Whiteladies Showcase bus route: the implications

Up the top of the hill, we will lose all day parking, so the commuters suffer.

But in exchange, short-stay parking, so it's a trade off.

Where there may be a clear benefit for us drivers is at Whiteladies Gate, where we have common interest with FirstBus: not being held up pedestrians. Today, inbound traffic gets held up not just by cyclists and traffic, but by one or two cars turning left into Cotham Hill having their turn blocked by pedestrians on the zebra crossing.

Even on a quiet sunday afternoon, hordes of people just walking are stopping drivers getting to important places. Similarly, cars trying to head into town are held back from making progress to the next traffic jam by the pelican crossing, which schedules lots of time for schoolkids and other low-priority pedestrians to cross Whiteladies Road at a crossing we have covered previously.

This is unacceptable -so we are glad to see that the traffic planning department has recognised that the war on the motorist means putting the pedestrian in their place.

More subtly, given that our vehicles too have been known to hold up bus traffic, we are smugly pleased that these proposals seem more focused on pushing the tax-dodgers out of the way of buses than doing anything to make driving into the city by car hard. A lot of important people live up this hill, and they have to get in somehow.