fraternal greetings between arrogant and self-entitled road users

We've observed before that there's no real difference between cyclists and the owners of fast german cars: Arrogant and Self-entitled wankers: the only variable being how much kinetic energy they bring to a collision.

You can see that some of the individuals are in fact self-aware of this little detail. And rather than treat "the opposing team" as unworthy, instead welcome their presence and greet each other as they pass.

Here we can see exactly this at work, with our tax dodging adult and teenage child heading towards the Clifton "dead zone" from the more exciting parts of the city, on a weekend afternoon where almost nobody is around. This St Pauls Road, incidentally, because its the way from Clifton to those more exciting parts of the city. It continues as "Tyndall's Park Road", because the Bearpit roundabout wasn't considered in the victorian era destination, so "Bearpit Avenue" is eternally denied our city.

You can see, as they head down St Pauls Road, a Porsche turning in from Whiteladies Road, cutting the corner as it revs up to the 20 mph speed limit Marvin Rees is yet to publicly abrogate —though his state of the nation "we can't punish driving" hints that it will come soon.

It comes up behind the two cyclists; the father riding alongside the child to stop both of them getting close-passed.

Rather than get upset, the Porsche driver pauses for a moment, assesses the situation, and recognises a fellow arrogant and self-entitled wanker. They pass, but close enough they can see each other clearly, and sound a friendly on their horn as they pass.

Our cyclist, also recognises a fellow arrogant and self-entitled wanker waves a friendly hello back. After all —why else would someone beep their horn in a quiet Bristol road except to say hello?

Grass a driver week: MK59USB, texting across a junction

Apparently some police forces in the country are now rolling out enforcement of driving too close to tax dodgers, maybe even section 59 ASB orders, which are interesting as there is a lower burden of proof. It doesn't impact penalties or insurance, simply threatens to take the car away.

We watch these experiments with trepidation.

Meanwhile, Bristol has a page to report incidents for their records alone.

This week we are conducting a small experiment to report a few dangerous drivers to this site, to see what happens. Expect followups if there are any results.


First, MK59USB on Tyndall's Park Road, crossing Whiteladies Road while reading their phone.



There are now pedestrian crossing lights on some of the arms of the junctions, specifically Tyndall's Park Road has a walk and ike one (a small dip in the kerb allows the bikes over); Whiteladies Road inbound also has green. These require left-turns to be restricted, which has long been a rule more ignored than observed. The council has recently done some raised corner sharpening; be interesting to see what's happening.

Where there is not any pedestrian crossing is on St Pauls Road —the Clifton Side— people run across when there is a gap, such as when vehicles heading inbound are waiting to turn right, and in that little gap between Whiteladies Road going read and TPR/St Pauls Road going green.

Which means this mercedes is about to head towards a junction where there are likely to be people sprinting across. Will they put down their phone?

No, is the answer, they keep on looking at it, going down to one-handed so they can hold the steering wheel with the other. About half way through the junction, they look up, notice the cyclist, and hold the phone down out of sight.

Interesting question: what would have happened if the tax-dodger hadn't been there?

The experiment begins, then, by filing this on the A&S police site, see how they react.

What about the full report an incident process? Too much hassle given its inevitable that nothing is going to happen. If they don't act when you go to the station with a CD of a video and a complaint, it's unlikely that they will react to a youtube URL.

Bristol's Parking Problem: 2016 style

There's an article up on the evening post saying for the first time in a generation, a majority of people are using either buses, bikes or walking to work instead.

This is fascinating. Too bad there is no coverage of the methodology of the survey other than it's "a survey of the commuting habits of thousands of city residents". How did they conduct this survey? A random call of Bristol numbers? Did it include s survey of the rural backwaters of S Gloucs and N Somerset? Did they look at the distances travelled to measure commute-miles, rather than just journeys? Did they ask firstbus and wessex bus lines for data, along with ANPR logs and phone company travel datasets? These are the things we need to know.

Anyway, in the list of people the paper called for an opinion, they reached for their Fax Machine contact list and got in touch with Hugh Bladon, Bristol's member of Association of British Drivers, who is always woken up from his sleep for a quote. Hugh Bladon actually lives in Weston Super Mare, a town which is still looking forward to 1974, so it's always surprising that they can contact Hugh for a quote. That's 20 miles away, a distance quoted by Google maps as 38 minutes drive from Stokes Croft on a Sunday evening. If Mr Bladon really does commute into Bristol every day, he'll be spending an hour each way, first on the A370, A38 or M5+ portway, then in stop-go mode through town to finally reach his destination. And for what? To live in Weston? That's the place where Banksy hosted his Dismaland Exhibition —and that's not a coincidence. Probably the main problem they had there was people walking round town laughing at stuff and taking selfies in front of the sea front, not realising they weren't actually at the exhibition yet. Why would anyone voluntary live there? If you have children, think of what it does to their minds? And, think what it does to your life, with 2+h a day sitting in a car.

Essentially, you can't trust the judgment of anyone who lives in WsM of their own volition. So the fact he is called on to be the ABD spokesman is a bit worrying for them: can't they find anyone else?

And what did he have to say? Rather than go for the survey methodology —always the first line of attack—, he accepted the findings and then blamed the council

I suppose people are getting fed up with travelling into the city. here is not enough provision for people to park, and I suppose more people are using the park and rides. I would also think George Ferguson and his 20mph scheme are frightening people who think they might get a ticket for doing maybe 23, or 24mph Those are the sort of things that drive away people.With the expanding economy, I would have thought more people would be in cars. It might also be there is not enough parking. Cycle lanes now take up a lot of tarmac where road parking used to be.

This is hilarious. We have never heard of anyone too scared to drive into the city in case they get a ticket(*).

Blaming the RPZ for removing a large amount of free-at-point-of-use commuter parking is something he should have gone for, but instead he imagines that people are scared of getting a ticket for driving at 24 mph. That's like saying people are scared of using the M4 in case they get a ticket for driving at 74 mph. They aren't, you don't.

As for the "Cycle lanes now take up a lot of tarmac where road parking used to be.". He must have a different cycle map than everyone else. The purpose of cycle lanes is to provide short stay parking. Even bus lanes are only closed to parking for 3 hours a day, 21 h a week.

But he does have a bit of a point: there isn't enough parking. Only what you want to park has changed.

Look at this video of a Bristol (not a WsM) resident cycling to the shops on a weekend.

1. There are no cycle lanes.
2. There are still people driving, not scared of getting a ticket for driving at 23 mph.
3. A lot of the people driving don't seem to looking where they are going.
4. None of the car parking space has been re-allocated to cycle lanes.
5. There are lots of bike racks,  about 8 opposite where Havana Coffee used to be, two over the road by that, then more by costa coffee and sainsbury's.
6. All of these bike racks are full.

There is nowhere to park a bicycle



Our reporter cycles down hill, avoids getting hit by the 4x4 turning from Aberdeen Road without looking, and the hatchback pulling out from the other side of the road without looking, carries on a bit, having to wait with a car in front for a driver taking their time to reverse park, then pulls over themselves to find somewhere to park. First rack: 12 bikes; no room for more. Visible across the road: two racks, four bikes, no space. They continue down to Whiteladies Road. On the far side of the road, there's space for about 30 bikes, looking fairly full. On this side of the road, 6 more racks, space for 12. Except, again, full.

One of the bikes there half of an abandoned frame, lying on its side. So the the tax dodger gets to do something nobody who drives in from WsM can get away with; they stick their own bike on top of it, lock up, and go to the shops. So we see approximately six cars worth of space allocated -all from the pavement, we note- for bicycles, which is a fraction of the space allocated to car parking. What we see in this video is, on Cotham Hill alone, 32 cars, two spaces free. For bikes, 48 spaces: all taken, albeit some with dissolving relics.

Is this an unusual event? Not really; the same situation was encountered on Gloucester road an hour earlier: one space outside Maplins, someone else queueing for it before the tax dodger had even unlocked. Because on that side of the road, there are about eight bike stands, from Zetland Road up. In contrast, if you wanted to drive there, there's more space.

Essentially, we are seeing a shift to cycling as a transport option in some parts of the city —and we aren't seeing the city adapting to that.  Hugh can complain about removal of parking, but there is significantly more space allocated to parking here than any other other form of transport.

This little stretch of Whiteladies Road is interesting, as it is what the ABD use in the videos calling the council "bonkers", showing how shops have suffered from a lack of parking and have had to shut down.



Well, our anecdata beats theirs, at least in terms of being up to date, and what it says is "Bristol does have a parking problem, but it's not just for cars".

(*) If you have —or know someone who has— stopped driving around out of fear of getting ticketed at 23 mph, please get in touch.

WN60HDC: Sign Language

If you look at any of the London cyclists videos, they normally involve shouting, swearing and recrimination. Well, a lot of Bristol coverage is like that —but it can be done less confrontationally.


Here is a silent movie showing the exchange of opinions on the merits of texting while driving between a tax dodger and WN60HDC WN60 HDC


After a point and a dismissal of he phone in use, the tax dodger points to their camera and then the number plate, the driver then responds with their own pointing action.

This is of course the site of our experiment where we see 1 car in 6 looking at their phone screen on a weekday morning. Here, on a saturday afternoon, Whiteladies Road is less congested, so it's surprising to see someone having time to check up on facebook. They don't check for very long, perhaps they don't have any friends.

Is is a good text?

Now that summer is here, the car windows are down and people can engage in spontaneous conversation.

Here, we can see a tax dodger having the rudeness to walk over a zebra crossing and lights, then, as they set off, decide to talk to one of their superiors -here the driver of Audi WR11FGG.


It's always hard to think of an opening for an impromptu conversation, but here the driver has left a way open by virtue of the fact she appears to be reading email on her smart phone as she drives down the road.

Admittedly, she does seem a bit surprised by the way the cyclist tries to strike up a friendly banter -but then as she was looking at the phone while driving down Whiteladies Road, she was unaware that were any tax-dodgers in the area.

Does car parking encourage local shopping?

One of the "Pickles war on the war on motorists" issues is that the lack of free parking is destroying the high street. An interesting assertion, but is it backed with real data? Well, we like our data over opinions, especially when the opinions come from politicians, national or local, which aren't backed up by any evidence.

Here is whiteladies road on a weekday, from Clifton Down shopping centre  up to Blackboy Hill, or more precisely the Port of Call pub.


Some things to observe.

1. 0:00 starts at clifton down, where a mid-size Sainsbury's provides groceries and beers.
2. The first 1:15 of the 2:30 video contains a stretch with vast amounts of short stay parking for shoppers. With the roll out of the bus lanes, the commuter parking here is now gone.
3. The first 1:15 of the 2:30 video contains many vacant shops. Two camera shops -killed by digital cameras eliminating the printing business, and Amazon. One bookshop: killed by Amazon. A bottoms-up off license. Some clubs which went away when "the strip" fell out of fashion.
4. The upper half of the video contains lots of shops -even though the parking spaces there are all full. It includes esoteric shops: kitchens, ellis brigham, artists supplies premium things: a fish shops, a cheese-vendor, and everyday things. 

The implication here is not that a lack of parking kills shopping, but that online trading and digital devices has destroyed the business models of some shops, trends in nightlife (and the cash to party) others. The 2008 banker-created recession has probably been more destructive than anti-car policies in this road.

Another issue may be that the Sainsbury's sucks up all the daily shopping cash, leaving only outdoor coffee shops nearby and a post office/chemist. The upper section of the hill keeps going due to a large local resident population with enough money to buy things, and the fact it contains the last off licenses, pubs and chip shops before the downs, or more precisely the student halls of residence on the other side of the downs.

(footnote: one of main camera of this project, a panasonic TZ27, came from Jacob's cameras which was at 0:54. London Camera Exchange in central Bristol is still surviving, showing that some of the more specialist camera shops are surviving -even though parking there is worse)

Whiteladies Road Texting: DG54DFV joins the dataset

Last week's Suspension Bridge visit showed that only 1 car in 100 in that traffic jam was texting. Maybe our Whiteladies Road "one car in 6" dataset was a fluke?

More study is needed, so here is another quick visit




This time, DG54DFV is the vehicle with a driver texting. We should start collecting gender statistics. Today: female.

Maybe there is something to do with the fact that this is often the journey into town, the inbound route, which encourages texting. We should stop and ask people about why they are texting or checking facebook to understand this. Or perhaps delegate this task to Avon and Somerset Police

Reminder: We are a data driven organisation that understands how things work

Some people -mistakenly consider us to be some kind of spoof, whereas in fact we are a documentary that has built up a weakly-defensible dataset of the city's transport issues.We also include topics like queue theory, game theory and the like to analyse that data.

This is why we despair when the legacy mass media publish articles that lack both real data and the fundamental understanding behind it

Now, Queue theory, Erlang's core concept: A queue happens when the egress rate of a channel is lower than the ingress rate.

In less technical terms "you get a queue if less things are leaving something than entering". It doesn't matter how big a bucket is, if more watering is pouring into it than is leaving from a hole in the bottom -eventually it will overflow

In evening post commenter terms "there's no point making something two lanes wide if it has to go down to one lane wide a bit further on". The bottleneck is the one-lane bit wide, not the two lane stretch.

We know this is hard to grasp, which is why people are still complaining about the Portway bus lane. Evening Post Commenters: the bottlenecks are the narrow bits beyond the suspension bridge and Anchor Road -removing the bus lane will not increase your journey time by car at all.

Alternatively: it is futile to remove a bus lane in the name of congestion, if there's a single-lane road later on. You are wasting your life on something that will not deliver the benefits you expect. You may argue against this using the term "common sense" -but that is why building things from bridges to computer networks rely on people called "engineers" trained in something called "mathematics". Common sense doesn't cut it when you actually want something to work.

The Evening Post reporters need to pick this up too.

As today there is an article, Traffic lights on Blackboy Hill 'are cause of the congestion'.

A BRISTOL campaigner claims a set of traffic lights at a busy junction cause more congestion than they solve – and should be ripped out.
Simon Brookes, who led a campaign for the removal of a controversial bus lane in Westbury Road, is now calling for the removal of the lights at the top of Blackboy Hill.

We aren't sure what "campaigner" means here. Presumably it means "someone who doesn't understand queue theory but likes to get their face in the regional press"

He conducted a survey and claims that the lights held up lots of buses.

Mr Brookes carried out another survey yesterday between 9am and 10am. He said he witnessed 89 changes of the lights and during that time, only two buses went through on green. But the number of buses going uphill and held up on a red was 26.

We are surprised that Mr Brooks has now started caring about buses. Because if you are trying to get bus lanes removed on the approach to Whiteladies Road, suddenly caring about their performance in Whiteladies Road itself seems somewhat hypocritical -unless you are simply pretending to care.

Furthermore, if you are going to do a survey on congestion -why do it outside the rush hour. Do it at 08:30 at peak commute and school runs. Doing it after 9am is like saying the M32 doesn't get congested because you drove up it on a sunday morning.

Bad data, failure to root cause analysis and then pretending to care about public transport. We don't do any of these.

Mind you, Mr Brooks' pretence to care about buses doesn't make it through the article:

He will also be calling for a cycle lane to be removed from Westbury Park, where it meets with North Road.
He said the lane was not used by cyclists and simply added to traffic congestion.
Mr Brookes also wants to see the removal of the remaining stretch of bus lane from Westbury Park.

Sorry, but the congestion has other causes. It may seem frustrating to be stuck in a car watching bike lanes and bus lanes that are empty most of the time, but that is because they are working. The buses are not being held up until they merge with the cars on Whiteladies road; the bicycles not held up at all, mostly.



Here then is our dataset: a video from  "wheels on the bike" counting the entire set of vehicles on Whiteladies Road, from the top to the triangle, in 1:45.




Most of Whiteladies road is one lane wide. That is the bottleneck -the carrying capacity of the road. Arguing about bus lanes  up the hill or even switching times of traffic lights is irrelevant when there is a lane traffic jam from Park Row and Park Street stretching all the way up to the Downs.

This is why appearing on papers demanding for things to be removed because they "cause congestion" is dangerous. Someone may one day see this video and say "maybe there are other issues". We know that -it's the surburbanites driving into town. Simon Brookes should recognise this, and keep his mouth shut.

Selfishly holding up a Mercedes

Shocking Footage of a Cyclist holding up an Important Person(tm) in a Mercedes not once, but twice.




This is in Oakfield Road, Clifton, where, despite the ongoing efforts by the council and the Neighbourhood partnership, cyclist are still seen. In the opening sequence we see two of them not looking at all intimidated and almost acting as if they belong in Clifton.

At 18s in, after letting an Important Person(tm) in a Range Rover past, the cyclist flips back their head to see what the vehicle sound is -where they spot a recent Mercedes. Rather than immediately get out of the way of what at this point is a narrowing road, the subsersive carries on, -again, acting as if they have a right to be there.

Once they turn off, however, they sprint ahead -why? to get in front of the Mercedes at the zebra crossing. If the car is turning left, it will be held up directly -and if it is going straight on the tax dodger can use the zebra crossing to clear the main road first, and then cycle in their way again.

Today the car is turning left, the cyclist dismounts and walks slowly enough in front of the car that the pedestrians coming the other way can get far enough over to again hold up the car. As the tax dodger dismounts and proceeds down Whiteladies Road, they glance back at the Important Car(tm) to see the Important Person(tm) looking unhappy at the audacity of a tax-dodger to hold them up not once, but twice.

BBC: welcome to the goldfish bowl

A message hits the rarely-checked Bristol Traffic youtube inbox

Can you get in touch?

Hi there,

I'm a journalist at the BBC, we're running an item on cycling on tomorrow's breakfast programme on Radio Bristol and I'm keen to speak to someone who uses a little camera on top of their helmets to capture various goings on during their commutes.

Can you get in touch with me as soon as possible please?

Thanks,

Jonathan

This falls foul our "do not engage with the audience of bristol media channels" policy, so gets rejected

We only just saw the message, but we wouldn't be willing to take part anyway.

What we can do is point you at this video made while walking a bicycle over a zebra crossing on whiteladies road, where a car goes straight over the zebra crossing in front of the pedestrian and then they proceed into the BBC car park.

http://bristolcars.blogspot.co.uk/2011/03/bbc-we-know-they-are-on-our-side.html

We saw the driver a few days later in the BBC radio van. If you recognise your colleague you may want to point them at the video and pass on the following message

"the western governments may be collaborating with google, yahoo, facebook &c to watch all our online activities & to record all that we do, but the monitoring infrastructure -phones and helmet cameras- is near ubiquitous, and google are happy to offer us use of their storage and computing services for nothing. The era of "getting away with something" is over.  Please consider that the next time you choose to drive over a zebra crossing while someone is walking over it.

http://bristolcars.blogspot.co.uk/2009/01/assault-on-liberty-continues.html

This is a dead cycle lane. No its not, its a norwegian blue.

One aspect of the Cycling City program was the way they used Showcase Bus Routes as part of the plan







as you can see, it means that on a friday evening people have a cycle lane to follow on whiteladies road

It's not a particularly great cycle lane, but with the bus lane downhill and road widening out further up, this metre or so of paint does say "bicycles can go here". For anyone thinking "why not take the lane", on a friday evening that lane is stationary traffic. On a day when there is moving traffic, most people aren't going to be fit enough to keep with the flow all the way up the hill.

this bike lane, is important.

But not, apparently, as important as a buildout "for pedestrian safety"



This little build-out popped up without any warning, no consultation on the council web site, apparently no discussion in the bike forums, nothing.

Why has it gone up? Part of the "safe routes to school" work to the new St Johns school campus; This is the one where last year Skanska proposed making lower redland road a one-way route and stopping cyclists from contraflowing as their safe-school-run plan.

That plan got killed, but whoever wanted to do it must have been bearing a grudge, as they have effectively managed to knife the Whiteladies road cycle route instead, giving you a whole 50cm of rough tarmac and slippery paint between the pavement and the large buses.

This is not a cycle lane! It is dead!

No doubt the council will argue it is "resting", that it is a "norwegian blue" cycle lane. We know different -this buildout has killed it. The cycle team needs to admit this, and on next year's cycle maps remove the "dedicated cycle lane" from this stretch of whiteladies road. To pretend it is still there is to be the pet-shop owner in the dead parrot sketch.

There's just one little thing we have to ask of whoever designed this. Not: did you know that there was a cycle lane there before you came up with your plan? Not: how did you manage to get this in without the cycle team noticing? Not even "how do manage to bypass the entire council consultation process"?

No its: how does slightly widening the pavement make crossing an A-Road at peak hours a safe route to school?

Uphill and downhill there are pelican crossings, the whiteladies gate one being very popular on the school run. Here, for example, is a video of people waiting to cross it when, as it goes red, a volvo school-running parent goes through it uphill (note the pedestrian to the left of the camera shaking her head in disbelief -she mustn't get out much), while the driver of the car coming downhill is too busy on the phone to do the same.



This shows that you can't safely cross whiteladies road on a weekday morning on a light-controlled or zebra crossing without expecting vehicles to cut you up. That doesn't even include the (sadly not on video) incident involving a school running Volvo dad driving over the wrong side of the oakfield road crossing traffic island. These crossings, despite their white lines and red lights are not safe to cross.

Which is why we stare at these roadworks in disbelief. Not because we care about the cyclists -they are clearly unimportant. But in complete disbelief that whoever built this thought it would make trying to walk two kids across two lanes of rush hour traffic is a safe route to school.

Because all the pinch point is doing is stopping bicycles coming up the hill at 4 mph from hitting the push chair -it does nothing for the cars and buses that are likely to cause more damage to the children.

Which means that it is utterly useless. It is not just a a dead cycle lane, it is a dead pedestrian crossing too

H610GDY -not that discreetly texting

Being a data driven organisation, we should set out collect some numbers on the percentage of drivers texting a lights -it seems high in the morning and evening peak hours, but that could just because there are more cars stopped by lights, and because they wait longer.

What we do know is this: when there are four or more vehicles stopped at a light, you can be confident that one of them will be texting. Our "expendable" cyclist demonstrates this.

After sending their school-running child onto the pavement to inflict terror on pedestrians, the tax dodger proceeds up the road, looking into every car; it turns out to be vehicle 2, the old British Leyland era mini H610GDY.

What is interesting is this: within six seconds of the lights going red she is two hands on the phone, texting. Presumably to say "help I am trapped in a mini -bring WD40 to spray on the spark plugs in case it starts to rain"(*)

Is it (a) she's got great reflexes, can come to a stop, put the handbrake on, grab the phone and be texting within six seconds, or (b) she already had the phone in her hands, and is on the foot brakes?

Mk I mini brakes are drum brakes without servo-assist; the disk brakes on the cyclist's wheels are more powerful and work better in the wet. This means the mini owner is at severe risk of driving into the van in front.

She just has to be lucky that there isn't an Avon and Somerset version of the Met's Roadsafe, else someone may forward this video to them to say "that texting thing -don't"

2WD Drivers -please get the 4x4 out for the school run today

Following on our advice to pedestrians and cyclists, we have one more

A lot people are still driving their small cars to school and work, creating needless traffic jams for important people. Here on Whiteladies road you can see this.
 
This traffic jam is making it hard for us to complete our Clifton school runs -and so feel smug about spending an extra £1500 on a vehicle with awful fuel economy. They are also hard to park -which is why Clifton so desperately needs more parking.

This morning you can see that pedestrians who ignored our advice to stay at home are holding a 2WD up Whiteladies Gate, slowing down a Landrover.
 

At the top of Cotham Hill, we can see more 2WD cars in trouble -with a pedestrian making it harder to clear the junction, so endangering themselves as these vehicles struggle to get through.


Please can all drivers leave the round-town runabouts at home and get the big cars out today -you know you deserve it.

Secret Whiteladies road GBBN parking

We are happy to declare the whiteladies road showcase bus route a success.

Before, parking here on whiteladies road was forbidden, because it had zig-zags. Now it is somewhere you can park during rush hour.

This is because the parking restrictions are not live until the signs go up-until then buses and cyclists get to go down the single lane, while we can park there all day.
 
Apparently this enlightened state of affairs will last another month or two.

Hold the Road 2

Last Friday, we reported on the 50 plus new parking spaces available on Whiteladies Road. We featured Audi YL06DYP taking advantage of the new spaces.

It appears that, whilst owners of lesser quality German vehicles have yet to take advantage of these new parking spaces, word has spread within the Audi driving community.

Here we see another Audi - WV60EZL - taking advantage of the same space.

As a civic service, we're thinking of writing to all car manufacturers to let them know of the scheme provided by Bristol City Council as part of the Greater Bristol Bus Network.

H/T Dru Marland for the photo

Hold the Road

As regular readers will know, we have covered the GBBN (Greater Bristol Bus Network) before.

We were sceptical at first, thinking that it might reduce parking opportunities in favour of the most profound losers in society: those that don't own a car.

Well, there are still cyclists, pedestrians and buses using Whiteladies Road, but it turns out that the revised road layout carefully concealed at least fifty new parking spots.

Here we see YL06DYP taking advantage of one of these new parking spaces. 

This is genius: we look forward to more use of Bristol's roads for static vehicles.

RTC on WLR

Showing we are more timely than the Evening Post with a publishing process that involves shipping paper in from outside Bristol -and so getting stuck on the M4- here are some pics of a collision between a BMW and a Toyota (Auris?) on Whiteladies Road from 08:10; twenty minutes ago.
 
The front of the Toyota looks toast, the airbags haven't deployed so it looks like a low-kinetic energy event.

The BMW bodywork has come out a lot more unscathed, though we suspect that if the driver took it to the BMW dealer in St Philips it would be the one coming out costing the most. The driver (belt and white shirt) was holding something up to the top of his head, implying he'd bashed it on the wheel or windscreen. That reg of BMW may not have airbags, and the driver may not have had a seatbelt or helmet. Yet as this is clearly a below-12mph crash, a cycling helmet would have reduce injuries.

 
The two people with rucksacks are a cyclist on the left and possibly a pedestrian on the right. It'd be tempting to blame the cyclist, but that's not the case, he pulled over after the event and was either being a witness or offering medical support.


What happened? The BMW RJ52AEM was crossing Whiteladies from Oakfield Road. At this point you need to pull across the road to get to West Park if you are heading across Bristol; this is a nice little west-east rat-run option from Clifton to Cotham that avoids the St Pauls Road/Tyndall's Park Road junction, where the traffic lights manufacture congestion.
 

You do need to pull out fairly aggressively as the gaps are quite tight. The main provider of gaps is actually the zebra crossing -whenever a pedestrian uses it the outbound traffic halts in a queue and there's an empty space on the other side of the road; once you get over that outbound lane you can go quite fast over the road, down west park and you are in Cotham Hill in a flash.
Today it went wrong. Looks like either the BMW pulled out expecting the Toyota to give way, and it didn't. Perhaps one or other weren't looking, perhaps the right-of-way negotiation process failed.

Either way, hope all is uninjured and that both are insured. Photos available to either party on request.

Bike parking steals valuable retail space

The high streets are in trouble, and there is little that can be done.

The government has proposed making it easier to change retail outlets from one use to another without so much paperwork -something the Costa Coffee outlet in Whiteladies road has done pre-emptively.

Another area was improved parking, which the whiteladies showcase bus route promises -by converting whiteladies road to 1h short stay parking during the day. Which shows how naive the government high street survey was -where do they expect the staff to park now that there is no long stay parking in front of the shop?

What Whiteladies road does have is an overflowing bike parking area, which gets in the way of pedestrians.

It also fails to recognise the benefit to the high street were it converted into retail advertising space

Warning Signs

The Showcase Bus Route is being rolled out on Whiteladies Road, bringing chaos to motorists, buses and even cash4cars vans.

At least they provide some warning, "temporary road service", or "road closed from 20:00 to 06:00"

As usual, the tax-dodger and pedestrian groups will be complaining that the roadworks and signs only care about the needs of motorists.

We say, yes, because we need to be warned of dangers ahead that they will not, because of their lack of money, encounter

This sign on Aberdeen Road for example, brings fear to many motorists, yet the cyclists and the walkers will go past unawares:

KWIK FIT OPEN AS USUAL

Fuel Costs and motorbiking

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?