suboptimal data collection strategies - or a secret plan to spy on us

A strange sight: four people wearing hi-viz sitting on the St Werbughs crossing of the M32

What are they up to? The "Highways Agency" text on the back gives the game away -they are monitoring traffic flow, with multiple people to independently monitor different lanes,
 
Some questions spring to mind

1. Why hi-viz? Really? It's a pedestrian footpath that some cyclists also use. Unless you have a fear of being run over by one of those two-kid-wide pushchairs, its the safest place in the city to sit. 
2. Counting traffic by hand? Why not just go to the bit of the Highways Agency that collects the ANPR data and use that instead. If you hook the M32 data up with those of the M4W, M4E and M5 feeds, you can even work out where people go to after leaving the M32. As any vehicle not found on those other feeds must have got off at Eastville or the North Fringe, you get those figures for free.

The fact that they aren't using the ANPR data may be sign that the UK Government police-state-on-motorists isn't as all encompassing as the daily mail and daily telegraph warn us of; that there isn't any coverage of the M32 at all. The four people on the footbridge are therefore implicity sharing a secret with us.

That or there is ANPR scanning of every vehicle entering or leaving the city, and those four people are sitting there to pretend that there isn't -they think they are counting traffic but their numbers are being discarded in preference for the machine-collected statistics. Only someone very paranoid would think that. Which is precisely why we suspect it.

A solution for the M32?

Sorry, no picture, but an interesting possible solution to the ghastly M32 car park which stabs at the heart of Bristol. Just as the River Frome was encased in concrete to make way for the car, why not encase the M32?. Those clever Germans are way ahead again....

http://www.treehugger.com/urban-design/german-autobahn-covered-giant-public-park.html

Oh, hang on. I just woke up. This is Britain, land of half measures and transport f**k ups. Darn!!.

Brian Rogers of Kingswood: speaking the truth

We've been a bit quiet recently. The main problem: thinking of new things to say.

Everyone has this problem. Take this well thought out letter from Brian Rogers of Kingswood.

It certainly pushes our buttons:

1. affluent middle classes cycling
2. holding up important people on their way to work
3. tax-payer funded lycra clad louts
4. sanctimonious, car-hating people
5. fill up the car parks

That would be a good article: tax dodging affluent (actually, this is probably true), car hating, and driving to our favourite parking spaces. It would make a good article, and we have formally invited Brian to actually write for us. All he'd need is "in our lane", "red light jumping" and "speeding along too fast" and we'd win this week's Daily Mail "lycra lout" bingo.

Of course, the same day that George "coke" Osborne announces that air passenger duty won't be applied to people flying in and out of the city on private planes is particularly bad timing for the tax-payer funded text. Remember: those people who live in Monaco and fly in for three days a week may retain non-resident tax payer status, but they hold up the economy, and adding £30/week on the already outrageous cost of (tax free) jet fuel would force them stop flying in to the UK at all.

Brian needs to work on his timing a bit there.

Furthermore, a quick web search shows that he wrote pretty much the same letter  a year ago.

 irresponsible for the city council to pour tax payers' funds into a cycling track that is, well, just a hobby for a privileged and sanctimonious few?

See? The same problem we have. There's only so much orginality you can do from one point-of-vitriol. Brian is having trouble writing the same letter once a year -you can imagine how hard it us for us.

Maybe its time for the team to retire

Occupy M32: year 40

A group of protestors are camped on college green, but apart from the "whiners corner" of the Evening Post, not having much effect.

A greater group of protesters have decided to come out in numbers and bring the city to its knees. Here they are on the M32

Their protest demonstration goes all the way up to Eastville junction.

Yet the mainstream media completely ignores this, even though these protestors include BMW and Mercedes drivers -the nearly-but-not-quite-1%, whose journeys in from the suburbs are crippled by the excessive fuel taxes the state is charging in order to keep the banks afloat.

The residents of the areas near the M32 are aware of this ongoing protest against the capitalist economy, and have been spraying signs of support against the M32 itself.

If there is one criticism, this protest has been going on for about forty years, and yet it has had little effect.

Bristol's Secret Rat-runs

We are debating providing some coverage of Bristol's secret rat-runs, to go alongside our secret parking coverage. Today, the best way to get from Ashley Hill to the M32 -Magdalene Place

It's good to see Red Driving School WVIIUEK showing a learner driver about this road, and how to correctly position themselves to take it properly.

Pharmacy Plus: proud to sponsor the Frome Valley cycle way

The new Frome Valley cycleway follows the frome from the heart of bristol up to near UWE, with the first half along that jewel of the Bristol Road system, the M32 motorway. The fast moving traffic will remind cyclists that if they weren't so poor, they too could have a proper vehicle.

Pharmacy Plus are proud to sponsor this new path. As a key member of the NHS supply chain, they recognise how important health and fitness is. The vehicle SF58PZK, which may well be associated with the company, is proudly placed in the middle of the path to remind people on foot and bicycle how much more accessible the city is if you have proper transport.

There is enough room for passing cyclists if they swerve into the road, so we think that whoever called Bristol Parking Services to report this car was small-minded and vindictive

Eastville Park: will you be my friend?

Word trickles down of a new group "Friends of Eastville Park", who are fighting back against the plans to formalise the pump trail with something in tarmac, and the development of cycle routes through the park. Why the cycling city maps say you can cycle there., and if someone or their dog gets hit by someone on a bicycle, whether the council is legally liable.

For visitors from out of town, Eastville park is the park to the east of the M32 flyover.

At least today. A large chunk of the park was given over to that flyover, with nothing but a Glasgow-style concrete picnic bench underneath as a memory of families coming down there for picnics.

We find it amusing that only now are people complaining about bits of the park being turned over to transport rather than greenery, rather than, say, 40 years ago.

More importantly, we worry that if the Friends of Eastville park have their way, they may not stop at the bicycle access. They may start asking for the bit of parkland that is known as the M32 motorway back. This would not be good. We hope, therefore, that the Friends of Eastville park are regular users of the M32 and can see the tangible benefits of it remaining in-situ. Be believe this is likely, given that they clearly don't cycle. And as nobody takes their dog for a walk on the flyover, the liability issue there isn't important.

News update

The team is being too lazy to do some serious reporting right now, but here are some news updates.

1. Crap Walking And Cycling in Waltham Forest is offline, along with all its artwork. While some people discuss why this is the case, and consider whether any of its comments about the Waltham Forest NHS or local council have, in some way, been considered libellous, we are pleased to provide the true explanation.

Waltham Forest acted as a control group in the Cycling England project. Some cities were funded to add more facilities to their city to encourage poor people to cycle. How would it be possible to determine if any increase in cycle usage was related to this work, compared to other trends like the rising cost of fuel? The answer: a control group. Waltham Forest, then, was encouraged to spend no money at all on improving walking or cycling in the city. To see whether motivational newsletters alone would suffice, Waltham Forest was funded to produce joyful "wouldn't it be better on a bicycle" leaflets and such like, things that could be stuck up at NHS hospitals that the staff and all patients would drive to -to see if this alone was sufficient. As the crapwalthamforest blog showed: it was not. With the wrapping up of the Cycling England project, Crap Walking and Cycling in Waltham Forest has been terminated. Note also that Waltham Forest itself will be terminated -however the lessons from the Waltham Forest experiment have been learned, and councils all round Britain will be encouraged to Walthamize their neighbourhoods.


2. An M4-A4174 link route isn't going to get funded, as noted by the BBC, "Hopes for M4 link to Avon Ring Road dashed".

We have some bad news for whoever in the BBC wrote that last article, with phrases like  "Hopes for an M4 link to the Avon Ring Road near Bristol have been dashed for at least another four years" and "it could have an important impact on the Bristol and Bath Science Park".

Dear BBC provinical reporting team: there is an M4 link the Avon Ring Road; it is called "the M32". Please consult a map of Bristol before writing an article next time. There is also an option of getting to it from the M4/M5 junction and down the A38, and while a bit longer, it avoids the kingswood to M32 traffic jams caused by people trying to drive round the ring road from Bath to the North Fringe.

The article should in fact be titled: "Hopes for yet another  M4 link to the Avon Ring Road dashed". It could then raise the fact that Chris Skidmore, the Conservative MP for Kingswood, doesn't understand the theory of induced demand any more than the head of North Somerset council. Specifically it isn't enough to add a new link road for today's demand; the new link road will encourage more traffic, more driving in, more people living out of Bristol and commuting by car to the North Fringe area. It would have been better to admit this and rather than push for a single extra link road, push for a new link road to be added every five years, so as to keep up with planned demand.

Walthamize the planet -and have a nice day!

More biggerer and betterer.

Bristol is often referred to by many ex Londoners as being like a "little London". While we can appreciate the comparison we at Bristol Traffic know that with the proper building of new bigger wider roads to allow more cars into the city it won't be long before Bristol becomes bigger and better than London. Better because we won't leave our motorways unfinished on the outskirts of the city. Ours will penetrate right into the heart of the city centre creating a vibrant city environment that everywhere else in the world could only dream of. After all we already know that car drivers are the only people who ever spend money in cities and allowing anyone else to get in their way is a sure way to help businesses lose trade.

We have a good start already in the M32 but there's more work to be done if our vision of the future is to come to fruition.

Here as a reminder of why the plan must be seen through is a short film by a young man highlighting where London failed to match up to our vision.

Glasgow

Only last week were were criticising Bristol's town planners for a lack of vision in the 1970s, for a failure to regenerate the neglected inner city by building enough motorways through its core. We only have the M32. One city in Britain has had the vision, and stuck to it, turning their neglected victorian era housing and under-utilised parkland into motorways, so that wherever you walk round the city, you can hear the background hum of high speed motorway traffic. With this motorway through the heart of the city, we believe it is possible to drive from the M32 to the scottish highlands without having to stop for a red light or pedestrians.

Yes, we are talking about Glasgow, and unlike the Copenhagen Cycle Chic team, who think it is a nice place to cycle, as is Aberdeen, we know that Glasgow is our kind of city, as documented by our allies, At War With The Motorist, on their trip to Glasgow, premier city in Scotland.

We like best that the integrated advertisting on the phone-viewer brings up an advert for Robbie's Driving School, who will teach you how to drive round either city, Bristol or Glasgow, in Style.

Congratulations Glasgow, and come on Bristol, get your act together! How else can you solve this city's traffic problems?