Spicing up the school run

Halfords are reporting a surge in sales of helmet cameras. While one motivator may be that it finally resolves the he-did-I-did and she-did-I-did arguments about positions in road, actions and numberplates, we know the real reason is to provide entertaining content for others to watch on youtube.

Of course, that  content needs to be entertaining, which implies "not dull boring journeys where nothing happens".

This is why we are grateful for FW13EKN spicing up the school run

As you can see, most of the journey down Cotham Hill is boring boring boring. Apart from the delivery van in the middle of the road, nothing worth mentioning. This is a boring journey for the parent, while the child has nothing to talk to their school friends about.

This is where the black golf FW13EKN comes into the picture. You can first see it waiting for the zebra crossing to clear, as it has just turned right of Whiteladies Road.

As soon as it gets round the corner, the driver sees that there is a spare bit of double yellow line for him to park his car into, and if he veers across the road aggressively enough he can take it before anyone else.

He also sees the oncoming parent and child, and decides to make their day entertaining by veering rapidly in front of them. It'd be easy to blame the cyclists for being unlit, did the father not have a Hope Vision LED lamp on the front of his bike, and the child a high power LED light of their own. No, this action wasn't done because they hadn't seen the bicycles, it was because they thought they could clear them in time.

Of course, tax dodgers being what they are, they did take up the space, and the way the parent blocked the car off he has been held up for thirty seconds -which is thirty seconds less of the credit-card base consumption that is essential for keeping the British economy afloat.

Eric "common sense" Pickles is proposing some changes to parking, including a 10 minute right to park on double yellows, and an end to the CCTV parking enforcement which stopped this driver parking in Whiteladies Road directly. We say: it doesn't go far enough.

1. Bicycles hold up parking and should be banned.
2. Bike racks take up valuable pavement parking space that should be removed.
3. The consultation doesn't make any mention of giving us 10 minutes grace to park on white zig-zags by zebra crossings -of which there are so many in shopping areas.

Without such changes, the inner city will never be revitalised by people driving in from the suburbs to buy packs of cigarettes.

Returning to the video, you  can see the parent appreciating the extra frisson of excitement the driver added to an otherwise unmemorable school run -which is why he thanks the driver for their contribution. It's hard to see, but the driver waves their hand in acknowledgement of the appreciation.

2WD Drivers -please get the 4x4 out for the school run today

Following on our advice to pedestrians and cyclists, we have one more

A lot people are still driving their small cars to school and work, creating needless traffic jams for important people. Here on Whiteladies road you can see this.
 
This traffic jam is making it hard for us to complete our Clifton school runs -and so feel smug about spending an extra £1500 on a vehicle with awful fuel economy. They are also hard to park -which is why Clifton so desperately needs more parking.

This morning you can see that pedestrians who ignored our advice to stay at home are holding a 2WD up Whiteladies Gate, slowing down a Landrover.
 

At the top of Cotham Hill, we can see more 2WD cars in trouble -with a pedestrian making it harder to clear the junction, so endangering themselves as these vehicles struggle to get through.


Please can all drivers leave the round-town runabouts at home and get the big cars out today -you know you deserve it.

Cyclists -think before you walk round the city

Just as we think pedestrians should stay at home, we think cyclists should question their journeys
 
they won't be cycling -they'll be walking -and in doing so, selfishly, making traffic worse.

  
It's not safe and you know it -why else would you be cycling.

The cyclist above is not only endangering themselves, they are still trying to get their son to school -a child who is being endangered by being forced to walk in the road.

Be like the owners of these bicycles: have a day off
  

Pedestrians -please stay at home!

It's snowing out there -and a lot of people are still trying to walk to their destination

The conditions are so bad that many of these people are walking in the road. This includes all the students trying to get to their lectures -when they could be indoors talking about snow on facebook or twitter.

Walking in the road is dangerous and selfish

Please can everyone trying to walk round the city, think "is this journey really necessary". If not, don't go out.
 
If you must go out -do not walk in the road, where you may hold up a 4x4, such as this landrover in Clifton -someone important trying to get their child to school before driving over to Clifton Village to help the local economy in a cafe.

Think before you walk!

The R242AAC incident: the outcome

There's an article in the Independents aying "Helmet Cameras are useless and the police can't do anything with the videos". Sadly we fear this is untrue: the police can prosecute drivers with the videos -if they choose to do so. The fact that most of the country hasn't seen any such prosecutions is due to the police, not the law.

Sadly, because Bristol police do intervene. Here is the sentencing letter from a small incident in which the car R242AAC forgot to give way to cyclists on a roundabout. We have covered this here and here.


 

Case against Anthony Butterworth, 

I am writing to let you know what has happened in this case in which you are a witness.

At the hearing on 30th December 2011 at North Avon Magistrates Court, Anthony Butterworth pleaded guilty to the following charges:

• Drive a mechanically propelled vehicle on a road/in a public place without due care and attention.

Anthony Butterworth was sentenced as follows

• To pay £375 fine

• Victim surcharge £15

• To pay £35 costs

• Given 5 penalty points.

...etc.

Five penalty points merely for nearly running two cyclists over? It's that -and the impact on the driver's insurance that hurts.

As a reminder, here is the incident in question:



Admittedly, he did pull straight out onto the roundabout without looking, but it was a quiet bank holiday. He had no reason to expect people to be on bicycles at that time in the morning.

The war on the motorists will not be over while the police are using helmet camera videos to impose fines and penalty points on law-abiding motorists!

We actually spoke to the parent who made the video, and got this statement:

"I am pleased that finally this driver was punished for their actions. The police and Jon Rogers were very supportive all through this process -going to a lot of effort to track down and prosecute the driver. I would like to thank everyone involved.

As you can see from the video, my son was wearing a helmet, and he has taken part in the council-backed cycling courses, which instruct children how to cycle safely in our city. 

As you can also see, this does nothing to address the fact that some drivers are selfish and dangerous. You can tell people what the safe position for vehicular cycling is, but unless the drivers look -or care that you are there-, you are still in danger.

The next time someone tries to argue that vehicular cycling is the right approach, that safety in numbers is the answer -and dutch style cycling paths a mistake -point them at this video and say "how could these people have cycled more safely?"

Well, they have the right to their opinions, no matter how misguided they are. We just close with the thought that a police force enforcing laws against motorists for such minor infractions of traffic laws could be one of the most  dangerous parts of a cycling city.

Followup on the "R242AAC incident"

We've been keeping an eye on the Times's Cities Safe for Cycling campaign.


We weren't that worried, because their manifesto was all about infrastructure. Such projects take years and can be put off on the grounds of the "the economy is in crisis -all we can afford is more bypasses".

What they had left out was the one thing that could have made our life tangibly worse straight away -demanding anything resembling enforcement of traffic laws. Today we can drive into ASLs on the phone, speed around the city, park in bike lanes, sound our horn behind cyclists. The underpeople may view all this as harassment, but it is what we need to do to get by in our city. There isn't room in the city for bike lanes, not when short term parking is so critical; stopping behind ASLs costs us seconds when the lights change, and mobile phones reduce the cost of congestion.

We need to break these outdated highway code laws to keep the city moving!

What's  concerned us recently is not just that the times is giving cyclists more publicity, but that they are slowly starting to look at enforcement:

• Put onus on drivers, says cycling world champion Mark Cavendish.
• Tougher sentences demanded against drivers who kill cyclists

That's a danger -a legal system that actually enforces the outdated rules. Of course, for that we will need judges that care about cyclists -which we are fortunately a long way off from having, and a police force that forwards cases to them.

The latter is something we all fear, obviously. Which is why it is so reassuring to look at the Cycling Silk's blog and see that in London, the police, sensibly, refuse to do anything. Indeed, the unit set to to focus on road safety, Roadpeace, are leading the way in this refusal to do anything.

Similarly, up in Glasgow, the one surviving cyclist, Magnatom, has actually been surprised to discover that the police won't do anything about HGVs nearly running him over at roundabouts.

It is critical that this unofficial policy remains. The growing popularity of helmet and handlebar cameras means that the things we used to do with impunity, now become videoed and stuck up online. If the police acted on these videos, then it would be worse than when the speed cameras were turned on.

Which is why today, we have some bad news for all important people in a hurry. Bristol Police do seem to care about the cyclists.

As regular readers may recall, last October we covered an incident where the car R242AAC nearly ran over a cyclist at a mini-roundabout.
 




The cyclist had complained to the police, who were trying to track the driver down. However, the driver had been successfully using the "don't reply to the letters" gambit, along with the "hide under the sofa when the police come by" tactic. It looked like they would get away with it.

Sadly for him, just before the time limit ran out, the police uploaded his registration number to the "cars to stop" list  on all the police cars, and within a week he'd been pulled over, forced to acknowledge he had been the driver, and pulled into court for "driving without due care and attention"

Now, at this point the normal my word vs their word argument would come out, and since the cyclist is trying to prove guilt, it's hard for them to make any defensible claims about our driving. And here is where those helmet cameras really hurt.

The driver had done what we'd do: deny all charges. But as soon as the video was shown to them, they realised that the usual denial tactic was doomed, and changed their plea to guilty.

We'll cover this in more detail shortly, but the key thing to bear in mind is this:

Not only are cyclists filming their journeys, the police in Bristol are acting on their complaints.

This is chilling. At least is hasn't got as far as London or Glasgow yet -maybe we should all move there.

Films@59 making Cotham Hill a Shared Space

It's lovely to see a company -here Films at 59- taking on an idea like "shared space" and embracing it.

Here on a weekday we can see them doing it perfectly.

The white van X548DJR over the yellow lines and the buildout mark the entry to the zone

Further on, the paveparked car LD07NYF, the van KU59DLJ that's claimed the driveway  and the white vanRD04NXU  half up on the pavement rounds it off -this area is shared with pedestrians and cyclists -we hope they appreciate this sharing!
 
The cycle logo on the floor shows this is national cycle route 4 -introducing cyclists to the shared space concept -and the forced swerve makes them slow down for the shared zone

The way they've managed to remove all visibility acts as a lovely piece of traffic calming, as even cars have to slow down.
 
Congratulations, Films at 59, for this selfless action.

The last time we had some coverage of this shared space area, there was a blip in traffic with a referrer of some server in the films at 59 domain -as if someone saw the coverage, agreed that having one van block the pavement made it harder for other vans to drive up it, and raised the issues with their colleagues.

Clearly the "shared space" approach is the solution to this problem.

Big Hello to R242AAC: roundabout jumper

We've had this video for a while, but been keeping quiet about it. Why? because there is a limit of six months for charging anyone for any dangerous driving/careless driving offence, and this driver has been successfully avoiding all attempts by the police to contact him. While that creates a new offence, "failing to report who was driving at the time an offence was committed", again, that has a limit.

This is profound. It means if you can hide for long enough, you can even get away with nearly running over a family at a roundabout.

The video and email came to us from "S":

I have a video of a near miss by a car that failed to stop for me and my nine year old son at a roundabout.

We are cycling up Cotham Road, about to go down over the roundabout to Cotham Hill. Cotham Road is calmer now the zebra crossing is in, and as you can see, the few cars passing on the bank holiday gives my son a wide berth, which is appreciated.

As we approach the roundabout, at 08:00 on 29 of April, I get my son in the correct place to go over, check that nothing is pulling out and we set off. I can hear the sound of a car approaching from the left, from St Michael's Hill, so I warn my son that this this car on the left is the next hazard we are going to worry about -as you can hear in the commentary.

As we get partway over, I pull ahead of my son, to make sure the approach car sees us slows down in good time.

However, instead of looking, instead of slowing down, this car pulls straight out onto the mini roundabout. If I had been about 50cm further ahead, I would have been hit, and if my son had been about 1.5m ahead of where he was, he would have been hit.

The car registration was R242AAC, I repeat this phonetically multiple times after the incident, along with the date and time, and at 1:12 in the video you can see the registration number, along with the Honda logo and the Accord model name.

The driver was a white male, with -I believe -brownish hair. He saw me and waved mildly apologetically as he continues through the junction without slowing down, continuing down Hampton Road. I follow him briefly enough to confirm the registration number, then turn back to see my son.

We are impressed not just by the driver's bravery in pulling out on what can be a busy roundabout without looking, but in their successful attempt to avoid what are apparently repeated attempts by the police to contact the driver, as with a video like this it would be pretty hard to deny your car was there.

We hope that nobody in the Bristol Area manages to spot this dark blue Honda Accord registration number R242AAC, that is R242 AAC and then immediately contacts the Avon and Somerset police on the phone number 101. All readers of this blog must keep an eye out for this car and make sure there are no cyclists in the area, to defend this bold driver from the menace caused by militant troublemakers who video their journeys round the city and complain about such minor things like nearly being killed.

The fact that if you hide for six months you can avoid prosecution is a new one to us. We look forward to using that technique ourselves in the near future.

Correct junction tactics

This video of Stokes Croft on a weekday evening is interesting. As well as the number of cyclists trying to along a road which clearly doesn't welcome them, most drivers are taking the collect "seize the junction" option here at the junction with Jamaica Street. Indeed, the yellow-hatching only covers half the road: its OK to block vehicles coming out of Jamaica Street, just not those going in.


What is odd is that the car at the end, WR60VVG , doesn't take the junction, even though at list late in the cycle, there's a risk of the lights changing before she gets to go through. Admittedly, she has passed the lights so can't see them changing, but even so, why hold back?

It's only as she goes past the camera that we can see why: she's on the phone.

That's a problem that phone users present: they slow down the vehicles behind. If she'd been paying attention she would have gone through earlier, and another car could have come up behind. While she didn't suffer, another vehicle did.

No, this is what we'd do


At 0:15 you can see some pickup -a proper vehicle- go through the roundabout and stop in front of the Cotham Hill traffic. That lets vehicles behind turn right, and ensures that the pickup driver isn't held up by anyone else. Of course, it does block that Cotham Hill traffic, so the usual "If you don't see them they aren't there" tactic kicks in: don't look to either side.

What does the driver do. The phone would be a context switch and make them less responsive to changes in the road ahead. No, they do a better action: they eat their breakfast. There's nothing like a bacon roll and a bottle of cider for a breakfast on the road. Eating this way reduces the cost of congestion: instead of being stuck in the middle of the roundabout being "wasted" time, it is now useful. We think the drivers coming up the hill, instead of being unhappy about the driver's actions, should exploit this opportunity and have their own breakfasts.

Safety in Numbers? More like tension

One theory is that as more people cycle, the more we, the important people, will expect bicycles. That's true, but it doesn't mean we welcome them. Instead it just makes us more frustrated.

Take this video of MJ06OSJ, going up Cotham Hill. They've been held up by a line of bicycles, and when they do finally a chance to overtake, there's another bicycle coming in the other directi0n. What to do?

As the video shows, the correct action is: continue anyway. If you've been held up by one bicyclist, you may as well punish another with a near death experience. It may discourage them from trying the same trick next time.

Optimising the School Run

Interesting scene here, not one we've noticed before.



This the Cotham Hill/St Michaels Hill mini roundabout, one of the high points of the city, and wonderfully representative. This is an excellent example of how the removal of traffic lights permits an efficient traffic flow.

But today, cars aren't exiting Cotham Hill. At 0:10 you can see why. The parent on the school run has opted not to pull over into the cycle lane, or even drive to keep-clear area in front of the school. Instead they just stop at the top of the road, let the kid out, a child who can then safely walk to the traffic island, and then over one more lane before reaching a zebra crossing, then get to school. The parent can get to their destination without any detour, without even struggling to get their car out of the bike lane and into the main car lane.

This action encourages physical activity in the child, and reduces congestion near the school. It also enable the child to cross the road safely. At 0:18-0:20 you can hear one of the vehicles behind expressing their concerns over this action, by sounding the horn. But if they were on the school run, why not let their kid out at the same time?

co-existence

Some of the cyclists think that if there are enough of them on our roads the rest of society will suddenly welcome them, it will suddenly become safer, and that everyone will happily dance around singing Dutch songs. Well, we have some bad news there

The increase in the number of people cycling, combined with the rises in petrol's costs, merely makes us angrier and more resentful

It's not enough they aren't paying to use the roads, they hold us up. The more bicycles, the more we get held up. We can experiment with this by secretly instrumenting cyclists and then collecting the videos, and seeing if conflict increases or decreases over time.

Here we see white van YB06BDO being held up by a bicycle as it turns into Cotham Hill from Aberdeen Road. It stops. What does the rider have to complain about? At least this driver wasn't on the phone.


He stopped, polite discussion followed. None of this road-rage stuff. A friendly city. Why do they complain so?

A local driving school discusses the highway code

Our coverage of the anti-car streets of Horfield generated some comments from 2nd2none driving school, who seemed to misinterpret our photos of one of their instructors cars parked on the pavement as some form of criticism. Nothing could be further from the truth! We are merely jealous that the instructor who lives in the area has some empty pavement outside their house that they can call their own. In the inner city we can spend twenty minutes driving round looking for some space on a buildout or zebra crossing, yet in the suburbs, there is a bit of pavement every household can call their own. The only time we've ever said anything mildly critical of this driving school was when we caught them parking legally in Montpelier, because that's failing to teach people the local skills. Robbies driving school never gets caught doing that.

First, they say:

by this comment you dont actually drive and are simply a busy body with nothing better to do than ride around complaining about trivial things like this.

Bristol Traffic is a community project that exists to document, not take sides. You appear to have taken our coverage as some form of criticism, for which we must apologise.

Anyway, the driving school made some valid points, the first one being:

we teach our pupils to park correctly but anyone can clearly see that these roads are far to small to do that.
...
at times parking on the pavement is unavoidable as to keep the road clear for other users.

Exactly. There is the theory "don't park on places you aren't allowed to", and practice "park where you need to" -and its the difference between the two which we find fascinating, and why driving school and L-plated cars get extra coverage that normal cars don't usually merit. We aren't criticising, merely observing and documenting.

Now, -and this is where it gets interesting- some people replies to the driving school's comments, not agreeing with them, but instead pointing out the bit of the highway code that discusses parking on pavements! This is shocking! Even more so when at more than one of the people replying claimed to be a contributor to the site! We shall have to pay more attention to who we let submit photographs and videos, as some of them clearly hold different opinions from our own -and the rest of the tax paying motorists in the city who subsidise their pedestrian lifestyle. See that? Pedestrian. It's come to mean "slow". There's a hint there.

Fortunately, the driving school replied and made a key point that wins the argument:

as for the highway code, this is a rule book that was written in 1931 with approximately 2 million cars on the road and the motor car being a non essential commodity, not the 27 million cars that now exist on this small island. There simply isnt enough road space for driving or parking and Bristol has one of the worst managed road systems of any city's.

This is precisely what we think, which is why we exist to document how utterly out of touch the highway code is, such as its complete lack of exemptions for anyone like us doing deliveries in town.

Look at this white van, WP57WGW, parked over a zebra crossing at the bottom of Cotham Hill December 8 2010! Zebra crossings and belisha beacons are a 1930s idea -time to move on!

Look at N&C deliveries truck N6MOV, who know that unloading pallets takes priority over solid white "do not cross lines" and double yellow lines alongside them on the Cotham Hill on December 8. Yellow lines? Obsolete! Time to move on!

Again -what a coincidence- here on Cotham Brow, December 8, Falafel King's delivery van WR58GWG is parked up on the pavement on double yellow lines. Yes, the old highway code says you must not do this, but if you need to get falafels into van, what else can you do? Double yellow lines? Pavements wide enough for pedestrians? Obsolete! Time to move on!

We close, however, with this video of the streets in Horfield round where the 2nd2none car was spotted, giving viewers from outside the city a harsh introduction to this area's problems. The roads aren't wide enough for cars to park two abreast, and the alternative -park on one side walking a bit- would involve walking a bit. As for double parking -forget it! These aren't the wide streets of Clifton.

The 2nd2none driving school must feel so proud as they drive round these streets, seeing what may be many former happy customers, not only having got past the test, but parking in the streets the way people in our city really need to do -even in the parts of town where there are still spaces on the other side of the road.

And of course, if you want to get new customers for your motor vehicles, there is the tilleys tactic, namely co-opting the bike path, footpath or pavement to sell your wares. Every pedestrian whose route is obstructed by a driving school vehicle will realise that driving not only gets them round town better, it lets them park conveniently afterwards, and so will be more tempted to spend the money to learn to drive.

Roundabout work #2: 08:17

Once the mercedes that blocked vehicles getting off the roundabout had cleared it, vehicles wanting to get onto St Michael's Hill could pull out, and here see the correct tactic: stop cars getting onto the roundabout. It's the only way to reduce demand, and so ensure the junction clears.

Which vehicle do we see here? Yes, its YA55VDY, the cult van of Bristol Traffic

Notice how the vehicle following this car is also in the mini-roundabout, but it hangs back to actually allow pedestrians to cross at the traffic island. Of course, this will prevent vehicles turning right to pull out, which is a bit selfish, but it does allow the roundabout to clear by reducing vehicle ingress rates to match that of egress rates.

The key point here is that it shows that those fellow-motorist-activist groups who advocate removing traffic lights are either missing the point or hiding the truth. On a junction without lights -like this one- the only way to get through is to be aggressive: drive the big vehicles, the 4x4, or even better, the battered big-vehicle, such as the white van. Now we, as white-van drivers, are happy with this, but we think the harsh truth should be discussed in the open, not discovered once they remove lights from the city centre: whoever values their vehicle least wins.

Roundabout work #1: 08:15

08:15 to 08:16 on the top of St Michael's Hill.

First a car with a Montpelier-MOT wingmirror duct-taped into place. Someone just horned it as to get to this part of the junction (see on the dashed lines) it had to sprint up the oncoming traffic lane.

But by doing so it gets to pull out where the mercedes stuck in the middle of the mini roundabout has left a gap, follow the van through to the right and hope that there isn't anyone crossing the zebra crossing, which would block up the roundabout some more.

It does clear, the gap allows a car coming up Cotham Hill to pull out and turn right into St Michael's Hill.

Or it would, if the Mercedes hadn't stayed where it was.

Do you see what's wrong here? By staying back on the mini roundabout, by allowing cars out of Cotham Road, the school-run-driver is, sadly, making things worse. All the vehicles who are held up on Cotham Hill will see this and drive more considerately.

Pavement blocking: does it help us motorists

October's bike park movement on Cotham Hill was apparently to help the local cafe -the one that is being repainted as "manga manga" have some outdoor seating. Well, we don't know or care about that, but one thing that does interest us is whether the newly positioned bike parks do enough to discourage walking?

The combination of some seemingly accidentally badly placed bike racks with some shopping signs put out for passing cars does make it very hard indeed to walk across this road, and so should discourage students from doing so. FirstBus and we motorists will benefit from this, obviously.

But does it work? We can still see people trying to squeeze past all the furniture.

The bike racks make cyclists feel welcome, even if the one we see is heading towards a junction which we hope the GBBN proposals will make impossible for them to cross.

Furthermore the other side of the road is still open to pedestrians, and if they can't skateboard down the pavement, they just switch to the road instead.

It may make walking less pleasant, but it isn't enough to stop the locals and students from getting in our way.

YA55VDY pulls out

People have been mailing us, where is the Yoghurt Van YA55VDY? Has some disaster struck Bristol's supply of dairy goods. The answer is no, the clocks changing just altered its schedule.

It doesn't pull off without indicating from the buildout by Whiteladies Gate until 08:10 now, helping to remind the driver of the honda SUV why buying a vehicle that may survive a collision with a white van was a good decision that makes school runs safer.


Note how the driver actually waves our (sadly cycling) reporter. The proposed GBBN changes may make it harder for this van, as the buildout may not be so large. While we can't see from the design whether or not bollards are planned, we fear the worst.

Cotham Hill Summit Problems

The final question about the showcase bus route proposals is will the removal of a zebra crossing at the bottom of Cotham Hill and a dedicated turning lane help school run parents turning off at Cotham Hill?

Not if this video of a weekday morning is consistent. There's a jam all the way up the hill from Oakfield Road.

Sometimes there is less of a jam, and then parents can safely pull over onto the bike lane without their fear of their children being hit by a cyclist as they drop them off at one of the local schools (St Peter and Paul's RC is the closest), then carry on to the parent's final destination without any detour.

This is safe, provided the cyclists don't interfere. Today you can see that our secretly-instrumented tax-dodger swerved out of the bike lane, into the tax-payer's lane, forcing the car W153KDA to pull out aggressively to avoid being stuck behind them.

Whiteladies Road : offpeak issues

We sent our expendable cyclist on downhill run of Whiteladies Road on a Saturday afternoon. Note people with the orange bags. That means small-revenue-sainsburys shoppers, either locals or students. The supermarket relies on a high turnover of these poor pedestrian people to compensate for a lack of parking. However, these people then get in way of us who are driving to or from proper supermarkets.

Put differently: the pedestrians who walk and shop locally not only take up space in the supermarkets they go to, they slow down shoppers who shop elsewhere.

What this video does shows is that at off peak weekend times the congestion is caused by people walking around. Therefore, the GBBN proposal to remove the zebra crossing seen at 1:32 (and implicitly, crank back the crossing time allocated on the lights at 1:28, because now there will be a full sequence scheduling right and left turns as well as straight on) may benefit at this time of the week: the off peak times.

But rewind a bit. Note how all the cars pulling out from any side road rely on the goodwill of cars on Whiteladies Road to get out. Because you may as well while you are waiting -you would hope someone else was as generous back- and because it costs you nothing. If the pedestrian crossing options were cranked back, then not only does it make it harder for pedestrians and cyclists to cross the road -which clearly we are happy with- then it will also be harder for cars to cross the road, unless someone added more traffic lights at these side roads. And we don't want that, do we?

This makes us think that part of the FirstBus GBBN schedule is not just to improve scheduling by removing pedestrian/cyclists holding up cars and buses, its secretly trying to stop cars getting across the road too, because we take advantage of the stopped traffic. There's a price see. And, because the parked cars will be removed, it's harder for you to edge out when making a turn. Instead of being safely protected from bicycles by the first row of parked cars, now you either need to hang back in the side road (as if) or pull out in front of the bus/bike lane and have people whine at you for being in their way.

Returning to the video, note at 1:40 the car double parked on Cotham Hill forcing the other cars past it. Sometimes you need to do that, park next to your destination, nothing wrong there. But if the proposal to remove the zebra crossing goes away, vehicles turning into Cotham Hill from Whiteladies Road, especially those coming down the hill, would pull in faster. The zebra crossing is a form of traffic calming. Without it, it would become more dangerous to double park your car in a popular shopping street, or to overtake such double parked cars.

Again, this is why we are in a moral dilemma regarding the Proposed Bus Route. The key benefit for us would be if it reduced the number of pedestrians in our way, but even we recognise that a limited number of pedestrians actually helps cross traffic.

The cult of YA55VDY and the impact of the Whiteladies Showcase Bus Route

Mid life crises. What do do? Sports cars? Mamils? Fixies. No: stalking. It's under-respected, and what the Internet, from Google to Facebook was made for.

We in the B.T. Project have taken up stalking one vehicle, and are pursuing it round the city. YA55VDY: the van that we are proud to have never ever seen parked even vaguely legally.

It's more than just a protest against anti-car, anti-van features, this takes dedication. Here, for example, you could park parallel to the double yellow lines, unload safely and pull out without having to back up blind into Picton Street first. But no, the driver has chosen to park 1m away from the kerb, echelon style, to make a statement. Deliveries matter.

We also have some footage from one of our secretly-instrumented cyclists going down Cotham Hill -you can see the distinctive shape of the van enables our tax-dodger to recognise the vehicle from a distance. This van is now famous!

Now, what's inside the van? We couldn't be bothered to drive over and look, but one of the cycle activists we were haranging here in Monty did -Captain Bikebeard says "yoghurt". Now we know.

In fact, this van is now so famous it deserves its own Facebook fan page. One van, one driver, prepared to stand up against an oppressive state by refusing to park where they make him, instead always -even if it means going out of his way- parking "illegally", as if the state gets to decide where is and isn't legal to park your van.

A few days later, we see it now on the double yellows on Whiteladies Road. 

The showcase bus route proposes changes here, so where the van is parked to unload will become a dedicated left turn into Cotham Hill, with its own light sequence. The Cotham Hill zebra crossing will go away, be replaced by some lights which will allow us to drive through while pedestrians wait to cross (as if we didn't do that already), while the addition of a new lane and pedestrian refuge will make walking across the road harder -and well-nigh impossible for any parent with bike plus child trailer or tagalong, which our secretly instrumented report appears to be doing.

This is why we have mixed feelings about the showcase bus route proposal.

Against:

• Removes commuter parking from Whiteladies Road.
• Encourages bicyclists to cycle up and down the road

Pro

• Increases short stay parking on Whiteladies Road.
• Removes a zebra crossing used during the rush hour by slow-moving children and students.
• Adds a dedicated feed-in lane to Cotham Hill.
• The feed in lane will suddenly abandon the cyclists from the safety of a dedicated lane to a situation where they have to merge right into the Whiteladies Road lane just at the same time that all the Redland Mum traffic turning left is trying to swerve left to get into this lane, so putting off the cyclists from every trying to commute by bicycle ever again.

One of our concerns here is that, in the age of austerity, we don't see why any money needs to be spent so that cars can cut in from Whiteladies Road to Cotham Hill. We force our way through the zebra crossing anyway, so all it does is actually increase the likelihood that we get held up by a red light; removes the option of turning right from Cotham Hill to Whiteladies Road, and makes it harder to get a lorry through the corner.