Call of the Gromit

The Gromits are across the city, and finally we have reason to visit the otherwise boring parts of the city -here, Clifton.
 
This is at the top of Cliftonwood

And here is how to get there from Hotwells. The audio commentary is too low to be understood, but that's OK, it's not very interesting. It is reminscing about pre-gentrification Hotwells, when you needed to know the football results to fend off queries in the (now Bath Ales) pub, when the sole cash machine was in a massage parlour, and the post-office used to sell draught scrumpy if you brought in your own container. Sadly, that policy has not been rolled out to other POs in the country.



It's long as the tax-dodger over-meanders around nearing the Lion Pub (recommended) at least three times, Church Lane and Constitution Hill upper  (4:11+) being the hardest part.

Ambra Vale (0:48) is going to be interesting, as it will go RPZ. Here, on a weekday, you see paveparking and narrow roads, but nothing worse than Montpelier. The difference is that Cliftonwood gets commuter traffic heading to the city or Clifton, where you can come in off the A4 portway or A370, find a space and then walk to work.

This video will be the "before"

meanwhile, there are lots more Gromits to visit.

Clifton Expanded Parking Opportunities -consultation

Back in 2011, we looked at the Neighbouhood Partnership proposals for Clifton, adding more parking under a guise which even we were impressed by "to calm traffic". That's a great lie -one to use the next time we get told off for double parking while delivering some of our special adult entertainment products to the Clifton area.

We looked at -and supported- proposals for

• The removal of two bays in Hotwells
• Adding parking in the bottom of Pembroke Road and  further up
• Removing the yellow lines on Clifton Park.
• Adding more parking anywhere it could be found in Princess Victoria Street

It's been nearly two years and we suspected this plan had fallen by the wayside, as the traffic planning officers cornered the councillors and pointed out that the political price of adding eight to ten more parking spaces to the area wasn't worth it. Assuming unrestricted parking on Pembroke road and Hope Chapel Hill, 6 more residents (i.e. voters) would get somewhere to park overnight. If the clifton village parking added an extra four spaces, with a 2h limit, then an eight hour day would add 24 parking opportunities. That's 30 votes overall -max. Yet the political capital spent up on trying to fight the cycling city in one part of the city would be high -because you'd be having to say "we won't spend any money providing safe crossings of Pembroke Road, or the east end of Clifton Park" -issues that also matter to Clifton voters -and potentially more than 30 a day.

Good news! Over Christmas -when the schoolparents would have been away, the consultation for the Traffic Regulation Order to add these spaces has arrived!

Not only that -they propose to add a space by taking away a proposed on-road cycle parking buildout! Finally a part of the city has stood up to this invasion of bicycles, by opting to provide a short stay parking opportunity for a car instead  -leaving cyclists with some insecure bollards that only the foolhardy would use.



To invest in adding 30 parking opportunities a day over making walking and cycling safe is a bold move -one for which we congratulate the two councillors for doing! They must have felt that those thirty votes may keep the two liberal democrat councillors safe, despite the fact that their Westminster colleagues are widely derided as the useless lap-dogs of George Osborne and David Cameron, Presumably they recognised that the people trying to walk or cycle in Clifton are poor people, unlikely to live in the area -or if they do, unlikely to vote.

We in the Bristol Traffic team are overjoyed that in one part the city, the people and the councillors have finally listened to what we have  been saying since 2008; pandering to the cyclists and pedestrians is a mistake!

Looking back at the old days, when the late Chris Hutt was our Clifton Correspondent, what was the third post in our history? Photographic proof that Range Rovers didn't have anywhere to park near the schools except the pavements.


Clifton has always been a special place for us -as much a centre of the driving and parking community as Stokes Croft -albeit with less run-down vehicles-so are excited about this new proposal, part of what we now term, the anticycling-city.

We strongly encourage everyone who supports us, who wants our streets clear of tax-dodging cyclists, for us not to be held up by pedestrians trying to get over zebra crossings, to read the TRO, and respond praising it fully.

We would particularly like for respondents to draw out the proposal "to remove the cycle parking place in Princess Victoria Street (not in force on-site)". This is the best example of how this TRO represents a bold action by the residents and councillors to do something nobody else in the inner city has done -to fight back!

HGV vs Clifton Vale

While doing one of our regular clifton deliveries, a quick detour to check out the road where the HGV got wedged a while back.

Yes, there is a new HGV shaped dent on the house at the top of Clifton Vale.


Looking up, this is the view the drive would have had.
 

What's not clear is where was he going: left towards clifton, or bearing rightwards. The latter is possibly marked as a straight line on the satnav, which it is, provided your car is nimble enough to swerve round and through the oncoming lane. Hatchbacks can do this, but things like estate cars have trouble.
 
  
What the HGV driver was thinking we don't know, especially as the hill is about 20% all the way up. At what point did they start to have doubts -and yet still decide to continue.

This is just going to lead to street clutter as every road from Hotwells to Cliftonwood is now going to have a sign prohibiting lorries -which can only inconvenience those of us who do know how to get our toys through the rat-runs.

Hotwells Primary: the parking problem

While down at Hotwell's Primary, we thought we'd have a look round to see where else parking restrictions could be relaxed.

Well, there's a bit by the school marked "school keep clear" that looks like a good opportunity.

Round the corner there a build out with bollards and four bike parks, stopping even important parents from using it.

There's even a sign "stopping on zig zags is dangerous and selfish". But as that's not live evening and weekends, that's a problem for commuters rather than residents.

Round the corner -on a weekend- no parking problems at all, with a pavement where you can park close enough to the fence to ensure that neither side of your vehicle gets scratched.

This is why we think the proposal to take away one short-stay dropoff point on Hope Chapel Hill to add at most two parking spaces is misguided. There's lots of pavements to park on outside of the weekday, and if you add two more spaces, well, that just adds room for two more commuters -people who aren't in the Clifton wards, so aren't going to vote for Barbara or Terry in a fit of gratitude. It's the school-run parents who will be most inconvenienced, and they who are the biggest threat.

Walthamising Hotwells

One of the Clifton Traffic Calming proposals -voted for, with support from the Waltham Forest Faction of the ruling LibDem party, was to remove some yellow lines from this road "to calm traffic", with a key justification being this is near a school and it would improve safety. This perfect Walthamisation: to improve the facilities for us, the motorists, using the walking and cycling part of the council budget, and claiming it is for "their own good". Waltham Forest excels in this, such as in the downgrading of a route to the Olympics, though we are surprised at how much it cost to make it so easy to PavePark. We in Bristol don't need such help.

This is the road covered. There are some buildouts already, one positioned to protect the wingmirrors of cars, and room on the other side of the road to park. The target area must be further down the hill.

Ah yes, here it is. A narrow stretch, two chicanes and then a wide space -wide enough to get two small cars into.

But here's a question: is this worth spending political capital on? Barbara Janke, Cllr for Clifton (Waltham Forest Ward), is in charge of a minority council that often cites its green foundations as a way of differentiating it. To remove some double yellow lines "to calm traffic" is going to get bad press in the green-troublemaker news outlets (fortunately, not the BBC or Evening Post), and embarrass others in the council. For what? Two parking spaces.

It may seem odd, but we in the Bristol Traffic project are against the proposal for two reasons. One is this: there are more important places to add parking areas that a back road near Hotwells

The other --and this is key-- is this: double yellow lines provide Clifton parents with designated dropoff areas on the school run. Those two parking spaces would be wasted on residents or commuters, as only two people a day will benefit from each new space; four people per day on a weekday, dropping down to one person/day on a weekend. Twelve vehicles a week. Whereas as a short-stay parking area, you could have ten parents a morning queuing up to do dropoffs, push the kids out and carry straight on into the city, without having to get out the car.

It is far more valuable for parental dropoff than for resident and commuter parking, and if the councillors don't realise this, they are talking to the residents and not the school parents. If we sent our kids to this school, we'd be in touch with Barbara Janke and others defending our right to park here, instead of saying "yes, we think two more residents should park here." Who cares about the residents? That's four voters, compared to the possibly twenty that ten families could offer.

The other thing is that traffic calming claim looks, well, weak. You could push it for Pembroke Road -you can get up to speed. But here? Even with a buildout dropped enough to let vans go over it, you can't keep your speed up, you have to give way at the bottom anyway.

For the sake of twelve extra vehicle parking opportunities a week, Barbara and Terry are going to make enemies of everyone in the school, as well as devalue the entire "LibDem are green" brand. Admittedly, their Westminster School and Parliament compatriots are doing the same thing, but if you look at the recent election results, not only did the Green party take a LibDem seat, they came second in a few other wards. The cost of adding two parking spaces here -both financial and political - doesn't justify it. Two happy residents, some commuters who aren't even in the same ward as the councillors, and 40-50 annoyed parents plus the local green troublemakers blogging about it -and maybe even letting the evening post in on the joke, so that Barbara gets laughed at as much as Gary "bus stop" Hopkins did.

This is just political ineptitude.

Breaking news: parking restrictions encourage higher vehicle speeds

The new "neighbourhood funding" schemes are great for us, the drivers, as we can use our money to get what we want: parking, without any city-wide initiative like public transport, sustainability or cycling getting in the way. This is why we are delighted to cover the "DEVOLVED TRANSPORT SCHEMES FOR 2011/12" for Clifton and Cliftonwood, which will be up for discussion on Tuesday at 19:00 above Jack's Brasserie behind the waterfront TSB building.

The important people in Clifton have been successful in adding one-way streets by Clifton-college, so making easier to do Range-Rover and Volvo XC60 dropoff, and held up the provisioning of bicycle parking on the grounds that it degrades the listed buildings. However there still aren't enough places to park our important cars. How to add more parking, without appearing blatantly selfish? The answer is obvious: push for it on road safety grounds.

This is the tactic planned for tomorrow, with the following proposals in the set.

• Lay-by at the bottom of Hope Chapel Hill: Existing parking restrictions encourage higher vehicle speeds
• Pembroke Road (St.Pauls Road end). More on-street parking would reduce vehicle speeds.

These claims are far better than the ones for Clifton Park and Princess Victoria Street, both of which just say "existing parking restrictions are too extensive", by which they mean "the bit by the side of the road where people cycle could be used by important people".

We hope all our local supporters turn up for this, and support the proposals and so make sure that we outnumber any cycling/living street troublemakers who sneak in and start calling us selfish gits who are more concerned about having somewhere to park our third car outside our houses than doing something to fundamentally improve Bristol's liveability. Those people don't realise that having somewhere to park our third Landrover -it's more than just a car- does improve Bristol's Liveability. Certainly it makes it easier to walk from the Landrover to our house, and by saving us driving around, reduces pollution and the CO2 emissions from our 3L V8 engines.

Futhermore, once that parking is in, it will be that much harder to put in bike lanes, so any ideas for adding some segregated route up Pembroke Road -our secret high speed alternative to Whiteladies Road- would be killed forever. It's important to do this now, before alternate transport plans progress.

Yes, those troublemakers will say "if we want parking we should have voted for the RPZ", but they miss the point: that would have restricted the number of vehicles we could own. Furthermore, by reducing the number of vehicles parked on the roads on a weekday, vehicle speeds have increased and Clifton is now a more dangerous place to walk. We have a spreadsheet we've just made up to prove it!

Note also that a large number of the other schemes (Ambrose Road, Cliftonwood Road, Alfred Hill, Westbourne Place and Redcliffe hill) are complaints by people about how parking is interfering with pedestrians. It is important to attend to stop this, otherwise the troublemakers will pick up on the complete hypocrisy of pushing for extra parking to calm roads in some parts of the area, while having to introduce bollards and dropped kerbs in other parts. We want parking everywhere, and no RPZ in our way.

Walthamize the planet, and have a nice day.

Keeping clear

Here again are the benefits of Cliftonwood life: considerate neighbours. See how well P731EBD and WN56XCJ are staying off the bit of Goldney Road marked 'KEEP CLEAR'.

White Hart Steps Bus Stop

We don't like Buses here at Bristol Traffic. They drive slowly. They stop us driving in bus lanes. They are full of students and people who have some kind of misguided notion that taking public transport saves the environment, though since none of them have proper jobs First's pricing policy ensures that very few of them can afford to get on the buses nowadays.

We do, however, like bus stops, which are a great place to park. There used to be one here, at the conjunction of White Hart Steps, World's End Lane and Bellevue Crescent in Cliftonwood, but as you can see from the photo below, this is no more.


However, the eagle-eyed amongst you will notice that something is pinned to the lamp-post, which upon closer inspection turns out to be an application to reinstate the bus-stop. We urge you to write to the council and support this.

Considerate parking

Are Cliftonwood's drivers the most considerate in the city? See how X868MDS has pulled right up onto the pavement so that other cars can get along Ambra Vale East, inconveniencing nobody but himself - he's so close to the wall he can barely get his door open!

Some may think that leaving threatening notes for other drivers who don't park so well is just a little militant, but here at Bristol Traffic we are appalled by parking as bad as the example shown by Y453TNV. Look how far from the wall the front of the car is. We have standards to uphold.

Not driving: parked

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

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

Fake police warning notes?

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

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

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

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

The blind bends of Clifton Vale

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

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



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

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

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

Secret Cliftonwood Parking

Everybody knows that there are no parking problems in Cliftonwood, and that is why its citizens recently rejected the imposition of a CPZ. However, what fewer people know is where the "secret" parking slots are - the ones that are normally free and you actually have to seek out. Here we see two cars demonstrating two of these slots - DY52OLC at the end of Randall Road, and NY54EWP at the bottom of Ambrose Road.

What these camera angles don't show is that both of these cars have bits of paper stuck under their windscreen wipers. They were probably from admiring local residents congratulating the drivers on locating these hidden parking spots, but we'll never know - sadly, the rain has rendered them illegible!

Concerned of Cliftonwood

PS: In the case of DY52OLC it could be to apologise for the fresh dent in the back right hand corner. Whilst admiring the honesty of the perpetrator, we say: next time, use indelible ink! Unfortunately, the wronged car owner will never know who you are.

Cliftonwood

Concerned of Cliftonwood writes:

This (attached) is why we citizens of Cliftonwood voted against the CPZ.

That kind of blunt one-size-fits-all approach wouldn't allow for the fact that somewhere like Ambra Vale is wide enough for perpendicular parking on one side of the road and double parking (like FL09NLN and K837XPJ) on the other and still has enough space for a bunch of layabouts - sorry, students - to sunbathe.

Cliftonwood RPZ news

Victory for the keep-our-pavements-free-to-park on campaign, Cliftonwood's resident parking zone plans are killed.

Vehicles like V305ROC will not have to pay a tax of potentially hundreds of pounds to park on the pavement in this part of the city. (credit to "Concerned of Cliftonwood") for the photo

Incidentally, we hear that the Bastard Hills of North Bristol bike ride is now scheduled for Sunday May 23. One troublemaker has already ridden it. We shall have to avoid the area on that date.

Persecution and voting in Kingsdown

Not just a threatening note by an angry a neighbour, but a genuine police ticket, here off Somerset Street, Kingsdown.

To the owner for L630 UVC

This is not a parking lot! you are blocking a public right of way. Please do NOT park here again

By Montpelier standards, it's hardly noticeable. Interesting how different parts of the city have different conventions.

This is Kingsdown, an area which may or may not have voted for a Resident Parking Zone.  Charlie Bolton says the vote came in at 200 against, 203 for,  though it appears to depend on where you put the boundary -presumably this area, "Darkest Kingsdown", is the bit that came in for it. Bristol 24x7 has some different numbers, ones that put the turnout at 18%.

For those people who didn't get invited to vote, it was by paper or online, every household got one vote with a specific login/password to prevent outsiders voting, or insiders voting more than once. An 18% turnout has to reflect pretty badly on both sides ability to get the voters out.

Cliftonwood: strongly against. Perhaps the parking problems there are due more to residents than commuters, and they felt that restricting their own vehicle ownership and use was unwise.

We hope they avoid monty

Here in Cliftonwood, someone pins up notes telling off drivers for parking on the pavement. Someone who lives here must have an issue with it. We just hope they never go to Montpelier, as they'd explode in anger and resentment.

The first car looks like it's been here a couple of days, and sports a penalty ticket, presumably for the expired tax disk.

28-01-10 P286SFB

Please remove your car from the pavement and consider mothers with pushchairs

Facing this car is KN52WNT, which also has a couple of bits of paper. One listing the "traced" address of the vehicle, the other telling it off

Just because one moron blocks the footpath. Do you have to follow suit. What about mums with pushchairs wheelchair users and people with poor eyesight please think of someone else rather than just yourself. you selfish person

This is fascinating. What it tells us is that a bit of paveparking is so unusual in Cliftonwood that people are surprised by it -that they go to the effort of writing notes, of complaining. Wow.

Extending the road

This car YM51MKA has found an innovative solution to the problem of there being no free pavement to park alongside, here in Ambra Vale, Clifton Wood.

It has chosen to park up behind the other cars, and so rely on nobody noticing that to its left, instead of some paving stones and a wall, there is a large gap then a driveway heading up to some garages.

It appears to have worked.

Sadly, if this area does become a controlled parking zone, then this is exactly the kind of semi-official parking space that not even residents will be able to use. And if all these "corner-case" parking areas disappear, that is a lot of the parking capacity of the city is going to be lost. Forever.

Fight for your right to park in the middle of the road! Join the campaign to keep the streets free!