Progress on Prince Street Bridge

Southville Parking posts us this lovely snap from this summer (Summer 2009 was a Tuesday in September, as you may recall), showing how part of the evolution of Prince Street Bridge is going on

A year ago: two lanes for cars, bikes and buses, narrow pavements on both sides. Then, change: the western side/northern direction was blocked off to be bike+pedestrian, while the other direction became alternating all-vehicles. This makes for some interesting options for tax-dodgers who insist on cycling.

Together with Forest Pines, Chris "known subversive" Hutt has shown that the long term plan is driven by Bus Rapid Transit; the eastern lane will have the pavement removed and the route made bus/bike only, despite the inconvenience this will be to the forthcoming 8000 Ashton Vale commuters and people who will discover that Tesco Sainsburys Southville is going to be the best supermarket the city has seen.

What's not been covered is how the rollout will be -will it be one big day when cars are banned from the bridge, and bikes are forced into the road, rather than the pavement? This picture answers the question.

The careful placement of an ice-cream van not only brings in revenue for those ice-cream vans who failed to win the Banksy franchise, it discourages bicycles from using the bike/pedestrian side, and so gets them used to it being taken away. As an added bonus, northbound cars awaiting the green light can buy some ice cream too.

The summer that never was...

If you look carefully, it will be apparent why Eurotaxi coach, C1EGO, is parked up in the zebra crossing zig-zags in Redland Road...

It's there, back in summer (you do remember that day, don't you?) when it was so hot that all the ice creams melted, forcing creamy treat vendor L11ATA to head for the shade to serve a coach load of children and school-run mums.

Luckily for him, and other ice cream operatives in Bristol, even though the heavens subsequently opened, and summer was cancelled, Banksy came to the rescue.

(I could now bang on about the benefits of large trees in urban areas, but I won't).

UPDATE: Summer has apparently returned. Sorry for any confusion.

Watch for children

Here we are again in Alcove Road, , Fishponds, near where one of the recent hit-and-run incidents took place.

Today, we see that the ice cream van G984VFP has a sign on the back, "slow, watch for children"

This is to warn other vehicles about to park on the pavement that children may be running out of their houses to get to the ice cream van, so endangering your wing mirrors and paintwork.

Probably didn't see the sign

Well, an ice cream van is kind of bus-shaped anyway, isn't it?

(submitted by Joe Evans)