We've heard sob stories about people having to go without food to keep their cars fueled up, but nobody has looked at the impact on the tradition of motorbiking to your mates to a pub. Not only are road taxes and petrol taxes on the rise, but beer taxes have gone up too.
This is a group of pub goers have been forced to cycle to the Vittoria on Whiteladies road pub for their afternoon beers; a row of chopper style pedal cycles lined up as a forlorn statement of a lost dream. Still, it adds to the beer money.
That blocked up building, The Ranch, is not damaged by any riot. It's just shut down -people aren't going out and drinking enough, so the Vittoria must welcome all traffic, even these push-biker-gangs
Looking at the zebra crossing, we can see someone didn't quite manage to make the corner here. At least that's one good thing of the plastic keep-left signs: they bend out your way and don't damage the paintwork.
This is the zebra crossing that the WoEP wanted to move away from the road crossings as part of the showcase bus route. Whatever the claimed reason, the real reason is now becoming clear: Tesco are putting in a mini-mart where the Texaco garage used to be.
As we've seen elsewhere in the city, a zebra crossing provides excellent short-stay parking opportunities for anyone nipping in to buy one or two items. Not petrol bombs though, as that bit of the site will be going away. Anyway, who could afford them?
We're reproducing a message sent out today, in order to prevent any misunderstandings if our email became public through other channels, just like that recent incident involving "Quercus", twitter and a naked man on a unicycle. First, we need to make clear that we do not in any way support the use of bicycles or public transport in the city. We are, however, concerned that the delivery and shopping processes of the Cheltenham Road Tesco Mini-mart are making it impossible for us to drive down the bus lane then swing left into Ashley Road, so avoiding the bearpit roundabout while heading out of town on the M32. Furthermore, the congestion caused by buses trying to swing back into the single-lane traffic is creating tailbacks as far as the Gloucester Road/Zetland Road junction, which makes nipping into Booze express harder. We couldn't come out and say this as it would make us appear shallow and self centred, so instead we pretended to have unified interests with the people that Jeremy Clarkson only this week denounced as anti-capitalist subversives.
Here is the letter
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Bristol Traffic Date: 21 June 2011 15:17 Subject: Express Cheltenham Road, Bristol To: expressqueries@uk.tesco.com
It appears that you are looking for feedback w.r.t the Tesco Express, Cheltenham Road, Bristol, the one that recently became nationally famous due its unfortunate history of catching fire late at night.
The Bristol Traffic Project wishes to provide some feedback about the newly re-opened mini-mart.
In case you are unaware, we are a web-based community project to build a defensible dataset on who drives, parks, cycles and walks badly round Bristol. Our stokes croft coverage dates back to 2008, and so forms one of the largest dataset on road usage in the area. As a result, the search terms "Tesco Stokes Croft" invariably lists one of our articles in the first page of responses, despite the recent national and international media coverage.
One conclusion of our three year dataset is that the number of people cycling along Cheltenham Road is increasing. This is something which the council believes is a good thing, which is why the Cycling City program deliberately set out to encourage people in Bishopston, further up the A38, to cycle to work -down Cheltenham Road. For this reason, the Greater Bristol Bus Network offers a mandatory bus lane during some parts of the day; this ends outside Tesco Cheltenham Road, where a non-mandatory cycle path begins. While historically the bus lane only ever existed on those rare days that Bristol Parking Services enforced the rule, the roll-out of in-bus camera and CCTV enforcement of lane-blocking legislation means that compliance is now higher, except amongst those entities that are prepared to view the penalty as an operational expense.
Within the last ten weekdays of the supermarket being "live", community contributions show that
There is invariably a large HGV blocking the end of the bus lane and the beginning of the bus lane between 10:00 and 10:30
The official Tesco deliveries, while scheduled for 10:00-10:30, render the bike lane inoperable for a minimum of 30 minutes out of every working day. This bike lane being, as mentioned, the primary cycle route into the city from north Bristol.
This official blocking of the bus lane impacts bus schedules, inconveniences passengers across the city, and may even lead to financial penalties to FirstBus.
Other organisations with an apparent relationship with Tesco (e.g. G4S) are prepared to block the bus lane during its operational hours, and therefore presumably view parking tickets as an OPEX. This reduces the availability of the bus and bike lane even further.
Customers engaged in a park-and-shop process are prepared to short-stay park in the bus/bike lane through out the day, so rendering it unusable to buses, cyclists, and anyone coming down of Arley Hill who wants to nip down the bus lane before turning left on Ashley Road towards the M32.
Customers engaged in a park-and-shop process are prepared to short-stay park outside the shop during the evening bus-lane hour, so creating congestion that runs as far back as Zetland Road and so has a negative impact on all road journeys.
Overall, then, the combination of scheduled Tesco deliveries, possibly scheduled visits by partner organisations, and short-stay parking by customers has effectively rendered this bus and bike lane unusable to anyone in a bus, bicycle, motorcycle or taxi, or anyone simply prepared to nip up the left lane to get to St Pauls, an action to which a blind eye has historically been turned.
Given the role of the road and the fact that the loss of this lane is leading to congestion morning and evening, we consider this outcome unacceptable.
We would recommend some actions to mitigate this. Sadly very few actions spring to mind other than the closure of the mini-mart.
Your cost model is built around an optimised supply chain that uses the same vehicles for delivering to Tesco Express outlets as other Tesco sites, so the HGVs could only be eliminated by the adoption of a new city-friendly supply chain.
Your cost model does not include the external costs of the impact on the journey times of non-customers, or other externalies such as the increases in their fuel use and pollution.
Passing motorists popping in to shop may have been explicitly or implicitly included in the business model of the shop. It may be possible to enforce a "do not sell to people who park in the bus/bike lane" policy by refusing them entry, however this will not help customer loyalty.
It is hard for you to enforce policy on how your strategic partners such as G4S arrive and park outside your premises.
What is possible is for the local council to act in such a way as to mitigate such issues, independent of any of your actions:
Use the CCTV camera at the junction of Cheltenham Road and Arley Hill to enforce the existing bus lane parking rules. This does not require any legal process and could be rolled out almost immediately.
Use existing the CCTV camera to enforce the 15 minute loading/unload time limit. Again, no legislation necessary.
Uprate the cycle lane from "optional" to mandatory, so earning all vehicles which park there a £120 fine.
Enforce the then-extended cycle lane driving/parking rules using the same CCTV camera
Increase the physical presence of Bristol Parking Services staff, so offering more of a visual deterrent before 10:00 and after 16:30.
Being a data-gathering exercise we shall be using the FoI process to track the number of parking tickets issued in this area, so see if it correlates with the increase of delivery and customer parking which our data implies is happening. We shall also encouraging our existing community base to collect more photographs of the situation, which we shall then place online along with the vehicle registration numbers, and so help build up a better dataset of who chooses to block this invaluable facility, and when.
Please thank your staff, partners and customers for their participation in our experiment.
The Bristol Traffic Team.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
As stated, do not interpret this as some form of subversive activity. It is just that the tailbacks prevent us getting down and parking on the pavement outside Ritas or sprinting over to the M32. We are, as people should recall, a data gathering and analysis project, so we welcome documentary evidence from everyone on this issue, even people engaged in un-British activities like walking, cycling, and getting on a bus as opposed to standing there hoping that one will turn up. The threat of using FoI information to collect ticketing statistics is real, and we enjoy the irony of having the CCTV camera put in "for the mini-mart's own protection" being used to ticket people parking in the bus lane during its hours of liveness. Expect updates in future
We are impressed. Every day that one of the team members has been down to Cheltenham Road this week, there's been a vehicle or two outside Tesco. What was once one of the showcase "cycle city" and "Greater Bristol Bus Network" routes has been returned to the tax paying driver -and as vans and lorries pay more road tax, they deserve to use it first.
"Slug" sends a couple of Pics from 09:15 on Friday 17 June showing a security van outside tesco,
And right outside the credit union, another lorry, MX07GJV
As slug says " It can be very dangerous for a cyclist to cycle in the cycle lane because it is to the left of traffic turning left. So the lorry driver out of concern for the potential danger that inexperienced cyclists are putting themselves in, decided to park on the double yellow lines ... ignoring the no unloading sign.
Behind the vehicle you can see all the way to the security van that is also parked on the cycle lane -and in between the lane is completely empty! Mission accomplished! no cyclists Left Hooked at Ashley junction this morning.
Interestingly, we have a different video of the same stretch of road from someone else taken about ten minutes later. This video is interesting because it is from the perspective of one of the tax-dodgers, someone who is trying to get across the city "after 9am because the roads are quieter." See that? These people have deliberately chosen to commute outside "the rush hour" because they prefer it. But that reduction in road traffic creates an illusion of safety -and encourages more of such behaviour.
At 0:03 there's another cyclist on Freemantle Road -heading towards the university or Clifton, then our underemployed camera-enabled tax-avoider descends Nugent Hill, an option forbidden to cars, especially since they put that island in at the bottom to stop right turns, a feature few motorists have managed to deal with. Our troublemaker negotiates that island by abusing the contraflow bike lane on Arley Hill, then flips into the left lane to undertake the stationary traffic to wait for a green light.
While waiting we see important people in cars and taxis, some public transport users, and unimportant pedestrians, and another cyclist at 1:58 crossing over to the contraflow. Because The A38 here, it could unify or divide the city. The council wanted to make it a showcase for the cycle city program, encouraging people from Bishopston (out of town; to the left) to head into the city centre, down this very road!
That is something we need to stop, which is why we are grateful for Tesco and its support. Because as well as unifying the cyclists, it could divide them. It and Muller road are the two roads that anyone cycling around north Bristol has to encounter, and if we can only roll back any pro-cycling "enhancements" there, then we can discourage anyone not just from cycling on these main roads, but even get across them.
That is why it is so essential to fight them on the streets, and why the Tesco delivery process is helping transform this road, and hence the whole of north Bristol.
At 2:14 you can see the bicycle head in to town. Although they think they have a lane to themselves, at 2:22 you can see their mistake -the security van has moved on since 09:15, but another delivery van has taken its place. Then at 2:34, a car half on the pavement, half on the bike lane. That bike lane is considered unsafe anyway, which is why they and the next lorry are blocking it. What's changed since the photos earlier is that the lorry seems to be deciding to pull out now; it's flipped its indicators on. The tax dodger goes past, and at 2:47 you can see another paveparked van; a 2:49 a similar car. All it takes is one or two vehicles doing this, all the time, every day, and people will be discouraged not just from commuting along this road by bicycle, but across it.
At 3:04 our troublemaker does a U-turn and heads out of town, showing that the bike lane there is in its usual state: short stay parking for shop customers and staff. This bike lane has been reclaimed!
At 3:36, they are now waiting to turn right towards montpelier, where you can see that the row of vehicles blocking the left lane do actually turn it into a bikes-only lane, albeit because nobody actually wants to turn left. Anyone turning left will have to swing over from the right hand lane, which might be a surprise to anyone cycling down it, of which we can see a couple at 3:50.
Then, finally, at 3:54, our errant tax dodger turns right, and then left into Montpelier, where they can feel slightly safer.
You see that? How the quiet bits of the city, Cotham and Montpelier, can be made cycling unfriendly not by adding any anti-cycling infrastructure, but by making it unpleasant to cross the roads between them. We don't need to ask the council for special anti-bicycle features, the way they do in Waltham Forest, all we need to do is park our delivery vans where we want on the roads the cyclist have to cross. It only takes a couple of HGVs to set an example, and once it's begun, every else will copy. What was a bike lane has become a parking area, not just to achieve the tactical goal: park outside our destination, but to achieve a strategic one: to knife the cycling city dream in the back.
Whose streets? Ours! For parking in whenever we want!
What we hadn't expected was how rapidly it would transit from a boring, functional bus lane and bike lane into a short stay shopping street. Tesco have brought the high street back again!
Notice here, on Thursday June 17, 10:18 am how the delivery staff have placed some warning signs out. At first we thought they were to warn cyclists not to go straight into the back of the lorry, and were a bit worried that Tesco may be starting to care.
A closer look reveals the real isse. Because the lorry has a loader that drops to ground level, they don't want any shopper to park their car on the double yellow lines too close to the back of the lorry. They are concerned about the customers, not the passing underpeople.
Here's a video of the same scene
Notice how you can just make out the bike lane underneath the lorry as it raises the floor.
Many of the troublemakers have complained that Tesco moved in to the area to profit from a road going upmarket. Untrue. Tesco moved in there because it wasn't upmarket enough, because people walked and cycled round, even though it was a main road with plenty of room for lorries and parking.
Tesco moved in to the area to save Stokes Croft from itself!
The Tesco Express has re-opened on Cheltenham Road.
It shuts at 18:00, so anyone wanting value beverages after that time is recommend to walk past the Arches, turn left to Zetland Road and go into Booze Express, who are happy to serve discounted vodka and red-bull throughout most of the evening.
Being closed at 6, the bike path in front of Tesco is unused.
What is interesting -and worth knowing- is now that the troublemakers have been evicted from the Telepathic Heights squat, there's room for two cars or vans in front.
Before there was always the risk someone on the roof would drop a brick or a bottle full of petrol onto your paintwork, but now it is safe.
With Cheltenham Road becoming safer and more popular, knowing the secret parking places is becoming important. This is a new one.
A quick trip in our van at 09:59 shows the delivery van YR59YUD happily ensconced in the bus lane, waiting to deliver to tesco.
We say waiting, because apparently as long as they don't start unloading until 10:00, it's OK. This actually makes sense. Anyone who is trying to use public transport or cycle at that time of day are clearly low-income people whose time is effectively worthless, according to the D of Motoring spreadsheets.
What is more interesting is later the same day, now at 18:37, we spot the "Mighty Banana" van of Stokes Croft, now parked outside Tesco. Has someone driven up from the Croft to get their weekly shop in?
Possibly, but they would have found their way blocked by a large group of strangely dressed people. That said, anyone driving up from the croft wouldn't find this unusual, or interfere with their daily shop.
What could, however, would be the police enforcement of parking rules. And here is where we saw something so shocking we almost dropped the mobile phone from our steering wheel hand (the other hand is for gear changes and the horn). Yes, a policeman actually went up to the van to note its registration number. We were in shock. This could destroy Bristol as we know it. Watch the video.
You see that? Panic over. It turns out that the "Mighty Banana" Van, W878MDC, is actually Chris Chalkey's van, and the police are only doing it for a laugh. In the voiceover you can hear Cllr Jon Rogers -whom we suspect of not being in the Waltham Forest Faction of the LibDem council- explaining this and why it's all a setup. Chris see's what's happening, starts waving his masonic hand-waves at the police and all is well. Masonic Handwaves, incidentally, are the van drivers' version of the Masonic Handshake -make the secret wave to any traffic police and they'll let you past.
False alarm: panic over. There's no problem with parking in the mornings, no problem in the evenings either. We were worried there, but at least everyone has come to their senses and realised that if there's one group of people in the city not to mess with, it's us van drivers. Those videos of people shouting "whose streets? Our streets?" wouldn't stand a chance against a roadblock of us going "whose short-stay parking areas? your bike lanes!"
We got a blip in web traffic last week with people searching online for "Stokes Croft" and "Stokes Croft Tesco".
We are Bristol's premier road-related news outlet --and given this road's role in both transportation and fast food, this extra traffic was not surprising.
To keep our out-of-town visitors informed, we drove the official Bristol Traffic White Van down to Cheltenham Road and 'the Croft to see what was happening.
The Tescos is boarded up, Fred Baker Cycles has a few hundred pounds worth of damage. All eight cyclists who read this site might want to consider visiting the shop and buying something there, to show your support for a local shop in the area that never chose to be alongside a new supermarket.
The outbound bike lane has a car in it, this time a police car.
The inbound bike lane also has a car in it.
Up on the now infamous Telepathic Heights, someone sits on the roof shouting at passers by.
Sainsbury's Local is now open in Gloucester Road, so you can "shop locally" without having to go into local shops. Of course, any one who does this will miss out on the pain-au-chocolat which the Bread Store has raised to an art, but sometimes you're in too much of a hurry to queue for them or talk to the staff.
What the new shop does have, and presumably will have the cyclists and students of Bishopston happy, is a contraflow bike lane just next to the shop, here on Elton Road. You can just see it under the HSS Hire van NA09EZJ.
Presumably the driver was worried about cyclists in a hurry endangering these new shoppers, who would be unused to such things, so he has positioned himself for the safety of these pedestrians. The fact that he is wearing hi-viz shows he recognises how cyclists on a the pavement can endanger pedestrians, and how it is important to be visible to them.
dichohecho points us at this secret parking space hidden behind Sainsbury's on Whiteladies Road, which is also handy for that fine beveraging factility, the Alma Tavern.
This will let you combine a swift pint or two in the beer garden with some Saturday shopping, without having to deal with the shopping centre's own car park, or the now-paid-for railway parking area.
It's not enough to learn how to drive, you need to know the lifestyle -how to sprint round the city, which signs to ignore, where best to buy some discounted vodka. This is why we are please to get a photo from cyclista, showing the Bristol School of Motoring car WR59OJY on the double yellow lines outside the Tesco Express on Bedminster North Street.
Some people are surprised that Tesco Expresses -which target passing motorists- are always on main roads with double yellow lines outside. Those people miss the point. Those double yellow lines ensure short-stay parking for passing customers. They put the shops on main roads as that is where the passing customers are.
Returning to the car, look how perfectly it is aligned with the pavement, the wheels perfectly straight. That is skilled parking!
Couple of months back, paul@loop-pr.co.uk commented on a posting, offering a traffic-related news story. Obviously we never followed up anything which would involve effort, though we did see that the company is a media relations company which specialises in taking your brands and making them newsworthy. Obviously, we are ourselves a world famous brand, so don't need to waste money in coverage ourselves, but one of the company's customers is streetcars, the second car-by-the-hour scheme in the city. For some reason Paul didn't ever follow up with a news item, which is a pity, as we are not above receipt bribery. But still we waited.
Today, though, in a bribery-free article, we are show why you should spend the money.
Here we can see the streetcars car YK10LHD making the poor pedestrians of deprived inner-city Clifton feel even less worthy, as now they have to detour around a car in the middle of the pavement.
Same for this cyclist, who cannot ride straight up to the bike park, they must instead dismount and walk.
Here though, you can see why streetcar are parked in the middle of the road, taking up all walking space. As well as the underpeople we've seen, there are lots of students in the area, and for about £7/hour they can rent a series 1 BMW, which you can then use to park on pavements! What a fantastic idea! Students: for only £7, instead of walking, cycling, or worse -use public transport- you can have a real car, and experience being an adult.
If there is one flaw here, it's timing. Year end. That means no money. Wait until October, when the loans have just arrived, the credit cards haven't topped out. That's the time to sell the dream.
Tesco are offering to improve this part of the city, by giving passing traffic a reason to pull over and shop. This particular stretch of Cheltenham Road lacks such amenites at present, so it is underused.
The road is actually two lanes wide here, and so it would be possible for HGVs to pull over and unload food supplies throughout the day. We know this as on this weekday there is a lorry doing just that further up the road. Nobody is inconvenienced.
The bike lane and bus lane would provide short stay parking for visitors. We know this, as on this weekday there is a van S89LHY doing just that. Nobody is inconvenienced.
As with the rest of Stokes Croft, the double-yellow lined bike and bus lanes will provide short stay parking for revenue-earning customers, instead of enabling through traffic on bicycles, who will not bring any money to Tesco at all.
We note that as this path is downstream of the newly enhanced Zetland Road junction, the changes made there to prevent bicycles riding inbound from Bishopston will reduce conflict in this stretch of the road, so ensure that a new mini-supermarket will not lead to an increase in accident statistics.
Look at this: the bike parking outside Asda, Bedminster, is full, with cyclists having to struggle to get their bicycles in an out of the six racks assigned to them.
This is the only bike parking on this side of the supermarket, the rest of area is dedicated to people who drive there.
It may seem a bit odd for a supermarket in a Cycling City to only have room for twelve bicycles and what appears to be thousands of cars. But consider this. Asda is owned by Walmart, the world's largest retailer. Do you seriously think that Walmart got so big by people cycling to the shops? Of course not. Their business model is built on bulk purchases, for which you need a car, ideally a proper 4x4.
Look more closely at the cyclists and compare them to the people making their way to and from the car park.
The cyclists: little bags, barely big enough to hold a snack. The car drivers: trolleys full of goods. Walmart's business model is based on high-volume low-margin sales, and cyclists bringing at most a rucksack just aren't buying enough food or other goods. These cyclists should be grateful that Asda has provided any parking, instead of turning this space over to support two more cars, especially on a busy weekend in the runup to Xmas.
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