Hotwells Primary: the parking problem

While down at Hotwell's Primary, we thought we'd have a look round to see where else parking restrictions could be relaxed.

Well, there's a bit by the school marked "school keep clear" that looks like a good opportunity.

Round the corner there a build out with bollards and four bike parks, stopping even important parents from using it.

There's even a sign "stopping on zig zags is dangerous and selfish". But as that's not live evening and weekends, that's a problem for commuters rather than residents.

Round the corner -on a weekend- no parking problems at all, with a pavement where you can park close enough to the fence to ensure that neither side of your vehicle gets scratched.

This is why we think the proposal to take away one short-stay dropoff point on Hope Chapel Hill to add at most two parking spaces is misguided. There's lots of pavements to park on outside of the weekday, and if you add two more spaces, well, that just adds room for two more commuters -people who aren't in the Clifton wards, so aren't going to vote for Barbara or Terry in a fit of gratitude. It's the school-run parents who will be most inconvenienced, and they who are the biggest threat.

Walthamising Hotwells

One of the Clifton Traffic Calming proposals -voted for, with support from the Waltham Forest Faction of the ruling LibDem party, was to remove some yellow lines from this road "to calm traffic", with a key justification being this is near a school and it would improve safety. This perfect Walthamisation: to improve the facilities for us, the motorists, using the walking and cycling part of the council budget, and claiming it is for "their own good". Waltham Forest excels in this, such as in the downgrading of a route to the Olympics, though we are surprised at how much it cost to make it so easy to PavePark. We in Bristol don't need such help.

This is the road covered. There are some buildouts already, one positioned to protect the wingmirrors of cars, and room on the other side of the road to park. The target area must be further down the hill.

Ah yes, here it is. A narrow stretch, two chicanes and then a wide space -wide enough to get two small cars into.

But here's a question: is this worth spending political capital on? Barbara Janke, Cllr for Clifton (Waltham Forest Ward), is in charge of a minority council that often cites its green foundations as a way of differentiating it. To remove some double yellow lines "to calm traffic" is going to get bad press in the green-troublemaker news outlets (fortunately, not the BBC or Evening Post), and embarrass others in the council. For what? Two parking spaces.

It may seem odd, but we in the Bristol Traffic project are against the proposal for two reasons. One is this: there are more important places to add parking areas that a back road near Hotwells

The other --and this is key-- is this: double yellow lines provide Clifton parents with designated dropoff areas on the school run. Those two parking spaces would be wasted on residents or commuters, as only two people a day will benefit from each new space; four people per day on a weekday, dropping down to one person/day on a weekend. Twelve vehicles a week. Whereas as a short-stay parking area, you could have ten parents a morning queuing up to do dropoffs, push the kids out and carry straight on into the city, without having to get out the car.

It is far more valuable for parental dropoff than for resident and commuter parking, and if the councillors don't realise this, they are talking to the residents and not the school parents. If we sent our kids to this school, we'd be in touch with Barbara Janke and others defending our right to park here, instead of saying "yes, we think two more residents should park here." Who cares about the residents? That's four voters, compared to the possibly twenty that ten families could offer.

The other thing is that traffic calming claim looks, well, weak. You could push it for Pembroke Road -you can get up to speed. But here? Even with a buildout dropped enough to let vans go over it, you can't keep your speed up, you have to give way at the bottom anyway.

For the sake of twelve extra vehicle parking opportunities a week, Barbara and Terry are going to make enemies of everyone in the school, as well as devalue the entire "LibDem are green" brand. Admittedly, their Westminster School and Parliament compatriots are doing the same thing, but if you look at the recent election results, not only did the Green party take a LibDem seat, they came second in a few other wards. The cost of adding two parking spaces here -both financial and political - doesn't justify it. Two happy residents, some commuters who aren't even in the same ward as the councillors, and 40-50 annoyed parents plus the local green troublemakers blogging about it -and maybe even letting the evening post in on the joke, so that Barbara gets laughed at as much as Gary "bus stop" Hopkins did.

This is just political ineptitude.

Clifton: resisting cycling city

Even as we complain for the current and aspiring councillors for their lack of imagination over car parking -compared to the residents, we must praise the area for holding back the cycling in the area. If they didn't you could imagine families happy to cycle over the suspension bridge to get to Ashton Court, to pootle up to the downs, or even nip over to Clifton village for a bit of shopping.

They've managed -without anyone noticing- to get away without adding any bike lanes, contraflows on existing one-way streets, pass-throughs on dead-ended roads, or any of the cycle city innovations intended to make cycling a viable alternative to driving. They have invested in some no cycling signs, but they are discreet and in keeping with the area -while the Keep Clear paintwork is being allowed to fade.

Looking the other way, sadly, three bike stands. But as the area was bollarded off, no parking area is lost, so the car S215BPN can stay happily parked on some more fading keep clear paintwork.

In the village itself, it looks like three people have chosen to cycle in. The provisioning of nothing but bollards to park against does its best to discourage people from attempting this, but still they come and park here on Waterloo Street.

The problem is, despite what cycling city advocates, there isn't room in this narrow street to add any cycling lanes or bicycle parking. There's not enough room for cars to pass each other, and, unlike Montpelier, some of these people are in cars they value, so the road has been made one-way for the safety of the paintwork of expensive vehicles like the BMW HK60CZZ.

We know that people are pushing for the removal of the in-village yellow lines to add parking, but we don't see the point. The yellow lines act as a way of ensuring there is always space for somebody important. Without them, poor people from other parts of the city would take away all the parking spaces.

Pembroke Road parking opportunities

Driving further north on Pembroke Road, we come to an area where all the parking spaces are taken. But it's still a wide road, and you can easily get up to 45 along it. No junctions, no zebra crossings, no mini-roundabouts, nothing to get in your way. Perfect. Admittedly, there's one or two bicycles to swerve past, and few schoolkids sprinting to the safety of the traffic islands, but a quick tap on your horn sorts that out.

Look in the other direction, towards the city. The roads are wide, but now there's a bus stop, a pedestrian, and a cyclist.

And everywhere: double yellow lines.

This leads us to our real metric of "where is there room to remove double yellow lines?" It's obvious, when you think about it.

Wherever there is room for people to cycle without getting in the way of important people in cars, there is space to add more parking.

There you have it. A nice simple metric of where we can put more parking. And its important to do this, because otherwise, the pedalling and walking factions, who are secretly defying the Waltham Forest faction in the council, would love nothing better than to put in bicyle lanes along stretches of road -and in a road this wide, they could even try segregation. Because of the double yellow lines, nobody is going to fight back to say "No! This removes the place where we have parked our car for years!"

This is why we need to Walthamize this stretch of Pembroke Road -because it is the only way we, the important people, can resist the so-called "progress" of those subversives, a progress that is really the continuation of the War On Motorists in a different disguise.

Pembroke Road: where should Barbara Janke remove the yellow lines?

Barbara Janke, leader of the council (at least for the next few days)- has taken on the challenge of ensuring that traffic safety "can be improved" by adding extra car parking in Clifton. Of course, we, the tax-payers, know that this is technically "bollocks", but we also know that anything which discourages walking and cycling does reduce the numbers of Killed and Seriously Injured, so provided you don't actually measure foot and bicycle traffic, you can claim improvements. This is the tactic used by central government to claim that the UK's roads are safer than ever, so there's no reason why the Clifton Councillors can't use it.

First, the bottom end of Pembroke Road as it approaches Queen's Road. Look at that -two wide bits of parking area, almost completely wasted. Only one vehicle has dared to pre-empt the proposed removal by doing a bit of paveparking -and they were only loading up.

In the other direction, a happy family walks over the zebra crossing.

Look how much parking space is being wasted here! Not only is there a zebra crossing -encouraging people to endanger themselves by walking- the zig-zags are taking up space for at least eight cars.

Some readers are thinking "more than eight cars", but this is Clifton, remember. Big cars, for important people, like Ranger Rovers, BMW X-series toys. Some of the students do have smaller cars, but Mini Coopers are acceptable -provided they are the new BMW version, not the old British Leyland editions.

If Barbara wanted to live up to the expectations of her local electorate, especially the Keep Parking Free team, she should remove not just all the yellow lines in these photographs, but the zebra crossing too. This would allow much more parking, and hence more traffic calming

En Vacance

People are asking "when will Bristol Traffic update us with what's going on in the Bristol City Centre?"

A big chunk of the B.T. team are actually on our summer vacation abroad, in France, Germany and the Yachts of important media types and ogliarchs of former Soviet Countries and Arabic-speaking dictatorships

We are doing this for your own good. Without us arranging the important deals with the owners of the press, the Evening Post's coverage would change; without us securing modest kickbacks from the supplying of russian gas to the UK, we wouldn't be able to pay our gas bills.

The situation is not so desperate that we need to return. We are beginning level-2 escalation, with both Boris Johnson and David Cameron returned. Frankly we were getting bored with them anyway. Cameron keeps wittering on about how never knew that Rebekah Brooks, which is why the Murdochs asked him to leave the yacht. As for Boris, there's only so much of his smugness anyone can take. Even Cameron's wife kept "accidentally" spilling red wine on him, just to keep sending him back to his room.

If things do get more out of hand, and trouble escalates to the urban ghettoes of the city: Henleaze, Westbury on Trym and Stoke Bishop, we will come back and declare a state of emergency.

As a precaution, FirstBus have pre-emptively withdrawn all service from the city. Forever.

Exploring Clifton's secret 20 mph zone

Round the back of the school, there's a walking only dropoff area, where the kids can learn to walk round paveparked vans by going on the road.

Then at the end of Wellington Park it meets Whiteladies Road and comes to a timely end
 

Where things return to normal: 30mph, pinch points, pretend bike lanes with tax-earning vans temporarily parked on the associated yellow lines

On the other side, in Redland, they have painted some bicycles on the road of the sustrans "route 4"

These may encourage cycling, but at least they encourage the cyclist to stay far enough out to avoid damaging vehicles, such as the mini WR57XBX corner parked on the double yellow lines. Incidentally, this road may be one that voted against becoming an RPZ. And well they should, as the enforcement of parking rules would remove such parking opportunities.

Fraternal Greetings from Stokes Croft to Waltham Forest

While this site has tended to document the Walthamization of Bristol -the transformation of parts of the city into little parts of the elusive Freewheeler's London district "Waltham Forest", today we are pleased to see the flow of urban features has reversed, and Waltham Forest is now a little bit of Stokes Croft.

People of Waltham Forest: Welcome to our city! There are many other aspects of Stokes Croft you may wish to copy! With bars, cafes, bicycles drugs and paid-for-sex, it is Britain's mini-Amsterdam!

Downfield Road: Clifton's secret 20mph zone

While doing our Clifton research we discovered something the area had been keeping secret -there is in fact a 20mph zone up by the Downs, between Pembroke and Whiteladies Road.

The entrance is on Downfield Road

With the 20 mph signage, parents will be as safe with their pushchairs in the middle of the road as they would be in Montpelier. Except of course, there aren't any pedestrians, this being Clifton. It's a neighbourhood watch area, and anyone walking is worth calling the police about. Presumably the 20 mph zone is to protect wing mirrors when paveparking isn't sufficient.

Looking at the school warning signs people may think that its for the kids, and the double yellow lines for the parental 4x4 dropoff

Except since our last visit, the school keep clear markings have been removed, leaving it for residents.

Overall then: odd. The area is too windy to be a decent rat-run, there's nobody on foot or bicycle to push for it. Residents wanting quiet or wing-mirror protection have to be the only reasons. Even so, it's selfish. Imagine if everyone wanted 20 mph zones! And this one is in Clifton, making it the thin end of the wedge. As far as we know, this is the only 20 mph zone in the quarter of the inner city from Cheltenham Road to the A4.

Christchurch school, Clifton -no yellow lines here, yet!

While looking for places where yellow lines can be removed from Clifton "for traffic calming", we say, with a knowing smirk, we are pleased to see that the roads by Christchurch School, Clifton, as seen here at 08:30 on a schoolday, have no such problem

Residents are free to park on the pavement without fear of harassment.

So can parents who were forced to drive here early due to the congestion problems caused by a city that failed to provide a city-wide motorway scheme like Glasgow. This family is stuck waiting 15 minutes for the playground to open, so have no choice but to park here. It would be dangerous to let the kids out to play on the pavement.

Now: the bad news. The council is proposing putting some parking restrictions in. No worry though -as our coverage of other schools in the area will show, it's completely unenforced, so provides a lovely parental drop-off zone -provided there aren't any pedestrians in the way. The careful parking of residents and parents alike here ensure that there are no schoolkids on the pavement. That said, the school has just won a Sustrans Award. That was for the kids, not the parents or residents, obviously.

Clifton: some bike parking has snuck in to the village

Before we can declare victory in Clifton in the motorists side of the warn on motorists, we must note that some bicycle parking has been added to the village, and it is -shockingly- in use

On the mall: two stands, three bikes, on a buildout that would easily fit if not a 4x4, a little mini.

By the Thali Cafe, more stands and three bicycles. you can tell this isn't Stokes Croft as the bicycles are newer and still retain their wheels.

Further up Regent Street, two more stands and one bicycle.

It does reinforce that induced demand idea: if you provide bicycle parking, they will come. This is why it is critical that the councillors and aspirants do all they can to encourage driving and parking by car, instead of conceding any more pavement or road space to cycling or cycle parking.

On that topic, can we at least praise Clifton for not having a single bicycle lane anywhere west of Whiteladies Road, apart from that one on the approach to the Suspension bridge that doesn't actually work. Active Transport campaigners would probably push for some integrated route to join up the bridge with Cotham Hill, then to link over to Gloucester Road, then Bishopston and Montpelier, their own version of an Inner City Ring Road. They can dream, but as long as we hold the high ground that is Clifton, we will defeat them.

Clifton's Bike Stands!

We'd thought that the Clifton councillors were strong enough to fight back against the cycle city plans in their own wards, but no, someone broke and conceded four stands

Fortunately, two of them are so close together as to be useless

They're on the junction of Frederick Place and Richmond Hill: back road nowhere near any useful destinations, and there's still plenty of pavement for parking. The fact that they are out of sight will stop anyone feeling threatened, and because they are nowhere near Clifton Village, won't do anything to actually encourage cycling.

Nothing to worry about directly, though its a sign of weakness at the top. Question is: who surrendered?

Support the Mall Residents by Double Parking Only

With the Goldfish "I don't remember what Murdoch said" Party council candidate saying more imagination is needed to solve Clifton's problems, well, let's see what can be imagined on the Mall.

Here we see a small car (a smartcar variant WR06EDP) double parked in front of a disabled car. It's not blocking that car, once they've managed to get in 10-15 minutes of zig-zagging will get them out.

Nearby, a little Nissan is echelon parked. There's a note in its windscreen.

On the other side, a Ford Focus CA60BHD double parked, a smaller car echeloned up to the pavement. The latter has the note in the windscreen.

Let's take a look at the note

Mall Gardens Residents Association

(MGRA)

Neighbourhood Watch

IMPORTANT NOTICE

CHEVRON/ECHELON PARKING

IF YOU ARE A RESIDENT OR REGULARLY

PARK IN THE MALL GARDENS YOU WILL BE

AWARE THAT THE MAJORITY OF RESIDENTS OPPOSE CHEVRON

PARKING NOT LEAST FROM HEALTH AND

SAFETY CONCERNS AND DAMAGE. YOU WILL

ALSO NOTICE THAT THE NUMBER OF CARS

CHEVRON PARKED IS DOWN TO A HANDFUL

INCLUDING YOURS. THE AVON FIRE SERVICES

ARE CONCERNED ABOUT ACCESS TO

EMERGENCIES IN THE AREA DUE TO THE

POOR PARKING

PLEASE HAVE CONSIDERATION FOR OTHERS

HAVE PATIENCE AND FIND A PLACE TO 

PARALLEL PARK

PLEASE SUPPORT THE RESIDENTS ASSOCIATION

There you have it. Echelon Parking is a health and safety hazard, which is why some of the residents are so concerned about it that they have put together a lovely A4 note printed in colour which they carefully place in the windscreen of every echelon parked car, so as to encourage people to double parallel park instead.

Now, some cynics may note that echelon parking works well for small cars, whereas double parking works well for big cars too, so perhaps it's not a concern about health and safety so much as the owners of the big cars wanting to be able to park, and if everyone in a small car echelon parked they wouldn't be able to. We don't believe this. If the fire services are concerned about poor parking in the area then clearly it is echelon parking to which they are referring, and it is critical for these people to invest their own time and money into discouraging these selfish echelon parkers from endangering everyone.

Clifton Park: one possibility

We borrowed Quercus's Land Rover to drive over to Clifton Park one morning, to see where excessive parking restrictions were endangering people.

Well, it's not by Clifton High, as the excessive restrictions at this end (the zebra crossing zig-zags and the school keep clear zone) are both in use for child dropoff. These restrictions therefore provide an important feature for important school run parents, and so should be retained.

Looking the other way, no, no parking restrictions at all. What were these road safety campaigners going on about?

Then a bit further down we saw it. Can you see here? Where there is enough space for a bicycle to go safely along without fear of being hit by a car. Exactly. Without Fear. We don't want that, as it only encourages them.


Real road safety campaigners would actually push for a zebra crossing here, as that crossing by the school is the only way to cross this wide and busy road. But we don't want that, it will take away more long-stay parking spots. Instead we are going to pretend that it's all about safety, when really it's about convenience.

On this, large double yellow lined road, only the car X411WCG is bold enough to assert their rights to park here, even before the excessive restrictions have been removed.

If people are prepared to park here, even when they will get ticketed and fined (at least on those three days a year when the rule is enforced), then that's enough to justify. As it isn't right next to a school, making it residential parking wouldn't remove any school run parking opportunities. If it makes it more hazardous to cycle round the back streets of Clifton, well, if we cared about that, we wouldn't be pushing for more parking -and the ward wouldn't have voted Barbara and Terry back in, would they?

In a cycling city, this space would be turned into a segregated cycle path, before anyone got used to the idea of parking here.

But while Bristol is a Cycling City, Clifton is not part of the city -it's older- and so exempt from any of these changes.

Clifton Park: limited extra parking opportunities here

One area where the Clifton Residents have convinced Barbara Janke, the local councillor and leader of the Waltham Forest Faction in the council, is Clifton Park in Clifton. We drove over on a school-run morning to assess the viability of the idea.

Well, it's wide road, but there's enough parking already on it stop the troublemakers trying to sneak in a bike path or two.

Looking towards the suspension bridge, the school keep clear zone and the zebra crossing zig-zags are both used for school run parents, the zebra crossing providing a way for the kids so dropped off to get to school safely.

You could push for it's removal, but that would make dropping kids at Clifton High harder.

Further east, towards Pembroke Road, something catches our eye. A clear space.

Admittedly, it is on a blind corner and if you approach it at speed it's where you'd swing in. Even if a bit of space was left in yellow at the end, the rule "if you park next to a legally parked car -it's still legal" would apply, so it wouldn't work.

Looking at the placement of bicycles on the road, and the oncoming cars, it's not clear that's the road here is wide enough for extra parking. Furthermore, as the road reaches Pembroke Road shortly further on, there's often a bit of a traffic jam in the morning. Having two lanes of traffic here helps a bit.

What is important though is to stop the walking/cycling troublemakers from noticing that there is no safe place to cross this road other than the zebra crossing in the first two photographs, which google maps tells us is 250 metres away. For someone to cross the road safely (and once we ban Jaywalking, legally), that's 500 metres of exercise. For their own health, as well as safety.

The big risk is that somebody pushes to get a zebra put in here or by the wide Clifton Park/Pembroke Road junction, as that would add at least 20s on the school run. A bit of Walthamization would see this off before the idea even got raised.

Southville's runner problem

Things must be a bit quiet in the Cyclist/Pedestrian wars right now, so the Evening Post has had to concentrate on that other bubbling issue: runners running along pavements.

Mark1864 makes a comment "This is ironic for the EP. A bunch of pedestrians moving faster than other pedestrians are causing problems on the pavement." We think we know who this person is. And yes, it is funny. This is the best set of comments in the paper. Despite the best efforts to turn this into the usual cyclists on the pavement debate, it's mostly pedestrian vs faster moving pedestrian.

One constructive comment from bobob03 is "There are quite a lot of pavements that hardly get any use along the ring road between the M32 and Emersons Green ." Yes, we love the idea of a large group of runners driving from Southville to the A4174 ring-road for an evenings run, except for the small detail that on a weekday evening that drive will take about 45 minutes. Plus the fact that the A4174 ring road is about as exciting as spending an afternoon with an elderly relative who keeps forgetting who you are and repeating the same conversation, again and again.

Anyway, while we are smirking at the comments, we have a fear. These runner groups, who go along in big packs, talking to each other, may form a militant "Bristol Runners Association", who will then go on and demand things like the right to run along pavements in the city -0ur parking areas. Then they'll want zebra crossings retained, rather than pelican crossings, so they don't have to spend three minutes running on the spot waiting for the lights to change.

Better to nip this in the bud right now.

Clifton Politicians: the imagination of Goldfishes

Back in March, we noted Clifton's proposals to sneak in some extra double yellow line removal, using "traffic calming" as the excuse. Well, it's been approved. More on that another day.

But before we look at the councillors actions, let's look at the opposing team, which in Clifton means the Conservative Party, leader one R. Murdoch. The losing candidate the May Election says "we need more imaginative thought to solve the problem" of parking. In particular, this ambitious politician is "undertaking a survey of the entire community, finding out where yellow lines are needed and where they can be taken away" and by doing so, he has found 100 metres of double yellow lines that aren't needed.

Well, Clifton certainly needs help if it is not to become like Montpelier, as LY52RKV and  S899ANW are forced to do. Yet these are nice cars, with wingmirrors -and Montpelier parking doesn't suit them.

We asked one of the tax dodgers what they thought of the proposals, and got this reply, which we quote unedited:

Those yellow lines aren't just wasted parking, they probably stop roads being blocked, helping through traffic, and make it easier to pass bicycles. Replace that with unrestricted parking and what do you get? 25 more cars.

That's not imaginative.

That's about as imaginative as a goldfish.

Imagination would be pushing for even one car club car bay in Clifton.

Imagination would be to put in bike parking in the village so that people don't need a car to drive from their house to the shops.

Imagination would be to discourage parents from driving their kids to school by enforcing rules about keep-clear and parking on pavements.

Imagination would be to use a resident permit scheme to limit car ownership, eliminate commuter parking and ensure that "sustainable" housing has an even harder limit on the number of cars per household.

Imagination would be to encourage the residents to use the bus, instead of trying to reduce the number of hours the new bus lane will be running.

This shows no imagination whatsoever and is painful to read. Are you sure the Clifton Conservatives web site isn't some kind of spoof?

Obviously, we don't agree with any of the actions, but we have to agree with their comments about imagination. It is the lack of action from the authorities that are forcing the residents to act for themselves. Such as here, where DV60XJL is forced to park on the yellow lines and pavements outside Tesco Express.

But even that is fiddling around the edges. As the tax-dodger notes, 100m of yellow lines only transfers into 25 spaces for important vehicles. Noise. And more to the point, we are already using a lot of that space already. It's not "unused parking", it's parking areas reserved for important people in a hurry -such as the Mercedes N445CRP.

Even if we don't want people thinking outside the box, we do want our councillors to think of a much bigger box than adding 25 more cars to Clifton. Or maybe thirty if you force the cars in hard enough.

We want much, much more. Here's what we propose

• Making the downs all year round car parking, rather than a pay-to-use luxury on summer weekends
• Removing  zebra crossings, school keep clear zones, and that bit outside the church, as they all take up space. 
• Adding a multi-storey car park somewhere within the area. Yes, it's full of old listed buildings, but that didn't stop a large car park going up on the edge of St Pauls, did it?

Faffing around with 100m of yellow lines isn't going to solve the problems the area has. At least the locals are already imagining more than this so-called-contender has to offer. This is important, as the councillors in charge share the same limited imagination; it is down to us citizens to act.

For the next few days, we're going to cover Clifton!

En Vacance

Apres le petit problem entre le Bristol Traffic reporteur, le Massage Club, le Avon and Somerset Police est the White Van, nous somme maintenant en France pour un vacation. Phew...

Ici, le "Rules de la Road" et different de England. 

Par example...

In Le Havre, un grand town avec plus du people (plus du 180,000) ils are constructing une 'Tramway". Ils also 'ave un unique idea, qui est quite good - 'le lanes de cycling, avec parking parallèle de le kerb, mais un peu further out". Les voitures est stationment dans le centre dans la rue, est le bicycliclests have sont own special lane pres de le kerb. Manifique.

Pas de dooring ici, je thinks.

Expecte encore de reports from France, until le petit problem avec le Police est decide en Bristol.