RPZ day is coming: Highbury Villas

Jan 3, 2011. RPZ-day minus one. Despite a majority of people outside the new KN RPZ zone being against it, kingsdown and the university quarter are going residents only plus guests tomorrow. We can see the changes, and compare it with previous coverage.

Look at Highbury Villas.

Before: a convenient place for art students to park to stroll into their early afternoon lectures.

Now: double yellow lines, even on the corners, and the bits without yellow are (mostly) for residents only.

Some bits are pay to park, and that's interesting as it adds much more short-stay parking behind the university than the proposed cycle parking area was going to take away. For that subset of students who have money to spend and only want to stay a maximum of two hours, this actually is beneficial. For those who have enough money for a car and fuel but not parking fees, the subset of students who were willing to get to this road before 8am weekdays, a secret parking area for them and commuters has been lost.

People ask what we in Bristol Traffic think about it, are we with the keepparkingfree people?

To be honest, no. Double yellow lines provide extra short stay parking for our vans, and there will be more legal spaces for those with disabled stickers, which, oddly enough, all our vans have. For us, removing the space occupied by commuters increases the semi-legal options for us, while reducing the number of people who will park across corners -people who never think about needs of us transit van owners when they park so insensitively. Then they get upset when we scrape them during the turns. This new zone will provide more parking options for us delivering special products to customers in the area, or nipping in to the newsagents for some more beer and cigarettes (there's a special loading zone there). We feel vaguely sorry for the commuters who will have to park a bit further away to walk in, and if there is an increase in pedestrians in our way, then we will have reason to complain.

Bike Parking options for St Michael's Hill Chemist

The bike park plans imply two racks will go down in front of the chemist on St Michael's Hill.

There is narrow bit of pavement in front of the row of buildings, used as a primary student footpath weekday mornings, peak times 5-10 minutes before 09:00 and 10:00. There is no room for a rack on the pavement proper.

The chemist does have its own sheffield rack, too close to the other fence to be much use. Usually, the parked car blocks access to the single bicycle that would fit in.

The estate agent has a phone box, and alongside it a big clear space with signs in the window that parking is enforced by a private company.

If this forecourt is council property, yes, bike parking could go here. Otherwise, well, there is little space on the pavement, the estate agents clearly value their parking spaces.

Look how much it narrows further on too -on one of the key walking routes in the city. That is a really hazardous stretch of pavement to try and walk a child, especially during peak traffic hours, as vehicle wing-mirrors often end up overlapping the pavement, even when the car stays on the road. The signs from the shops are not exactly helpful either.

Proposed bike parking on St Michael's hill

What should come into the inbox today but a PDF of some proposed new bike racks along St Michael's Hill, that parental school run traffic jam that turns into a pedestrian overflow of a morning. These are part of the plan to provide bike parking on every stretch of shops, to make it easier to pop round for your supplies.


This little area has names that appear in our database regularly -Highbury Villas, the Homeopathic hospital, St Michael's Hill itself. Yet we aren't sure how many of the vehicles which appear there are shoppers. Daytime its commuters and students, evening residents taking up space, with the area outside Somerfields being the main parking area
The proposal is for:

1. Two racks at Clarence Place, by Somerfields, not far from the wonderful Highbury Vaults.
2. Two racks on the opposite side of the road, in front of the chemists.
3. Two racks just south of Paul Street, near the cafe stretch.

Having sent one of our reporters over to check out the evening shopping rush, and having checked our databases, we'd like to recommend:

1. Place the Somerfield racks on Clarence Place , and build at least five racks [link].
2. Consider whether the proposed racks outside the chemist's are viable [link].
   
3. Move the bottom pair round onto Paul Street, where they can still be seen but which don't stop passengers getting on or off buses [link].

The Unionists say: don't be fooled!

First, a quick Boxing Day walk round Highbury Villas, which will not be in the CPZ/RPZ, but which our data implies is popular with last-minute student parking. Over Xmas, all the residents have vanished, so we can see how lovely the streets look on a sunny morning.

A bicycle chained to a fence is the sole vehicle parked on one side of a road.

The main entrance route is clear. Strange. There is so much space it is unnatural.

Similarly, St Michael's Hill -CPZ/RPZ boundary, is devoid of all traffic and nearly all cars. It looks like a place lost in time.


And speaking of lost in time, here is the note from the unionists, with comments inline. Comment in italics from the perspective of Kingsdown, where the zone is weekdays, 9-5. The doc is transcribed as is, including not enough commas but lots of apostrophies, all in what appears to be the correct place.

Don't be fooled by Residents' Parking

Think Residents' Parking would improve your life? Don't be fooled

If Residents' Parking came to your street or one nearby:

1. There would be absolutely no guarantee of finding a space. Ask friends in cities like Bath that have Residents' Parking schemes -you can pay for a permit but still find nowhere to park.
The message here is that this won't fix the parking problem. True, but what do they propose as an alternate solution? Congestion Charging? Also, you aren't going to find anywhere to park on a weekday today so this will not make parking in Kingsdown worse.


2. There would be fewer spaces. Streets would be tidied and hundreds of spaces would be lost making parking, especially at night, more difficult.
If this means that existing rules about pavement and corner parking are enforced, then good. Those spaces were not legal anyway.

3. Fewer spaces would mean parking spilling over into neighbouring streets -causing problems where none exist today.
Parking problems exist in Cotham everywhere south of the railway line; this will not make things worse there during working days. It may make things worse evenings/weekends, but for those in the zone, it is not their problem. The people in the streets that may be affected get to make their own choice, and it is not for Kingsdown residents to feel guilty.

4. House prices would drop as parking becomes more difficult.
Currently off-street parking commands a premium and justifies the effort. An RPZ would eliminate the value of this premium, but should not impact house prices. Parking will not become more difficult for residents -it will become easier.

5. Residents, businesses and visitors would all have to pay to park or risk being towed away -adding extra costs in the worst economic situation for over 50 years. Local businesses would suffer and maybe close.
There will be more short-term pay-to-park parking than currently. All the Kingsdown parking spaces during daytime are occupied by commuters, leaving only the zebra crossings for short term visitors to local businesses.

6. The council may limit each household to one vehicle. Even if that is OK for you now, what if your circumstances change?
There is an assumption here that everyone has at least one car. The RPZ costs are a reason to reduce the number of household cars., not increase them.

7. Your household would be limited to just 100 visitor's permits per year. For a family of four, that's fewer than 2 visits each per month!
During working hours, nobody comes by car today, as there is nowhere to park, so that is 2 visits/week more than zero.

8. Builders and other tradesmen would use up your permits. Even a simple builder's job could use up a month's supply of permits.
Whoever wrote this hasn't had to deal with the double-parking builder problem you get today.

9. A family wedding or funeral could use up all your visitor permits for a year!
There is no way today that a family wedding or funeral would permit visitors to Kingsdown on a week day. So this would still be an improvement. Then there are weekends.

10. There would be more yellow lines, road signs, traffic-wardens and tow-trucks -do you really want this?
Bristol Traffic would like existing yellow lines and road signs to be enforced, along with rules about parking on corners, pavements and in front of schools, without waiting for a CPZ/RPZ rollout. It is a shame that Keep Parking Free does not consider those to be issues, but since they have fought the rollout of a zebra crossing designed to provide a safe walk to Christchurch School, Clifton, you can guess what their point of view there is.


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The organisation has  their own web site: http://www.keepparkingfree.org/
It's in a nice pretty green colour.

Highbury Villas by lunchtime

Here is the Highbury villas road by 11:10, (disclaimer: on a different day). There are a lot more cars.

Of particular notice is anything corner shaped is occupied, and no van is going to get past the black golf

Where it is parked half into the middle of the road, you aren't even going to be able to make it round the corner, except maybe by reversing to the left and then going out forwards. That is not yet a move they include in the driving test, but it has value.

Assuming that at 0900 the residents and any commuters filled up the parking "spaces", this is the overflow for the students. Driving down here is committing, and if you are coming over to get here in time for your tutorial, you don't have time to circle round the rest of the area, which, to be honest, isn't going to have any parking spaces either. You may as well accept that a hint of a corner is all you are going to get and take it.

The owner of this car, RK51VHD has balanced the probabilities, accepted the risk and come up with a parking solution that while not "thinking outside the box", is certainly thinking of a box with bigger corners. Which is the kind of risk taking and innovative problem solving that universities are proud to instill in their students. Here we see what Bristol University instills in theirs. And because this cul-de-sac isn't currently scheduled to be part of the Kingsdown CPZ, it's one that they will be able to instill into future students.

Highbury villas in the morning

Returning to the Highbury Villas; first question: does it fill up with commuters, residents or students? Let's look 09:03 and see what has happened.

It's pretty sleepy, a little set of dead ends: one entrance road and two side roads. A lot of the housing here is student accomodation, handy for the university, the many excellent pubs and a somerfield that has not yet earned the "fresh" keyword on its sign. If these are their cars, they aren't moving today. The corners are not blocked.

There's enough froom for this van to squeeze through.


At the end of the road, after the keep clear zone, there's a back entrance for the arts bit of university. This was unexpected, and shows why for a student living here -or parking here- would be so appealing. A secret back route into the arts school.

Conclusion: at 9am the road appears mostly full of resident rather than commuter or student cars -though those residents are probably students.

Highbury Villas

The question of whether it is students that cause parking problems in the university area is interesting. The simple way to determine this would be to audit the streets, get the registration numbers and assume all cars registered outside the city's commuting footprint are student cars. That would require access to the central number plate database.

The alternative is just to collect the registration numbers in term time/outside term time and compare them, assuming that vehicles seen in more than one week in term time and zero times outside it are students. Thatwould be informative, but time consuming.
It's simpler just to collect some photos and make some random assertions without any data to back up the statements, that being how city planners appear to operate. Here then, is Highbury Villas, off St-Michaels hill, on a weekday. This area will not be in the CPZ, so whoever has discovered that it is a secret parking area will be able to continue to do so, possibly including the honda WU05UZR.

And here is the same road on a weekend. There is clearly a tangible difference in the number of vehicles trying to get on the yellow lines, as on a weekday there isn't a single free double yellow line to park on.

This is not within the proposed Kingsdown CPZ, incidentally, that ends on St Michael's Hill, directly behind where these photographs were taken. It will be interesting to see how more congested this street becomes after the zone is deployed.