Railway Path Signage

As the extended route through Wickham Glen goes on, signs are already up on Alcove Road pointing to Eastville Park

Similarly, there are signs off Fishponds road letting pedestrians and cyclists know that their reserved route is nearby

To help cyclists get to this oasis, Avon Home Carers of fishponds have graciously parked both cars WU10LLV and WU60MHN up on the pavement, so creating a wider road for the cyclists.

We hope the tax dodgers are grateful, for, as the logo says "we care"

Death on Fishponds Road

Bristol lost a teenager on Monday: Junaid Nazir age 16, killed on Fishponds Road -in front of his own house. A taxi driver was arrested on suspicion of causing death by dangerous driving, then released on bail. We don't know any other details.

One of our contributors went past the site on Tuesday evening -here are their comments:

This was an awful thing to happen, an awful thing to see. Junaid's friends and family were there -all of them utterly devastated. He left to go to school at Filton College, and instead of coming home after another day at school, he never came back. All his dreams are gone, all that is left are memories.

Every time his family leave the house, they are going to pass the place where this child -their son, their brother, their cousin - died.

It was really heartbreaking to be here, I tried really hard to get a photo of the flower and not all the friends and family, -as that wasn't right. They were very welcoming, but it's hard to cover this. No schoolkids should be placing flowers to mourn the needless death of one of their friends.

Afterwards, I went down Fishponds Road -never fun- then turned into Roygate Lane, then onto the railway path. Suddenly I'd gone from the friends and family mourning the death of a sixteen year old to the late summer peace and pleasantness of an almost Dutch walking and cycling route into the city. Yet what point is it in having such a lovely facility if you can't even get across a road 300 metres away alive?

The whole Bristol Traffic team extends our condolences to the family and friends -it will take a long time for everyone to come to terms with this, and -based on personal experience- nobody will ever really get over it. You can never forget.

We'd also like to hint to Evening Post that when they put up articles on tragic events such as Junaid's death, that either they disable comments or they monitor them so all four regular mad commenters don't just repeat their own prejudices -again, and again, and again. This is not the place for them.

Our normal service will be resumed in a few days. In the meantime, there is a growing monument in Fishponds to a failure of the entire "road safety" industry. Consider visiting it.

Siemens Highway Maintenance: Exempt

Who should we see on Fishponds Road one sunny weekday morning but the Siemens traffic light team, working on the pedestrian crossing, having moved on from Muller Road.

While taking this photo of the van BN59YEC, someone up a ladder on the other side of this street started shouting "I'm exempt! I'm exempt!". We don't care! We are here to document the possible, not criticise!

However, his claim raises an interesting thought. As we discussed, it is legal for police to park on zig-zags when on call, but not legal for us to paint "Police" on the front, sides and back of our white van, so that fact is of little use.

However it is not illegal to paint "Siemens" and "Highway Maintenance" on your van. We checked. No laws.

Therefore, anyone with a white van who wants to park where they like should nip out to get their vehicle painted up like this, and then get out their and reclaim the zig-zags! And the pavements!

Progress!

As regular readers know, we regard any facility which permits slow pedestrians to cross the road safely as not just an inconvenience, but a needless burden on the NHS, because it keeps the frail alive

We are pleased to see that this one, on Fishponds road by Alcove Road, has been disabled. By not providing any promise that it will ever come back, or reason for the disabling, we hope pedestrians will be demoralised enough to consider driving instead.

The polis on fishponds road

Police van up on the zig-zags on Fishponds Road by Alcove Road

Could be a speed camera, van, perhaps?

On the lampost to the right of the picture is the forlorn looking incident-witnesses-wanted sign from May's Mercedes hit-and-run collision with a bike heading in the same direction as the police van is pointing. The authorities are apparently still looking for the blue Mercedes.

Mercedes Hit and Run - Fishponds

While Bristol mourns the tragic loss of Troy Atkinson in the city centre, it is worth noting that the day before there was another hit and run involving a Mercedes, this time at the junction of Alcove Road and Fishponds Road.

According to the Evening Post

"A 40-year-old man was riding a black racing bike towards Bristol on Fridaywhen the incident happened.

At around 7.45pm, a blue Mercedes turned into Alcove Road and knocked him to the ground, causing him to suffer minor cuts and bruises."

We checked out Alcove Road to see if there were any blue mercs on the pavement. Not today. Two vans on the corner, providing a lovely bit of traffic calming by hiding all chances at seeing oncoming traffic.

And a car, WN56ULM, proudly sporting its "baby on board" sticker to let people know that this car has to park on the pavement to get its small child in and out the house.

Overall, not a nice place to walk or cycle, which is a shame, as it is one of the access points to the Railway Path.

It is probably a quirk of statistics that two hit and runs collisions involving Mercedes cars happen in the same week, but it is also worrying. It is nice to get onto the R.P. and enjoy the safe chaos of the evening traffic up and down the path.

Bristol Blue

It first showed up in our Entering Free Monty posting, now it is time to cover the issue in more detail.

Bristol Taxis are now required to have a standard colour, Blue. This will distinguish them from minicabs, which can retain their grubby beige colour.

Here are some of the new taxis, SH08UCV and SH58PHV, sighted in Alcove Road, Fishponds.

As you can see, they provide a uniform colour scheme for the pavement

And so make everything cheerier

When you compare it to the taxi across the road, W502PHY, the new colour scheme is a clear improvement.

Maybe it's broken down

This RAC van was up on the pavement by a corner off Fishpond's road all day, so presumably it broke down during some driving manoeuvre.

After all, such a widely-regarded motoring organisation wouldn't show such blatant disregard for the Highway Code unless something had gone wrong with their van .