

We are a Bike-It School - Join the movement

Christchurch School, Clifton, Now has a sign up in front of the keep clear zone,

We are a Bike-It School - Join the movement

Presumably it is at that exact height so as to catch the eye of parents parking here, such as the Saab T423RMW

To be fair, those parents have a good reason to not be walking in -they really do have no choice.

Not with this mini HD03WXL blocking the entire pavement for anyone trying to walk round to the school's other entrance

Incidentally, the local PACT meeting minutes state the new priorities include this school:

Agreed 26th March 2009

1. Driving offences around education establishments, with specific reference to speeding and inconsiderate parking. Two highlighted areas are:

A: Clifton College, namely College Road, Guthrie Road and The Avenue.

B: Christchurch Primary School, namely Royal Park.

Driving offences around educational establishments

Outcomes

Updated 6 May 2009:

So far there have been six patrols conducted around our local schools. During these patrols there have been:

12 motorists stopped and issued words of advice.

10 cars issued with warning leaflet

6 fixed penalty notices issued.

What is interesting here is that there are no complaints about people cycling on pavements. Perhaps you need a certain amount of free pavement before that to become an issue. By that measure, Bishopston must be ahead of Clifton. But if there have six penalties issued on six patrols, that means every patrol is finding one vehicle that merits not a warning or a word of advice, but a penalty ticket. Perhaps school parking is an issue here after all.

PS: Walk to School week, may 18-22. Watch out for pedestrians!

Branding

We can't come out and say "premium German-branded cars park worse". All we can say is "premium German-branded cars appear a lot in our database", but that's a self-selected dataset and not defensible. What we really need is access to a (suitably anonymised) dataset from Parking Services, say a week's worth of issued ticket data, with all the number plates replaced with random numbers and some other tweaks to prevent de-anonymizing, but with car make/model retained. We'd also need to know the percentage of these brands in use in the city compared to other models, to see if there was a significant variation. Then we'd know.

And, being city-wide, it would stop us being picking on particular schools. Like Christchurch School, Clifton, that appears to have a serious parking problem. The problem being: not enough space for everyone driving in. And seemingly everyone who does drop their kid off there uses Ein Auto aus Deutschland.

X21SJC may actually be a resident's car parked on the school-keep-clear zone, so denying parents their rightful place.


The parents are forced to park round the corner, the red BMW H674HJO narrowly avoiding being scraped by a small child having the audacity to cycle to school with a parent -neither of them wearing a helmet. We are shocked and appalled by the risks these people are taking.

Further along, another Mercedes R116KTC.


At least the disabled parking area is left alone.

Some of these cars could belong to residents. We'd need to audit the street on a Sunday morning to build up a better model of who is parking where round these narrow streets -streets that voted against becoming residents parking, incidentally. Presumably because it was obvious to all that an RPZ would take the pavements on these roads out of play, which would be unacceptable.

Keyword KN57CDF

In the foreground, someone commuting on an Orange MTB. In the background, someone doing sprog dropoff on the school-no-parking zone of Christchurch School, Clifton, on the road that is the homeland of the say-no-to-CPZ organisation -that being the house in the background with the posters in the window.

But not just a" someone in a car", that's someone dropping off the kid from the Audi A3 KN57CDF. Which is a keyword to be used in searches in your favourite index datacentre, be it Google or Yahoo!, will lead to the car advert when it was last on sale, listing it as a 2.0TD vehicle registered in November 2007 and sold for £16,995 pounds for just under 10K miles.

This is why we encourage all web sites which list car number plates, to omit the spaces from their listings, it makes it easier to index. For cross-site listing we need consistency. I think we can take it as a given that the DVLA and other authorities operate similarly, at least in the IT infrastructure. We need the same from sites like Crap Cycling in Waltham Forest, else we will never get national coverage.

The fact that the second hand car retailers all list number plates not only gives us vehicle history, it reinforces that number plate listing online is not itself against any data protection/privacy rules. So that's OK then.

Yes, but it's so convenient.

Over at Christchurch school, there is now a sign up.

It says "Parking on the zig-zags is dangerous and selfish"

The Parent driving VW Touran WV06WMO has seen the signs and is safely and unselfishly parked between the zig-zags and the keep clear markings, leaving enough room on the pavement for a small child to scooter into the wing mirror.

And at the front of the school, the owners of the camper van B694YNM are not parking on the zig zags. They are living there!

Minor parking difficulties at Christchurch

A brief tour of Christchurch Primary school, Clifton. This will not be in any CPZ -that will be a few streets to the south. The lead campaigner in the "Keep the parking free" group lives nearby, so presumably this is the parking he envisages.

The school itself has a little handwritten sign up on the subject, which is new

It says "Please do not park police will ticket". Technically that's wrong. In English, "will" implies inevitability, unlike willen in German, which is more aspirational.

The police may ticket. Parking Services may ticket some parking violations, but not those related to parking on the school keep clear zone for which only the police have authority. The sign should be updated to state these facts correctly. Does it have any effect in its current form?


Well, there is is a space in front of the Smartcar KY58NJU, which, by parking half on the pavement leaves enough room for a golf to get by

The golf PY54JFG, which also makes sure there is enough room for passing cars when it pulls up at the school gates.

Other cars, such as WN07LPE appear more concerned about pedestrian access than protecting their wing mirrors, so park a bit more on the road in the keep clear zone right in front of the entrance. Far enough out to let people past, and slow down passing cars to 20mph.

When last discussing this school, the need to drop kids off by car came up, with readers commenting on how lazy children were now. Perhaps they are used to travelling by car because that is what they are used to, in which case the question is : why do so many now parents drop the kids off by car instead of walking them in? Increased wealth: two car households are now common, and increased workload: both parents working means that whoever drops the kids off have a limited amount of time between dropoff and work. Also, with more choice in schooling -the old "this postcode means that school" rule is gone -hence some kids have further to go. These parents have no choice but to drive, hence they have no option other than parking on the pavement, the keep clear zone or the school-no-parking area.

Here comes the CPZ

"Bristol Dave" has got hold of the Residents Parking Zone voting results.

The presentation is a bit weak in that the 30%-50% band is one colour -orange- and that is where much of the variation lies. If you had a better gradient it would probably show more of a trend towards "the closer to town you live, the more likely you are to vote for this".There's a ring around the current CPZ that is about 50% in favour -those places where park and walk is a viable commute policy for outsiders. But with a 7x24 and a pay-for-visitors policy, the scheme was not just trying to stop commuters parking in your street, it was to make you pay whenever you visited anyone else in the city. A lot of the outskirts appear to have noticed this fact. Kingsdown looks like it will be first to go, which will have implications for the neighbours.

Rollout of the RPZ will be really beneficial to anyone driving to school as long as the council doesn't have the audacity to enforce the rules between 8 and 9. It should increase the amount of parking space by the schools, and offer more parents somewhere to park afterwards. I had an excellent discussion with a parent outside Christchurch School last week, someone defending their right to park on the pavement on the "school keep clear" zone. They have to park there because there is nowhere else to park, then they go home over the downs, which must be a least a mile away -but in an area that doesn't suffer from commuter parking. Once the RPZ is rolled out, the right to drive your kid to school won't be limited to those who have driveways or are carrying on to work.
[updated]: moved the image as the original one apparently went off-line.

Insensitive Bike Parking

Here, in front of Christchurch School, clifton, there is a bike parked on the pavement.

any child that made it safely back onto the pavement after navigating the delivery van unloading something for one of the houses and parked in the "School Keep Clear" zone would find their way blocked by this bicycle. No wonder the Evening Post and Association of British Drivers blame bicycles for causing so much of Bristol's traffic problems.

Bicycle Parking at Christchurch School

While looking at Christchurch School's dropoff policy, its interesting to see what they have for bikes and scooters. There is a covered bike park inside the school grounds.

Yet look at how insensitive this bike is, parked the one parking on the railings.

Here's a better view

See? There's only a narrow pavement, yet someone has locked their bike up on them, so denying that pavement to anyone walking to school. This is dangerous and shows a complete disregard of the needs of children walking to school. This is the kind of thing that Cycle City Bristol will only make worse.
[Cars: CN51BZL, N435PFB]

Christchurch School, Clifton

Christchurch School, Clifton, has some physical no-parking barriers up in front of the main entrance. What to do? Walk in? Or park somewhere else?

Well, there's still the corner of the road opposite, with keep-clear signs to keep commuters away.

And round the corner, a lovely drop-off point, used by L63FKR, amongst other vehicles.

Though the road is a bit narrow, so you do need to get a little bit on the pavement to let the other parents through, as shown by WV06WM0.

Clearly half-hearted attempts to discourage parking outside schools merely displace parents. And well they should. If you've made a decision to drive the kids to school, parking issues merely force you to be more imaginative in finding parking places

Stereotyping

A reader called SP left a couple of comments implying maybe were over-sterotyping BMW drivers. Interesting thought. Yes, there is a fair amount of sterotyping going on, but mainly of range rovers. BMW drivers are just like any other local driver. They need somewhere to park on weekday, here the car RF55NAE outside Christchurch School, Clifton.

The take kids to school in the car, a car they have to park near the school, here N707WJB outside Christchurch School, Clifton.

And they sometimes leave their car with the door open while they do the child dropoff, so as to make sure no kid with a scooter or bike dares to scrape the car RE52ZKO while they take their primary-school age child to Christchurch School.

Or on the keep clear zones at the corner, by -wait for it- Christchurch School, Clifton.

Sterotyping? No, documenting. None of these cars are on double yellow lines, only one (EZJ8266) in a keep clear zone. The rest are just up on the pavement by the school entrance, leaving enough room for through traffic and generally blending in. Which is why their coverage is actually fairly minimal. It's not as entertaining as the problem of how to park a Range Rover in Montpelier, or as ironic as driving school cars parking where they shouldn't. And it's certainly not as photogenic as an ice cream van driving down a bus lane. Maybe we could start sterotyping them, but well, it's been done already, hasn't it? Maybe once we've got bored of making fun of range rovers or driver deadlock outside schools at dropoff time.

Christ Church School #2: the other entrances

Continuing a circuit of this school, the reason that parents are not dropping their kids off at this entrance becomes apparent. Because the school has roads on four sides, and entrances on three of those sides, there are easier roads to park on.

This peugeot, V594FGF, is using the Kensington Place entrance, which has a fine corner for unloading on

And a bit round the corner for overflow, which the Mazda appears to be taking advantage of.

Further round, Lansdown Road has a good dropoff area which the signage "show you care, park elsewhere" manages to keep free of residents, leaving it clear for parents in a hurry, such as the Audi WP53OOY

And the Honda R143TAO.

By providing a safe pavement stretch and two car-friendly dropoff/park zones, this school provides a balanced yet convienient access policy.