"were you the idiot driver of the grey van who on Wed Feb 1 was swearing at me down at Muller Road because all the way down Romney Ave he hadn't been able to pass me, because I didn't get out of the way of traffic?"
"If you were, can I point out that I was doing 30 mph, so you had no justification to pass me, and as I was following a car doing the same speed about three bike lengths in front, you had nowhere to go anyway."
"I hope you enjoyed the long traffic jam on Muller Road with no bicycle in your way to get upset about"
We have looked at our van and no, it doesn't look grey, more a white with a brown layer on top, "dirty!" written on the back. (that's our brand, incidentally).
We understand the grey van driver. We don't think bicycles should be on the road, so the fact that you were there -and the fact that he couldn't get past- made it very frustrating. If you had cycled slower and stayed to one side he would still have hated you, but a bit less.
That's something the advocates of "vehicular cycling" don't understand. They think if you imagine that you are a car, and position yourself appropriately, you will recognised as a vehicle and made welcome. Not so: you will just become an arrogant cyclist who doesn't know their place -and deserves the abuse they get.
It is your very presence that is the issue, not just your positioning.
We're always being accused of somehow presenting the cyclist point of view, rather than discuss the problems that RLJ-ing cyclists present. Good point. Lets run some of those videos. Before that, let's pre-empt the "when cyclists RLJ they don't endanger anyone" claim. Not so. When they run zebra crossings or pedestrian crossings they do endanger pedestrians. If they force pedestrians to hold back they may keep the pedestrians from crossing the road until the cars get a green light, so exposing them to more risk. And they completely destroy any moral high ground the tax dodgers claim to inhabit.
For the next few postings then, some RLJ-by-bike work. More than that though: some theories as to why. It can't be because they are important and in a hurry: as if they were they would be driving. There must be other reasons.
Let's start with this video at the Muller Road/Shaldon Road junction.
0:00 Filming begins on Station Lane, there are two tax dodgers here, cyclist #1 is female and in front of the filming one.
0:08 The woman on the bicycle (henceforth "cyclist #1") crosses Muller Road while the right hand approach lanes have green for both turning and going straight on. This is the 3rd or 4th set of red lights since the M32, and cars are still in speed mode and not used to red themselves. Yet she sets off, wobbling a bit, as she tries to get up the hill.
0:09-0:21 she's now got a line of cars going up the hill beside her, as she approaches a parked car she's going to have to pull out on.
0:22: now as she reaches the pullout point there's a supermarket delivery van to deal with.
0:28 Shaldon road gets its green for traffic going straight on or right (left turn has been green since 0:06)
0:40 Station Lane gets green, the other cyclist (henceforth "tax dodger #2") sets off
1:03 the woman who sets off at 0:08 gets passed by tax dodger #2.
Let's look at cyclist's #1's actions then. She set off through a red light, exposing her to risk to crossing traffic, reinforcing (clearly valid) perceptions about RLJing cyclists, and then making it harder to get up the hill because of the passing cars then the van making the pull-out that much harder.
And for what? Because tax dodger #2 reeled her in about 20 seconds. At that rate, if she was going up the hill towards UWE, what would be for tax dodger #2 a 15 minute hill climb will, for cyclist #1, be something more like a 45 minute crawl. At which rate the saving of 40s is absolutely negligible. Maybe running a red would make sense if it would save you time, but in this case it offered increase risk for no real benefit.
Why do it then? Why not just wait for green and pedal a bit harder when it arrives?
There's a lot of complaint from the bicycle-troublemakers, the vocal ones, about vehicles stopping in ASLs. We think that it's exaggerated. Here is our proof.
[update]: It's apparently a Wessex Connect Bus. We praise them for their consideration.
It's a video from (an expendable) cyclist. As we've stated before, we don't video our own driving in case it is used in evidence against us. Even the soundtrack of us trying to touch-type facebook updates on the phone could cause legal issues. Hence we give these tax dodgers cameras "as gifts" and collect the output. Today we see the output from a shinier camera, which is helmet mounted for a bit more stability.
This video was shot going down Shaldon Road, meeting the lights at Muller road. As you can see the bus has its wheels behind the ASL, but the front of the vehicle is in the ASL. This is for everyone's own good -nobody should go into this ASL.
0:13. The bus gets a green light to turn left, taking up most of the lane as it swings round. A cyclist may have survived if far enough to the right, but the turning car would have dealt with that.
0:22 The cyclist gets a green light and starts to head through while a car coming from the M32 runs the recently-red at speed.
If the cyclist had been using the ASL for its planned purpose "getting out early", they'd have been hit by that car. The FirstBus WessexConnect vehicle's positioning not only protected the cyclists from it's own left turn, it saved ithem from other road vehicles.
We think this is one of the cycle facilities which even the militant cyclists would be campaigning to remove.
We feel betrayed. Why? Cllr Gollop was the leading quote for the Bristol Bikelash. How can he rightfully take our side by denouncing the painting over of some parking spaces with bike lanes, then turn around and say "it's OK for people to cycle here". It's just hypocrisy. We know he's going to drive there, obviously, but will he stand up and say the truth -that he and his party are the only people prepared to stand up against cycling and public transport in this city, because they are the only form of transport for poor people, and we are not poor. Well, not poor yet, though his colleagues in Westminster have plans for that. But don't worry: the unemployed don't commute.
We always have a special place in our coverage for driving schools, as they have to teach beginners the hard art of driving and parking in a city which, excluding Clifton, is anti-car.
Here, up in Filton. Evolution WM10YHO show that the way to park is up on the pavement.
In front of it, a shared space. This eliminates the pavement entirely, and makes for some fun high-speed chicanes.
Speaking of driving schools, our ongoing discussion with one has had a new comment. The instructor does provide some good insight into what it's like driving a bus in the city, so those commenters slagging off FirstBus drivers should really save their anger for FirstBus management.
He also raises the issue of which laws should be ignored first:
I completely agree with people should not park on double yellow lines or zig zags or to close to junction corners all of which cause a danger to other road users but I do not count parking 2 wheels on the pavement in a very narror street that was never meant for parked cars in the first place as the same level of offence.
We don't bother with making decisions about which action is more defensible than others. We ignore them all, hence save time thinking about which action is more right than others.
We also note that we haven't seen that particular driving school in our database. The driving school that most pops is the British School of Motoring. The BSM may have more market share, but they are to be commended for something else: they are the only driving school that we have documented teaching people how to park in Montpelier. The other schools, they pick you up, then take you somewhere safe to learn to drive. The BSM actually hold their lessons in Montpelier.
In-town, in Richmond Road, Montpelier, we have a heartwarming sight. No, not the cyclist going up the hill with the Sainsbury's bag on the handlebars -it's the BSM instruction car WV60WJF.
We don't think driving and parking in Monty has its own test yet, so we're assuming it's a lesson. As Richmond Road is one of the hardest to drive and park on, we congratulate the BSM for showing their pupils the way forward -or at least the way up on the pavement without damaging your wheels, hitting the wall or paying the wingmirror tax on the way up the road.
So far, nobody from the BSM has got in touch with us. However, we are pleased to have video coverage of a discussion between some under-employed tax-dodger and the BSM car WR60CUY, which can be seen driving into the ASL on the red light: the bicycle doesn't get their green light until Shaldon Road is on red, so the car has had five seconds of red before it comes to a halt.
When queried about what the driver thinks the penalty for driving into an ASL is, the driving instructor comes back with the correct answer: anyone who cares about such things doesn't have a life. We actually think this summarises the entire country's cycling activist groups: they only do it because they don't have real lives.
Congratulations to the BSM for putting this tax dodger in their place!
A tax-dodging troublemaker emails us this video to say "Is this white van DK04TBX that nearly ran me over on June 10 in its rush to get to Kellaway Building Supplies on Shaldon Road yours?"
Here is the response composed by our lawyers
Askmid says this vehicle is a VW Transport T30TDi. As the Bristol Traffic Team's white van is a Ford Transit at least ten years older, we deny responsibility.
We think all criticism of this van is unfounded, as by accelerating past the bicycle before cutting over it, it left plenty of room.
By indicating its intent to turn left while it went past the bicycle, the cyclist had plenty of time to take evasive action.
Kellaway Building supplies plays a key role in supplying everything a white van in the building trade needs apart from copies of the Sun and cans of Red Bull. As the Bristol Traffic van is a key part of the Bristol sex industry supply chain, Kellaway Building Supplies rarely appears in our list of destinations, apart from when meeting the needs of an individual with an obsession about loft insulation. A superinjunction prevents us identifying the specific board members of one of our local football teams.
We're going to be looking at the Clifton "calming traffic through more parking" plans, to show that this isn't really a self-centred proposal by the Clifton Parking Faction (our comrades, the Keep Parking Free team), but instead a dedicated attempt to reduce risk in a busy city.
Here is the Shaldon Road/Muller Road Junction. Our secretly camera-instrumented traffic dodger is not waiting the ASL we paid our tax money for, apparently because "you get run over by buses turning left on the left turn light, or buses turning right"
At 0:04 a car parked with its hazard lights on, some L-plate vehicle, we believe.
At 0:08 the tax-dodger pulls up to go straight on, even though there are no markings on the road to indicate that this is permitted.
At 1:23 in this dull video (and people wonder why we text in our cars at junctions. This is why), a bus turns right.
At 1:27, behind the camera, the bus comes to a halt, as it cannot get past the parked car, not with the queue of cars waiting to turn right.
At 1:31 someone sounds their horn. We are not sure who. Either its the silver car behind the bus, or a car behind the bicycle complaining that they are in the way.
At 1:40 there are now five cars behind the bus, the traffic speed has been reduced to 0 km/h. No pedestrians will get hit by cars now.
At 1:46 the green light reaches Shaldon Road, the tax-dodger pedals forward through a junction that is now blocked by stationary cars. Any cars behind them will not be moving, hence their speed is also 0 km/h: again, safety at work.
At 1:50 the known subversive weaves their way through the now traffic-calmed junction, so ensuring that if there were any pedestrians in Station Lane, they would not get run over by a speeding cyclist.
There we have it then. A single L-plated car can traffic calm a busy junction, reducing vehicle speeds by 15 km/h, that is, from 15 km/h to 0 km/h.
This shows how the addition of extra parking spaces can calm hazardous junctions, and is not merely an attempt by a group of self-centred Clifton residents to add extra parking for their extra vehicles. Although that is, of course, a side-benefit, one that other traffic calming ideas: bike parking, trees and build-outs don't over, which is why it is the only form of traffic calming that we, the Bristol Traffic team approve of. Update: added the video
Bristol Graffiti has been quiet recently, so we have to help out on Muller Road, which has multiple vote conservative posters up on it's Shaldon Road advert area. It's clearly not targeted at the locals, who are happy to not only rip off bits of the advert, but write up things on top about giving the saved money to bankers. And they walk there to do it!
This advert is targeted -like the ones at the bearpit- and the motorist stuck on the way to the M32, held up by an anti-car council that refuses to make Muller Road a dual carriageway, refuses to remove the pedestrian crossings further up the road which create all these tailbacks. This party knows their audience: the British Motorist, though it doesn't quite get the message right. Rather than "Let's cut benefit for those who won't work", it should be "let's raise taxes for those who don't drive". That would be better. The Chinese government -communists- subsidise petrol, yet here in the UK we won't even sell it at cost. It's enough to make you vote for the Communist Party of the People's Republic of China, though even in the Bristol West postcodes that got Bristol East ballot papers, these people aren't listed as an option.
But that is not the real issue of today's post. Today's is about a shocking political gaffe by a senior city politician. We aren't going to spell out what he says -you need to listen to what he says. And what he doesn't. He is coming out and showing us which side he and his party is on when it comes down to the greatest issue in the city this week.
This exclusive video shows exactly what enemies we, the out-of-Bristol motor commuter face on our daily drive in, with the M32 traffic jams and the struggle to find a parking space afterwards. We are the victims of these inner-city bigots!
As you may recall, we also complained that the so-called mainstream press would be seeking quotes from such organisations as the Association of British Drivers, and not us, Bristol's premier pro-car news organisation.
When will they realise: the ABD do not represent Bristol Drivers!
Look what they say about this proposal:
"It's difficult for drivers to stay at 20mph in modern cars, you have to keep it in third gear and keep your eyes on the speedometer. You could be skittling over pedestrians at 20mph that you would have seen if you were going 30mph.
It could make the situation worse."
See that? The ABD are worrying about the safety of pedestrians. When did we, the city's drivers care about that? We want them banned from the streets along with their bus using and cycling friends. There shouldn't be any pedestrians out there for us to worry about.
But what really hurts us is this claim that having to keep an eye on the speedo will cause drivers to take their eyes of the road. This shows us, sadly, how out of touch Captain Mainwaring and the rest of the ABD folk are. They may go out for "quick jaunts" in their beige Austin Allegros, taking care to top up the windscreen and radiator water levels, and wearing both driving gloves and a flat cap, but the rest of us have moved on. Driving round town is not about watching where you are going: it is about phoning ahead to your destination complaining that you will be late because there is another bastard cyclist in the way. You don't look down to see the speedo, you look up from the phone where you are trying to compose a text message.
These people have just lost touch. Pity. We could have made a great team.
Now, if you are going to use "safety" as a reason to argue for 30mph limits -you really need some good arguments that are up to date with modern driving techniques. For this end, we have co-opted the white van of R.P. Glass, on their way up Shaldon Road to Kellaway Building Supplies.
First, an apology not just for the sound but the placement of the camera, our unwitting cyclist is still trying to adjust it to get the "light" to work. If only only they knew.
As you can see, the cyclist is pootling up a hill at 10-15 mph, the van is coming up at 30+. As it passes the cyclist, it has its left turn indicator on, indicating it is about to swerve in front of the bicycle and enter the building supplies site.
The only way this operation can be accomplished safely, for the van to clear the bicycle, is at speeds of 30 mph or greater: proper speeds. At 20 mph the van isn't going to go fast enough to get past the cyclist, it's going to end up having to pull in right over the cyclist. Which will then be the fault of this cyclist, who is clearly guilty of not following Transport for London's Cycle/Lorry safety guidelines; guidelines which tell bicycles not to get on the left of left-turning lorries. But it will also be the fault of all those cycling campaigners who pushed for lower limits. Yet who will get the blame? That's right, van drivers like the one driving R.P. Glass of Bristol on Tuesday November 23.
Some postings of this blog are sponsored by the EPSRC as a form of community outreach, primarily to popularise mathematics. Like Bang Goes The Theory on the BBC (also sponsored by EPSRC) only without the bang. Or the bouncy presenters. Or the coke budget needed to make kids tv presenters so bouncy.
Given the current politicians-versus-science disasters, from cannabis risk assessment to the technically unworkable three-strikes-and-out downloading proposals, the need to cover such topics is stronger than ever. Otherwise the politicians get their beliefs from the daily mail, and that can't be considered "rational" by post-enlightenment standards. Indeed, most of our mathematics outreach budget is spent in whitehall, trying to explain to ministers how negative numbers work.
For Bristol, Game Theory, again. Not the Nash Equilibrium, this time, but minimax game algorithms and alpha-beta pruning, and the consequence, the Horizon Effect.
This coverage was triggered by someone commenting on our Save Double Parking posting, asking why cars always overtake bicycles just before they do some other operation, such as stop suddenly:
"When you're on a bicycle, many drivers think they have a right, nay a
prerogative, nay a DUTY, to overtake you, no matter how dangerous, or
pointless it may be."
Well, yes they do have a right, but the question is, is it a duty? And if not, why, as these tax-dodgers claim, do we overtake them so often?
One hypothesis is that it is because the tax dodgers are effectively stationary objects, of course you have to swing past them. But that isn't enough, as we have data which implies it happens regardless of bicycles speeds. No, a better explanation is needed: game theory.
The first point to consider: what is the game. The bicyclist is trying to reach their destination alive, their "moves" are decisions about pedalling and braking, routes to take, what to do at lights.
Motor vehicle drivers are trying to reach their destination in a timely manner.
Both groups of players have a key feature: the happiness of other road users is not a concern. Most car drivers in the city would gladly overtake anyone not doing the speed limit, anyone pootling along radiating hints that it wants to pull over -it's just harder to to pass a car. When there is a bike on the road, it is easy to pass, but as a price, it slows you down more until you get that moment to pass.
Returning to the game that is "Traversing the City". Cars, vans, buses have moves too: the steering wheel, the accelerator, the brake pedal, the gears, the indicators. These can be used to implement the decisions to make: where to go, when to pass,when to stop, whether to indicate your plans in advance.
Consider also the fact there is effectively a conflict in the city between competing road users: pedestrians, cyclists, motor vehicles. Bicycles get in the way of cars rather than staying in the gutter to punish cars, so cars and vans pass bicycles punish bicycles by braking or turning after overtaking. It's not that they have to, but that they can. By making the journey by bicycle more miserable, it will discourage them.
This is the essence of the minimax strategy (wikipedia entry, Manchester CS Dept slides). Minimax is the foundation of computer gaming, whether the games is something the kids are playing on their DS in the back of your SUV, or a US Department of Defence mainframe plotting the warplan between Nato and the Warsaw Pact back in the 1980s, when the moves involved tanks and strategic armaments whose deployment took cities off the game board called Europe.
The Minimax Strategy: applying a scoring assessment to the game, the minimax strategy says:
pick the moves that deliver the best score to your player, and the worst score to the opponent.
That is profound, and kills the whole concept of "let's just coexist", because if you are driving, that's a losing strategy. The very presence of bicycles inconveniences you -and encourages more cyclists. So yes, you do overtake them, you give them a bad experience -otherwise they come back. That is not malicious, that is minimax.
Some issues with minimax:
Scoring -how do you score the game? Arrival time isn't enough, you need to include discomfort. Now the rainy season is returning, splashing bicycles and pedestrians by driving through puddles helps
The Horizon Effect. How many moves ahead do you look? There is always going to be a horizon, beyond which you stop looking, and there's a risk that you end up choosing the wrong moves, because you didn't look far enough ahead.
The reason, therefore, that cars stop immediately after passing a bicycle is for two reaons. One: it helps produce a worse outcome for the bicycle. Two: they only had a lookahead of one move, and the next operation was not planned for.
That's Minimax then; a good strategy for games where the scoring is possible. Bluff games are trickier; it was always one of the issues of the Cold War: the USSR played Chess; the US played Poker.
Now, let's look at this in the context of Bristol, along Shaldon Road, Lockleaze. This is a good road for our experiment as it is a continuous straight road, and there are lots of left turns off it, so we can see how different vehicles behave with a bicycle slowly pootling up a hill.
Time
Event
0:05
Lorry passes bicycle, gives 20-50cm of clearance. The URL on the side of the vehicle, williamstewart.uk.com, is close enough for the cyclist to remember and comes out well in the video.
0:09
Lorry #2 passes bicycle, unusually gives more clearance. The logo says "Welsh Pantry"; presumably they are visitors to the city from overseas. We shall complain to their firm about failing to blend in.
0:15-0:18
Vehicles are held up briefly by the bicycle and oncoming traffic, but do manage to get past.
0:23
A red polo passes, indicating right.
0:24
A silver Vauxhall Vectra KF04FBE passes. This car has been held up by all bicycle-initiated delays, and applies minimax to punish the bicycle; refusing to pull out much and swerving in early. However, it brakes at the same time. This a sign of the horizon effect -it has been so busy planning the minimised score of the bicycle that it failed consider what its next move would be -and whether that red car was indicating its intent to turn right.
0:31
The red polo turns, so KF04FBE can go ahead and do its left turn. The delays caused by the bicycle here have cost it time, that has to be regained by a bit of speed before slowing and turning left. This waste of fuel is caused entirely by the so-called green transport.
0:38 -1:28
Dull bits that remind us why cycling is so boring that we hate it.
1:32
Kellaway Building Supplies. In our discreet post-mortem with our unsuspecting cyclist, apparently having a lorry overtake you near here with its left turn indicators on is very disconcerting. Well, they can always drive can't they?
1:34
Van somewhat inconvienced by bicycle positioning -too far out-comes past and speeds up.
1:43
Ford Ka comes past, indicating left, then starts turning over the bicycle. Then it decides that in fact it does not want any bicycle marks on its paintwork, and comes to a complete halt, leaving the bicycle to continue on straight. Again, a mixture of minimax and horizon effect. If the car had driven faster it could have cleared the corner.
Notice how nearly all of these vehicles give the bicycle room. including the Vauxhall Vectra that has to do a hard brake after pulling in, and the Ford Ka, which gives the bicycle incredible amounts of clearance before starting to turn over it.
While some of the drivers may resent the bicycles, may want to discourage them from cycling, nobody wants a collision. It's not just the injuries you cause, it's the fact that bicycles rarely have insurance and the damage they can do to your vehicle can be quite serious. The short term gain of running over one bicycle is lost by the delays and the insurance.
There you have it then, minimax. The cyclist's goal was to position themselves where tyey felt safe (their Max) -not merely regardless of inconvenience to tax payers, but precisely because it slowed the cars down (the car's Min). The cars and lorries mostly reacted by passing the bicycle as soon as they could (their Max), and, for some of the players, trying to reduce the cyclist's experience -be it pulling in and braking, or simply turning while partially past the bicycle.
This concludes this week's Game Theory session. For further details, please consult this MIT coursework. As we said before, bluff is the other game aspect, which comes up in "wing-mirror bluff" and negotiation over who gains ownership of a single lane road.
This research was supported by the United States Air Force Office of Scientific Research and Development Command, and by the EPSRC.
This is Shaldon Road. Behind the camera is a path leading to the Farm Pub Path -Shaldon Road is the main route from that path to Lockleaze and hence UWE. As and when the "new" North Fringe route gets rolled out there will be one less steep, but it will still suffer from the problem of getting over Muller Road, of which this is one of the junctions.
What is that bus in? That's right, an Advanced Stop Lane.
Now, some people, and Crap Cycling & Walking in Waltham Forest spring to mind, would fault this bus for endangering cyclists. We do not. Not just because we view cyclists as tax-dodging troublemakers, but we don't think bicycles should be using this ASL on safety grounds. Remember, the primary route on this road for a bike is straight on, towards Ashley Down, Horfield, St Andrews and St Werburghs. No cyclist planning of surviving their commute back from UWE should use the bike stop lane. They should hang back.
Here is a video showing why, taken from the other direction.
Note how buses turning left swing round to completely scrape clear the ASL of bicycles? And while someone could try sticking to the far right of it, vehicles turning from Muller Road into Shaldon Road will get them there.
Once upon a time, this ASL was actually wider, yet its right hand side was removed to eliminate the illusion that this was a safe place to loiter. It would seem to us that painting out the rest of the ASL would benefit everyone.
Lovely morning scene in Lockleaze - a line of cars who have all managed to get exactly two wheel on the kerb This is pretty skillful. It's not the fault of the locals that the anti-car council won't give them a proper pavement to park on, yet they do the best they can with the narrow kerb. Keeps the car clean, and the grass green, though it means that the passengers will still get muddy feet.
When will the council give Lockleaze proper pavements for its cars?
One reason for pavement parking is you don't want to stick out further than anyone else. Stick too far in though, further in than your neighbours, and they might get offended, think you are taking too much of the pavement away. It's tough problem
Here, on Shaldon Road, the council is trying to do something about it, by strategically placing vans along the road, showing the correct way to park on our city streets. WP06CX is parked one wheel on the pavement, not quite half way over. Further up, CN06CFX is parked a bit less on the pavement, enough for a driver to show they care about their vehicle, and view the pavement as "their" property, but not enough to make driving off hard.
This example-setting appears to work. On the day these photographs were taken, there were no vehicles parked further on the pavement than the council vans. Given that sometimes one can encounter vans parked completely on the pavement, this is quite a significant improvement.
Why do people park on pavements? Possibly through convention, possibly for convenience. But also because it protects you car by being scraped by passing traffic.
Which is why this car, parked on Shaldon Road, seems to have chosen the wrong place to park. Car almost completely on the pavement? Check. Road-side wing-mirror folded in? Check. What can they have done wrong? Anyone who cycles up here will know, they will know this stretch of the road is one to feel nervous on. Because of that sign, the "K", stands for Kellaway Building Supplies. As in "depot visited by lorries during working hours" building supplies.
And where is the car OE55ACY parked? Right on the corner. Looking from the other direction, you can see that a pickup turning in clears the car with ease, but its not the pickup you want to worry about. It's the large truck delivering 12 metric tonnes of breeze blocks. It's the cement lorries. Its the trucks on a schedule who have just come off the M32 and need to get this dropoff done so they can head off to somewhere on the other side of the city before lunch, trucks that are already so scratched up that some more honda-CRV paintwork would barely show up.
Better to have got the car up on the pavement, then reversed down the road a couple of houses. You have further to walk, but your bodywork survives.
This is a pretty profound event. A member of the council's cycling/walking group personally told us it was coming, but we had to wait and see. The sign is up "new signals ahead", and now, if you wave your bicycle over the sensors, bikes get a green light -that is green only for them. No longer do you have to fear the cars turning right off Shaldon Road getting pissed off with, you, the "red-light-running cyclist" trying to get in their way and shouting at them if they try and run you over. This is a moment to feel grateful for. Not only does it make the commute better, it is a sign that online campaign groups can achieve change. Look at these messages, in the cycling campaign mail archives, which show that people have been reporting signalling problems. And look -it only took us four years and the creation of Bristol Cycling City for this to happen.
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Steve L Date: Tue, Oct 25, 2005 at 9:35 AM Subject: Re: Muller road/shaldon road bike lights To: John Roy Cc: Andrew Whitehead, bristolcyclingcampaign
John,
Has the Muller/Shaldon/Station road bike lights timing problem been investigated yet? It has been a month since I reported it.
I can verify that the cars turning right from Shaldon Road to Muller road still get a green light 5-6 seconds before vehicles (especially bicycles) trying to go straight across to Shaldon Road. This, coupled with the fact that there are no signs indicating that this is a four-way crossroads means that you cannot cross this road safely while obeying the lights. The only safe way to do it is watch for the muller road lights to go red and cycle across the junction then, against the red light.
This junction is now the most dangerous one on my daily journey.
-Steve
Good Morning Steve
Your email has been fowarded to me and I will have it registered as a formal piece of correspondence, I understand Andy Whitehead has already corresponded with you but he was unaware of the reasons for the changes at these lights. I am not a signals engineer so cannot answer the question you have raised. However the works which have just been completed on this junction were part of the Safer Routes to School measures for the new Fairfeild School and include new pedestrian phases on Shaldon Road.
I have fowarded your email to Bruce Slattery in our signals team and have asked him by copy of this email to answer your question. Thanks
John Roy Team Manager Walking, Cycling, Safer Routes to School and Public Rights of Way Traffic Management
Hi Andy,
I'm writing in with a request that would be very helpful for the safety of cyclists in the Muller road area, especially the many young cyclists:
Please can the timings of the new traffic lights at Muller road/Shaldon road be adjusted so that vehicles coming out from Station Lane get a green light before cars turning right from Shaldon Road to Muller Road? Station Lane is the main pedestrian/bike route between Lockleaze and Ashley Down; it is used a lot by students going to and from Brunel College, and up to the University, as there is a bike path to UWE at the top of Shaldon Road.
There has recently been a lot of work in the area, with a new set of traffic lights at the road junction, and many much welcome improvements on the underpass between Station Lane and Station Road, such as resurfacing, cutting back of vegetation and removal of the remains of abandoned stolen cars.
However, the new lights appear to increase the risk to cyclists heading north from Station lane onto Shaldon road, as the timings are worse than they used to be.
The underlying problem is that cars heading down Shaldon road view the four way junction as a T-junction, and pull out in front of anyone cycling out from Station Road, even though they are meant to give way. Historically, the solution to this has been "head out as soon as the light goes green, assert your presence".
But now the timings appear to be different, and vehicles turning right onto Muller road are setting off before I get a green light, which seems to imply that they are getting a green light before me. This makes it much harder to get across the road.
If the light timing was adjusted so that bikes coming out of Station Lane had a few seconds start on cars turning right, I think it would be much safer to cross the road. This, combined with all the improvements made to Station Lane and the underpass, would make it a very good route for cylists. Otherwise, the only safe way to cross muller road would be to pedal over to the pedestrian crossing, hit the wait button there, and then cycle out against the red light when everything is stopped for cars.
The much feared Muller Road/Shaldon Road "Lights of Death" junction isn't sporting any lights today. Not for bicycles coming off the St Werburgh's path, a path due to be uprated over the winter (the path's closure warning signs are up, incidentally).
Normally bikes get a green light after oncoming traffic have had 15s of green, enough for all the vehicles turning right -who assume its a T-junction- to pull out. Some of these drivers get very upset about the whole thing. You need to look at the lights to left, on muller road, and pull out when they go red, before the oncoming cars react to green. It's not fun.
Today they are trying a new experiment. The lights have been turned off. All traffic is dropped to one lane at a time, which is cutting down on vehicle flow. Muller Road, the busy route from the M32 to North-West Bristol, is busy, as is Shaldon Road. Nobody is happy. When they get a chance to go, the cars take it. Which makes crossing this road by bike kind of tricky. And on foot. This crossing was actually funded as part of the safe routes to school program. Now it is fenced off half way, so if you run to the island, you will get stuck.
There have been some mitigation measures on Shaldon Road -cones- forcing one of the locals to park in the bus stop instead of their own house.
The reason for all of this is some electricity roadworks, work that has been slowly going down Shaldon Road over the months. It's been good work, with the road left in a nice state afterwards. Enquiries were made of the very friendly site crew about why we cyclists were left without lights. Apparently someone in the council felt that we didn't need them. Because the traffic was down to single lane, it would be easy to cross. Easy maybe for cyclists whose knees work, cyclists who arent towing children and like cycling across traffic on Muller road because they like the adrenalin rush. But if you do want that experience, better to go to Ashton Court and have some mud fun, not seeing if you can outrace the transit van that has the green light on Muller Road.
Stephen Webster is the name of the council contact. I wonder, does he have an email address? Does he have scientific evidence to back up his theory that its OK for bikes to cycle across Muller Road traffic when its down to single lane?
Here in Lockleaze, the minivan M209XHW shows how the dropped kerb at a traffic island not only provides a safer route for pedestrians, it benefits vehicles too. The wide dropped kerb lets the van slide straight up to the pavement and so park close to the wall, letting it park between the driveway in front and the pavement crossing behind. There is adequate room for pedestrians to one side; this is the shared space we've heard so much about.
"Hi, do you like to talk about driving as well as parking"
Yes, it's just harder to photo.
"I was cycling back from UWE today [ed: Nov 20] the car P9 CAT cut me up on Shaldon Road and was abusive at the lights"
It's hard for us to judge who was right and wrong. All we can say is that 'A car that may have had the number plate P9CAT seemed to have a difference of opinions about the rights of bicycles to Shaldon Road.' If we had a photo of the car we could less ambiguous about the car registration number.
"The car was a silver Renault Scenic and the driver was wearing a Bristol Council jumper".
How about: 'the car appeared to be a silver Renault Scenic and the driver appeared to be wearing Bristol Council-branded clothing'. Which implies the driver may have been part of our Cycling City council, or may have have just had some of their clothes.
"He got very upset when I tried to take a photo with my phone".
You do have legal rights here, but you have to be discreet about them. One trick that may work is to switch the camera/phone into video mode and record the conversation without pointing the camera at the driver, make it look like you are fiddling with the camera, but not actually taking pics. You could even point the camera towards the car without holding it up and looking like you are filming.
People have an optimistic expectation of privacy on the public road, especially of them, their house, their car, their family. Whereas in fact, as the recently Moseley trial shows, you only have a right to privacy if when, as the son of Britain's most well known fascist politician, a politician married in Joseph' Goebbel's house in Berlin, you engage in sex acts with prostitutes and speak in mock German accents while dressed in army uniforms in a private house. The streets are public and anything you do there can go into print, on TV or up on the web. We take pics and put them in our files. The government builds up a multi-petabyte filesystem logging everyone's mobile phone location and ANPR number plate information. Both activities are currently legal. Indeed, there is nothing but engineering issues stopping us building our own numberplate and telephone tracking infrastructure -though we have plans there.
The other thing to think about is: do you really want a confrontation? Does it help? Isn't it a bit dangerous? Why not take a pic of the back of the vehicle and the option to talk about it. without getting into an argument with the driver? That gives us the photo and you avoid getting in to an altercation. There is also the risk the driver is left in an even more unstable anti-bike state than before.
To conclude then: if you come across any member of the Moseley family having paid sex on a Bristol street: take the pic and sell it to the papers. If a car leaves you feeling unhappy on your walk, cycle or drive round town, photo the car discreetly, with plate and location, send it in.
On that topic, there's a new address for photos: bristol.traffic at gmail.com . Videos are welcome along with stills. What is important is entertainment value. Fights no, funny yes.
We've also heard that since the parking zone proposals came out we've drifted away from shallow entertainment to dull road theory things. Sorry. Shallow and entertaining will be resumed shortly.
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