MoD Abbeywood cycle path access issues

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

First, note how the bike barriers are down.

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

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

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

Car access on MOD Abbey Wood Cycle path


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


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


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


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


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


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

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

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

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

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

More investigations -and maybe some experiments- are needed.

Cyclist Harassment of Hospitality Industry Training driver on the A4174

Last week's focus on Abbeywood and the nearby area should have been enough to show cyclists they were not welcome in this part of the town, the car city. Yet shocking coverage comes to us of a cyclist in this very area, harassing a car driver on the A4174 ring-road for using a mobile phone. We will let the contributor, "A", speak for themselves:

One of the big advantages of driving a car is that it leaves your hands free for other things like reading some papers, or talking on your mobile. Or in this case both (steering can always be conducted using your knees). Never mind that talking on the phone might occasionally distract you from the actual job at hand (driving) causing you to collide with the odd pedestrian, cyclist or anyone else.

That's why we were so upset to see this video of an unknown cyclist accosting this poor employee of the very appropriately named HIT (Hospitality Industry Training) on the A4174 near Coldharbour Lane, Filton.

There he is trying to have a conversation on his phone, whilst looking through what looks like his appointment book when this cyclist has the cheek to ask him what his employer thinks of him driving using a phone. Just for the record again, that's Hospitality Industry Training Limited, www.hittraining.co.uk, tel 0800 093 5892, the vehicle a white Renault van, registration number AY09ZNP.

The driver with the phone doesn't shock us -what else can you do in the awful traffic jams there- but what shocks us is how the cyclist shows no shame at all. Not a bit. In fact, we suspect they are proud of what they did.

MOD Abbey Wood Week

We have some coverage of Abbey Wood this week, to make sure that the green bike paths shown on the maps don't match up with changes on the ground, because this part of Bristol is our part of the Great Car Economy, and we want it to stay that way. Before the coverage begins, note that our coverage of abbey wood parking problems bring in a lot of visitors, here are the keywords in the last month that brought visitors to our page on site parking issues.

abbey wood mod
abbey wood
abbeywood mod
commuting bristol filton abbey woods
abbey wood parking
abbeywood mod.com
bath to abbey wood cycle path
abbey wood bristol parking
car parking near abbey wood bristol
cycle bristol to abbey wood
m.o.d staff parking abbeywood
mod abbey wood parking
abbey wood + mod
abbey wood mod address
abbey woods mod
abbeywood mod bristol
abbeywood parking
bristol mod site
buses to abbeywood bristol
cycling from bath to filton abbey wood
parking nr filton abbey wood
trains to abbey wood bristol

It is reassuring to see that more people seem concerned about parking nearby than bicycle or public transport access.

Filton Road Holdups

From a couple of weeks back, South Gloucestershire Council dared to close Filton Road, that well known short-cut so much loved by UWE students and Business Park users that avoids the lights and queues on the A4174 (the reason for those queues? mostly people using the short cut but never mind).

Anyway, the barriers and signs didn't deter many, convinced this was some clever ploy by Council Engineers into tricking them to take the long way round, a great drivers saw those pesky cyclists sneaking through and decided they'd follow, including the driver we see here in the Citroen Xsara X268GOV.


The only problem was the signs weren't a clever ploy after all, the Council really had dug the road up. And we see poor old X268GOV has been forced to execute a 5 point turn and come back the other way. Worse they've now got to go back down Filton Road, past all the 'Road Closed' ahead and Diversion signs they'd apparently missed earlier and re-join the back of the queue on the dreaded A4174: a dual carriageway whose opportunity for widening has been neglected at the expense of a bike lane that never gets used by bicycles, on account of them being on this rat-run instead.

And the reason for the road closure? Gas works? New sewers? No, to add insult to injury those lunatics at the Council had closed the road to build a new cycle path!

South Gloucestershire is the motor-centric part of Bristol, and such facilities and road closures go against the interests of the residents and commuters. Why do they think we moved to out of town villages and got jobs in a featureless sprawl of buildings, were it not to drive to work and home again, pausing only to nip in to Sainsbury's and B&Q's on the way home, eating a hamburger grabbed from the McDonald's drive through as we do so?

If we had wanted to live somewhere where we walked and cycled to shops and to work we would have chosen to live and work in the city centre. We don't and we didn't -so why is this anti-car council interfering with our lifestyle choices?

Abbey Wood MOD site parking

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Abbey Wood Cycle Facilities

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

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

First, a big sign promising new cycle routing.

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

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

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

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

The Old Filton Road bike path

The Old Filton Road runs parallel to the A4174 ring road. It's a nice way to cycle between Frenchay and UWE, and is popular with the lunchtime runners.

Here's a bike approaching from Frenchay, on the road.

Here's another one. Again, on the road. There's a nominal 30 mph speed limit, which the approaching van is actually following

The Evening Post should be proud that there are no-pavement criminal cyclists here, and that this pavement is safe to walk down.

Except, what's this? The pavement is actually marked as for bicycles as well as pedestrians?

That's right. This 1.5 metre wide path is meant to be for bicycles as well as pedestrians, even though all these cyclists are ignoring it.

And the best bit. By providing such a stunning cycle facility, the local council can acquiesce to the campaign of the local conservative and unionist councillors -and the prospective parliamentary candidate- to re-open this narrow rat-run to cars driving UWE and the business park.

This feature, costing £120,000, is something which South Gloucs. council is actually proud of and had a big press event when it opened last autumn. Because as everyone knows, cyclists would rather cycle on a pavement than enjoy a traffic free road. As the council put it, these works were "designed to improve the environment for cyclists and pedestrians"

This must have been a great moral dilemma for our local legacy-printed-press. One the one hand, they hate bicycles on pavements. On the other, they like roads being opened to cars. What to do? Because they'd rather a bicycle on the pavement than slowing down their cars, they went with unrestricted praise in Bristol Road Reopens; title and prose on a par with "Berlin Wall Comes Down" or "Nelson Mandela Released". The best bit is the comments section where "Rob, Frenchay" complains that the biggest problem now is that some bikes are completely ignoring their pavement and slowing down the cars, and requesting that the council "enforce the cyclist to be on the path".

Yes, this is a bike path that the Evening Post, the Association of British Drivers and we in Bristol Traffic can all be proud of, even if none of any of these parties, drivers or cyclists alike, consider it worthy of use.

UWE: Recognised Pedestrian Route

Right on the edge of the UWE campus, there's a "recognised pedestrian route to campus". It says so in big letters and a symbol of somebody walking.

That's a really strange concept. The city proper has these things called "pavements", and with the notable exception of Montpelier and Clifton Wood, they are generally considered "recognised pedestrian routes". Yet here, out in the car-centric city fringe, they have signs up telling you where you are expected to walk.

And where to walk from? Well, there is a zebra crossing, with another sign at the far end.

It says: "recognised pedestrian route to car park 20".

Ahh, now it becomes clear. For a moment there was the glimpse of hope, the idea that thousands of UWE students would walk in to campus from somewhere, maybe the train stations, maybe nearby housing, and go to lectures. But no, they are walking in from Car Park 20.

That tells us

1. There isn't enough space on campus for all the staff and students to drive in, they have to have more parking across the road.
2. There are at least 19 other car parks. They have not yet numbered up and opened the car parks on the former-HP land they recently bought, and B&Q Filton is not official parking, so those areas are not included in the total.
3. There is no expectation that anyone will walk to UWE except from the car park.

UWE is probably the best, the greenest of the sites here -take a look at the queues of cars leaving the MOD at 1700h for a contrast, and the U1-U5 buses are the best road-based public transport options in the area. However, barring theLockleaze path, driving is probably one of the main access options to the city. At least compared to its neighbours, the students drive small cars and fill them with their flatmates, so the CO2/head and congestion impact per student is less than for the companies -but it does set them up for a lifestyle of sitting in traffic jams, one they can use for the rest of their life. Think about it: Oxford and Cambridge: cycling. London: tubes and buses. UWE: driving to lectures.

Green and Pleasant Land

Isn't Google Earth Wonderful?

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

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

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

MOD Abbey Wood

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

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

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

The end of Dovercourt Road

Josh Hart's already-famous analysis of city streets looked at Dovercourt Road. Here is the northern end, by Bonington Lane. And what do we see parked all wheels-on-the-pavement? A Driving School car.

Presumably it is off duty, so the owner of the peugeot VN51ODX can park how they like.

Note the building work going on up the road. You don't really want to park on this road while building work goes on, not if you value your car.

Which is why this van has opted to sneak up behind the bollards, so ensuring lorries or other site vehicles don't clip it.

Shopping without cars

One of the hardest things to cope with without cars is shopping for food, especially bulk food shopping. It's OK if you have time to walk to the local patisserie to get some pain au chocolate in the morning, but if you need a week's food you need to hit either a supermarket or one of the remaining high streets, buy your entire weekly load and head home. Without a car or a bike trailer, you are constrained by how much you can buy, so end up having to shop more often, which is pretty time consuming.

Here is some evidence of people who have embraced foot shopping.

This Sainsbury's trolley is in Cheltenham Place, Montpelier. The closes Sainsbury's supermarket is in Gloucester Road, across saint andrews, and about a mile away. Someone must have pushed it all this way, presumably full of food.


And here is another trolly, resting in the undergrowth near Lockleaze. A couple of miles from Sainbury's Filton site. So again: someone has pushed a trolley a long way, hopefully full of food. It may have just been pushed to UWE full of food -as a lot of students have been doing- and then "joyriders" took it from there, but it is still a sign of foot-out-trolly-home shopping.

The supermarkets don't like this, some people view it as unsightly. But why should supermarket trolleys be limited to the car park? That's a very car-centric world view. As part of our cycle-city, we should encourage people to walk to supermarkets and push trolleys full of food home. Why not have trolley return points at UWE and other parts of the city where students live, so as to aid them to live a car-free life?

Fringe Path

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

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

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

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

MOD path improvements: MTB race training

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

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

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

(thanks to Shawn for this photo)