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.

Clifton Mums Hour

This week is what used to be half term, before we had six term school years.

Last week was different, which meant that the chaos that is Clifton Mums Hour reigned, twice a day or more, in the vicinity of Clifton College.

Imagine the scene... a lone cyclist in College Road trying to get to the Downs vs a Clifton Mum in a car. A no-brainer. Cars parked both sides of the road, no space, and at least a 5 second shorter journey by car. If I were a Clifton Mum I certainly wouldn't let a cyclist hold me up. I'd cut right in front of them and slam on my brakes to let another car park. Or, 5 seconds later, I'd pull right in to the kerb and stop at the zebra crossing, blocking the cyclist again. Ha!

Then I'd hack it off up the road before the cyclist catches up - and park up on the yellow zig-zags outside the school to set a good example to my children, which is what the driver of WR57AXW did.

So if you nip down to The Avenue in Clifton at about 15:00 this week, this chaotic scene will not greet you. There will be no cars parked on yellow zig-zags, no cars on the pavements, and nobody daring to park on the double yellow lines. Give it a week or so though, and you too could join in with the fun, like this:

It's important to note that EK59SDX and WR57AXW are very important people, so are allowed to park their cars on the zig-zags, whilst WM09CZA is probably an actual VIP, as shown by the flashing indicators.

Lesser mortals, such as Range Rover LTP321, WU56TZV, MJ55FUV, WR03AUJ, LB55UHH, WR58WSN, MA07HNL, VN02VUL, WJ58YBB, RO51LOD, KN07PID, XHY1 had to park on the double yellow lines and pavements. They were not alone, but our database will explode if we record many more.

Only T59SAE manages allow pedestrians access to the pavement by staying firmly on the double yellows in the road. Kudos.

Our advice: don't have strange haircuts in Clifton during term-time.

The Stepford wives of Clifton really don't like it.

Lives and Cost/benefit analysis

Bristol lost three schoolkids last year in crashes. The anniversaries of the deaths of two will be next month, deaths that should not have happened.

The one we haven't covered yet was an 11 year old, Alexander Bjoroy, flying to Clifton College from Brazil. Here's the school with a US flag at half mast. Why the US flag? At half mast? The Omaha Beach landings of D-Day were planned here by the US army. Decisions were made there that impacted the lives of people all round the world. After the war, the US army presented their flag -this one is apparently a replacement which formerly flew above the US Congress.




In 2009, Alexander Bjoroy died because of other decisions made. Der Spiegel has put up a fairly bleak an analysis of what happened on AF-447.

1. With the passenger and freight loads of the flight from Rio to Paris, the only way the Airbus 330  had the fuel capacity for flight + minimum emergency fuel was by pretending the destination was Bordeaux, and then, if when they get close to there and they "happen" to have enough fuel, continuing to Paris. Yet the landing costs and delays aren't included in the schedule, so it's not something the pilots are actually encouraged to do.
2. There was a storm, and without the surplus fuel, the pilots chose to fly through it, rather than round.
3. All three pitot tubes, which measure airspeed, froze. The online computer didn't know what to do.
4. The airplane stalled and fell out the sky. Attempts to restart the flight computer were recorded by messages sent from the airplane's computer to Air France, but they clearly had no effect.
5. The plane crashed into the sea with a force of 36G; so hard the tailfin sheared off. The oxygen marks didn't deploy, nobody had life jackets out and the stewardesses weren't in their emergency seats.
6. Everybody died. 

The coverate of the airspeed sensors, the pitot tubes is poignant. 

• Military airplanes heat their pitot tubes to prevent freezing
• The civilian FAA test requirements predate jet planes and only test for temperatures expected at or below 9km, yet this plane (and all other planes for which pitot tube freezes have been recorde) was at 10km.
• Air France has opted not to spend the €300K per plane needed to add some software that Airbus sells to help pilots angle the plane correctly after airspeed indicator failure.

Given the size of the AF fleet,  €300K per plane probably adds up. But for anyone who lost a friend or relative on the flight, the money would have been justifed. Some questions may need to be asked of Airbus itself, however, and this brings us back to Bristol, where parts of the planes come from. If the pitot tubes are known to fail, and are used at heights/temperatures outside their test space, why doesn't Airbus provide this software for free. Surely it exists to correct a design defect in the plane itself?

[some coverage in the software engineering community. The A320 was the first civilian fly-by-wire plane, and there's still debate about whether it was a wise decision for it, its successors, and recent Boeing planes.

What is the bicycle speed for College Road?

After Dru Marland got penalised for cycling too fast, we sent one of our unwitting cyclists down College Road to see what speed cyclists should do down it.

Notice how, although the bicycle was going at the same speed as the car in front, it was still holding up a Volvo XC90, school-run, presumably. This car was forced to overtake the bicycle, which, with the oncoming traffic and narrow gap in front was not an easy move, especially in such a large car.

This is a busy road with a school, Clifton High, just passed on the right, with the parental parking/dropoff zones on either side of the road. Forcing cars to overtake aggressively right in front of a school is a dangerous action and it is selfish for the bicycle to do just that. To make matters worse, the bicycle then immediately swings past the Volvo only to come to a complete halt in front of them. This is a selfish operation that will slow down the important driver whose time is, according to DoT equations, worth more than pedestrians or cyclists.

Clearly then: a bicycle travelling at the same speed as motor traffic speed is going too slow and holding up important people. But going down this road at above traffic speed, as Dru showed, is too too fast. The obvious solution is to ban bicycles from such important roads, namely any road near a school. It is for the safety of them and pedestrians, you understand. Think of the schoolkids!

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.

Deadlock on the school run

Deadlock: in which more than one entity try to acquire the same set of resources, and by doing so create a situation in which none of them can acquire enough resources to get work done. In traffic, it is where vehicles trying to enter a junction stop the vehicles in the junction from leaving, and hence nobody can achieve their goals.

Here's a spot of bother in Clifton. There's the Volvo XC90 WV57EUU, which we already have indexed, here helping pedestrian access to the school by slowing down traffic. It's not on the pavement today, or blocking a driveway, just right on a corner where there is a double yellow line to remind people not to park. Its' not dangerous, look -kids still manage to cross the road alive.

Unfortunately, while such conscientious traffic calming helps most vehicles slow down, it does nothing for coaches trying to do a turn -they need this space to get round. A traffic jam is now building up with three lines of cars, and the Volvo desperately trying to reverse a car for which reversing was never a design goal. Or if it was, that and "fuel economy" came lower down the list than "create the illusion of security" and "wide"

What we in computing call a "deadlock" has developed: nobody can get out because the other vehicles are blocking each other. Here's how it gets resolved. The Volvo struggles to reverse.

Leaving room for the Mercedes to pull through, and get stuck in the same place. Nice bit of forward planning there. Must work in investment banking.

Incidentally, the reason the Volvo had such a hard time backing up is not just land-barges like this are a dog to reverse, there's another parent blocking the other corner, again on the double yellow lines, this time in a pickup WR56UUH.



You could hang around all day waiting for a situation like this to resolve itself. But we have other schools to visit, so we must leave them to it.

Probably didn't see the signs

Keep an eye on this car, WV57EUU, here showing it is black/yellow colour blind, and hence oblivious to the double yellow lines.

And the 'No parking at any time' marking on the wall, which is also yellow/black

Designing user interfaces and web signs for colour blindness is a common best practise: you don't rely on the ability to distinguish red and green as the sole way to navigate a site, as red/green blindness is very common. What we have here, yellow/black blindness, is much rarer. There is little that can be done to mitigate it, though London try with their red-marked lanes.

Volvo Parking

We're also looking for photos of legally parked Volvo XC90s alongside those of Range Rovers. Whoever was doing this parking (school pickup in clifton?) was focusing on car protection and traffic flow rather than pedestrian safety

So, WV57EUU goes in the database. Incidentally, one stevel is now the Bristol Cycling Campaign's School officer (self-appointed). Building up a set of pics of how every school in Bristol deals with their transport issues -and what their safe route to school plan is- is something that would be useful.

So when a visit is paid to the school, we can bring up the powerpoint slideware of what they've been up to, along with a spreadsheet print of which cars appear to be particularly dangerous towards pedestrians.

These are going to be some fun discussions.

Volvo: because your children matter more than other people's

When you buy a Volvo, especially a Volvo XC90, you are making a statement: that you care about the welfare of your passengers.

But actually you are making another statement: that you care more about your passengers than you do about any other people on the streets. And when you take your dear little children to school in your Volvo, you don't want their life endangered by other vehicles.
Which is why, once you buy a Volvo XC90, you are obliged to park in front of the pedestrian/bicycle access point to the school, on double yellow lines. Nothing else would be as safe as your new SUV.



During the month of June if you buy an XC90 in our end-of-school-year sale, Volvo will pay for all parking fines accrued within 30 metres of a school.

Volvo: because you know whose children matter the most.

Why pavement parking helps the school run

Here, up in the premium car corner of Bristol that is Clifton, we see why parking your BMW or 4x4 on the pavement helps the school run go so smoothly. First, 'the Avenue', where everyone has parked their cars up on the pavement. The traffic flows, so even late parents can drop their kids off at Clifton College on time, including the Jeep WR05MHL.

But just round the corner, on Guthrie Road, the BMW parked on the double yellow lines is not on the pavement, so these range-rover driving parents have to wait for the oncoming car before they can get home.


Similarly, round the corner on College road, cars parked on the road create congestion and making access to Clifton High School trickier.

This slows down child drop off and creates frustrated parents and children, which can not be a good start to a school day. And it risks your vehicle's wing mirror getting scraped.

The School Run

The Bristol School run is a time of chaos, as you have to drive across town, children wailing in the back, you on the phone. And once you get there, where you are going to park? Especially in a big 4X4.




Fortunately the council provides a special area in front of each school purely for 4X4 Parking. Here a range rover demonstrates its use. You approach the double yellow lines, and get up on the kerb, so as not to inconvenience other 4X4 drivers.

The nice thing about this area is that because it is kept clear of little cars, you don't have to worry about reverse parking a vehicle with no visibility, on the way in or out.



The main inconvenience of this area is the fact that there are sometimes schoolkids milling around, on the designated parking zone (historically this was called a pavement). These are children whose parents are too poor to afford to bring their children to school by 4X4, either they have parked and walked from their little car, or, heaven forbid, they have walked all the way from home. Don't their parents know that is dangerous? Don't they know how polluted the air can be at that time in the morning?

How could they expose their loved ones to such pollution and risk, when they could be driven to school in comfort and safety in a filtered airconditining, high viewing position range rover? And that's apart from the inconvenience which children on zebra crossings cause when you're running late and need to get to school in a hurry. Here they are, still in the way. Can't they see the indicator? Don't they recognise how important someone who owns a car like this must be?

Something should be done. Either the school or the council should come up with a transport plan to help these deprived children get to school by a proper form of transport - a 4X4, here LX05ATN.