Broadmead bumping

A video reaches us of an incident at the bike path crossing rupert street to the horsefair where the cyclist crashes into the pedestrian and they both come off.


Nice swearing. If we cycled, we'd swear like that too. One point though: there are no lights controlling pedestrian crossings of the bike path, and so that highway code about giving way to pedestrians probably kicks in. The other: this was predicable. There is no point putting a camera and a horn on your bike if you aren't going to look at where people are walking and whether they are looking at you.

Free Bristol Primark Parking

The very street names "Horsefair" and "Haymarket" remind us how at one time our ancestors, the city's gentry, went about their business on horseback, generously helping the city's economy by providing jobs for your ancestors, the city's poor, grooming the horses and cleaning the streets after them.

It's still the case today, as we motorists create useful employment in a range of workplaces from car-washes to hospitals. But the respect has gone. Even the city council will only allow tax-dodging cyclists and pedestrians the freedom to turn from Haymarket into the Horsefair.

Therefore we admire the driver of S988RVM who has asserted his ancient right to stop where he wishes in the centre, while
forcing any cyclists to dismount as a demonstration of respect.

(photos and lovely text by "anonymous").

Getting the message across

Bristol Traffic is a news channel. Maybe not quite the same as the MSM, like the Daily Mail or The Telegraph, but we like to think we compete with the quality dailies.

And the Bristol Evening Post.

So far we've co-existed well in Bristol, with BEP following our rabidly anti-cycling message almost every issue. There was a small shift in their editorial policy a few days ago, which we covered, but this was probably only a hiccup, although they did sponsor the Big Bike Ride. However, we're confident this was just an aberration, and we have photographic evidence.

Down behind the Bearpit, in Broadmead, Bristol City Council are undertaking an experiment in The Horsefair and Penn Street, by only allowing through disabled badge holders, buses and taxis or emergency service vehicles. The experiment started on 11th December 2009 and was due to run for 18 months. It's still in place, so now seems permanent.

It was interesting, therefore, to find Western Dail Press vehicle WU07XES parked up in a bus stop in The Horsefair, towing a trailer with an advert on it. It seems the driver needed a bit of refreshment - it's hard work driving around all day, pulling an advert.

What did the advert say?

Well, it invited you to purchase the Evening Post so that you could "WIN THIS CAR".

The editor here at Bristol Traffic was beside himself when he saw this, and immediately sacked the entire marketing team for not thinking of it first.

But he's happy that the Evening Post are once again in the pro-motorist lobby.

UPDATE

The driver was spotted later in the week, loading another Burger King into the car...

Bristol's secret epidemic

Mike Dunn sends us this photo of horsefair


Nothing unusual there, a line of stationary cars making it easier to walk across cross. Except some time in December, this road was closed to all but buses, bicycles, taxis and disabled vehicles.

As these motorised vehicles lack firstbus logos or taxi yellow plates, the remaining conclusion is: disabled.

Which shocks us. We did not know that there was such an epidemic of medical conditions forcing people to drive down to Cabot Circus. We hope that it is transient, that they all recover, as this does not bode well for our city's long term health.

Down by the bus station

Whenever you monitor humans, you have to worry about The Hawthorn Effect; the fact that people behave differently when being watched. This is notorious for skewing the results of many experiments, and you should always ask experimenters how they compensated for it, to make sure they knew what they were doing.

We solve this problem by not telling the cyclists that it's a camera. They think its a light. Of course, having the bicycle with lights on would effect the experiment too, so to avoid that it doesn't actually work as a light.

By monitoring without them knowing, we get to see the world from their point of view, hear their complaints, then dismiss them.

Today's video: Dove Street Kingsdown to Broadmead, by way of the Marlborough Street Bus station.

1. Notice that in Dove Street, those vans parking 3/4 on the pavement ensure that passing bicycles do not get hit by open doors, and make it easier for passing vehicles to get by them.
2. The Honda LG57XPV that appears to pull out without indicating before veering across the road is not victimising the cyclist, it would behave the same regardless of whoever was behind it. While driving along, had its brake lights on, "tourist lights" as we call them, which warn the vehicles behind that it is planning something.
3. Pulling in to Dighton Street at 1:00 we see a line of bicycles using this road to avoid the St James Barton Roundabout/Bearpit options, or to head over to Clifton without cycling over the big hills. [Incidentally, we hear a rumour that the Bristol Cycling Campaign, as well as promising free drinks at their EGM on Thursday, are planning a Bastard-Hills-of-North-Bristol ride that will not avoid those climbs].
4. At 1:20 the instrumented cyclist and another cyclist both slide past a taxi to occupy the remaining half of the ASL. This does not leave room for the two other cyclists following. What will they do?
5. At 1:28, the cycling-chic woman passed earlier appears to be having braking problems, as her bike only stops after she has shot halfway over the junction. Notice how she stops by putting both feet on the ground. That means fixed-speed or broken brakes. Given that cars are still heading across this road from the right hand side, only three sets of lights/two junctions from the M32, everyone anticipating a bit of speed, this is a brave things to do, she has earned her ghostrider label.
6. At 1:35 we see that the vehicle waiting to turn right is in fact a police car. Presumably our little ghostrider was too busy looking for cars from the right to worry about what cars were waiting to turn.
7. At 1:41, the police car pulls forward, and by 1:45 is parallel with the rider. Is she going to get told off?
8. No, it turns right, as do the vehicles behind. Even the lorry at 1:57 doesn't clip her, despite her being positioned on the inside of the bend
9. At 2:02 the high speed sprint of a van through the lights tells us that they have just gone red for that lane, and that the bicycles will now get a green light, which kicks in a couple of seconds later.
10. At 2:06 our camera enhanced cyclist sets off and never sees the ghost rider again. She had not only tried to cycle across the red light and the lanes of traffic, she had positioned herself so she could not see the lights, and so missed them changing.
11. Our cyclist uses the bike lane until it ends, and is then forced to turn off the road, to go down Whitson Street to the bus station. There then follows 30 seconds of dullness.

Where things get entertaining again is 2:44, where the bicycle is in the bus and bike only lane heading towards Broadmead. They have a red light. Will they wait? Or has the previous junction given them ideas?

They wait for three seconds, then veer over to what appears to be a pedestrian crossing -but actually has a bicycle on it. Therefore we must sadly conclude that this bit of crossing on bike is legal, and we can not report it to the police.

We are not so sure, however, about the pavement riding they do afterwards. They do not go straight on, where they would encounter the car, but instead veer left past some phone boxes, over the bus lane and then on some more pavement. We were beginning to get hopeful again, but then saw that they were actually riding up to some bicycle specific traffic lights -which were going green- and then they set off again, into Horsefair and hence Cabot Circus.

As you can imagine, we are unimpressed by the cyclist who ran the first red light. Not only was it dangerous, it didn't gain anything. At least when we speed in a car we get something in exchange -the feeling of speed, reduced journey time. She got nothing, and forgot to keep an eye out for police cars. The second junction though, leaves us confused. The bicycle clearly went up on the pavement, over a pedestrian crossing, on some more pavement and then up to some lights. We do not whether to be

• Upset about the behaviour of the cyclist
• Upset that an anti-car council added these features
• Confused by the fact that these features seem to not be at all rational. Surely to make it easier to get from the bus station to broadmead, the crossing lights would be on the left of the junction, so the bicycle would not have to zig-zag everywhere? We suspect the lights were put in on a budget to help tax-dodgers head the other way.

We have decided to go for all three options. Bristol Traffic: confused and upset.

Troy Atkinson update

We've recently seen some more comments on our page covering the death of Troy Atkinson by a hit and run driver in April.

It turns out there was progress in the driver's prosecution: Mohammed Ahmed, 19, of Eastville, plead guilty on Friday to :

• taking a vehicle without consent
• causing death by dangerous driving
• failing to stop at the scene of an accident
• driving without insurance

He took a car that wasn't his, ran over Troy Atkinson at Cabot Circus, then drove off. The court case is covered in the BBC and Evening Post. There's not much to add on the case except that one teenager is dead, another teenager's future not going to be what they dreamed of.

What we can do is get a quick video of what it is like to travel down Cabot Circus from one of our instrumented cyclists,. We believe this is the route that Ahmed took.

The BMW the bicycle is tracking is driving fairly sedately down the road, looking for somewhere to pull in. You can see pedestrians running across the way of this car, including at 0:19 a small child calling back to a parent on the other side of the road -if this journey had a risk of a pedestrian running out, this would have been it.

At 0:55 there's a wave of pedestrians heading out of Cabot Circus towards Quaker's Friars; they've had to wait for a bus and a car, and are now sprinting across the gap between those vehicles and the bike. There may be a build out, but there is no zebra crossing and shoppers are expected to wait patiently. Note how the pedestrians wave a little thank you to the cyclist for stopping, they are clearly grateful.

The junction which Troy was crossing when he was hit is at 1:17-1:20.

This video was taken on a weekday morning, admittedly during half-term. It's a mixture of shops, buses, pedestrians and cars, and you have to look at it and think "is this a good mix?", and "if so, why don't pedestrians have right of way at any of the crossings?" Yes, there are bits of a speed bump there, but why no zebra crossings? Why on a weekend do crowds have to queue up waiting for a moment to sprint across the gap? The only possible explanations are (a) to remind pedestrians of their place in society and (b) FirstBus resisted the idea of zebra crossings.

As well as mourning and remembering Troy, then, consider this: what if this road was made bus, bike, taxi only? And pedestrians get zebra crossings on all of the build outs?