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

Secret Colston Street parking -handy for the BRI

"OJ" drops us a note

Dear Bristol Traffic,


I have discovered a great place to park my 4x4 for free, 2 minutes away from the Centre. There's a lovely wide pavement outside the Colston Almshouses on Colston Street, and as N864HWP shows, no traffic warden cares if you park there.

The only drawback is that (see 2nd photo), some of the space has been reserved for road tax dodgers. I could have easily parked my Hummer behind W381XKX, but for the fact that someone had put (unused) bike racks on the pavement there. The thing that's really frustrating me is that I bet cyclists ride onto the pavement to use these racks.

It's good to hear that no traffic warden cares, though we must hope no passers by with mobile phones dial up the Parking Services control room on +44 117 903 8070 and report the golf, as that pavement is possibly covered by the yellow line rules. The bit by the zebra crossing: go for it!

K33VYP shows their imagination

Imagine a different world. No speed cameras, no traffic lights, cash back whenever you fill up your car. We can. The ABD can. "Hoverboard Hammond" can. And in Clifton, K33VYP is imagining a world without double yellow lines.

Such out-the-box thinking is what we need in this area to solve its problems. If there is one thing that's unusual is that this Mercedes is the only car parked here on Oakfield Place

We know why that is: they stole our rat run. Stepping back a few paces and turning the camera to the left:

A whole road has been blocked off and turned into cycle parking. Worse yet -a through route for cyclists, who could then endanger the paintwork of important cars, like K33VYP itself.

This road blocking not only provides a parking area for visitors and residents, it takes away the parking opportunities nearby simply by making it so hard to get to them.

Stealing our Roadspace

While the cyclists are still loojking for examples of where the cycle city program stole roadspace from us, we and Cllr Gollop know the truth: even bike parking in the middle of the Centre is stealing space from us.

And that's without even getting us started on the whole roundabout/centre debate, let alone the need to re-instate the dual carriageway through Queen's Square. They took our ring road and gave us greenery. And is that bit up for sale so we can buy it and bring back the road, a group of motivated volunteer Road Builders? Fat chance.

[photo by Martin of Bristol Culture]

Bike Parking Rollout

The long awaited bike parking on buildout rollout is taking place.

King Street East

This is in addition to the existing King Street area, next to the traffic warden writing a ticket.

Just off Park Street in Park Street Avenue

And on Tyndall's Road.

We await the Evening Post to discover these and complain, again.

However, we take a more relaxed view.

1. These are all paid parking spaces that are being taken away, and who pays to park? Only losers who don't know the secret places.
2. By not building the bike racks on the pavements, they are keeping them clear for our vans.

We're a bit miffed that the racks keep on reinforcing the myth that bicycles are welcome, despite the best efforts of our local press and conservative councillors to remind them that they are nothing, and despite the premier approaches to the city: M32, A4, A370 all going out their way to say "you'd be insane to cycle here". The fact that some do, all the way to the university, is why some students get so frustrated. There's not much we can do there though, except get together with the EP commenters and together pay for some banners to put up on the bicycle approaches to the city to say "with the money you have saved -now buy a car"

Clifton's Road Theft

Dichohecho sends us a pointer to their photo of Oakfield Place, taken from us tax payers, and turned into a bicycle parking area.

  by  dichohecho 

This is not just a secret rat run from St Pauls Road to Oakfield Road, it lets passing motorists stop by that fine establishment, the Victoria Pub, for a quick beer, or the Lido for a meal -if they have the cash. Neither establishment has little to gain from having cyclists with no money visit, yet that is exactly what the council appears to be encouraging.

To be fair, with the tree, it did look very nice at Christmas.

And the bollards, with their reflective strips, were visible.

Even so, it is bad enough when parking spaces are taken away to make this city bicycle friendly. To take away an entire rat-run and replace it with bicycle parking and somewhere for people to walk, this is a dark day indeed.

Family Cycling vs S Gloucs

Shocking footage of an entire family's collection of bicycles, up in the North Fringe, at a secret (as in "official secret protected by the official secrets act") location.

What's surprising is that they managed to get there, despite the efforts of S Gloucs council, who strategically positioned a lorry over the bike path to stop anyone who wasn't bold enough to cycle along a dual carriageway from getting to the bike racks.

Come on S. gloucs, please try harder!

Cotham Hill bike parking update

Last month we were pleased to see some bike parking points being removed from this area, so we nipped down to make sure there was somewhere for our van. Sadly, no.

Two new bike stands have appeared across the junction, which, along with the three street signs make it impossible to park on this build-out.

Looking at the original site of the bike racks -two bike stands have gone away, but two were replaced, and a van-unfriendly bollard inserted. All the bollards are now in use as sign-mounts

We also found out why the bike stands were moved. The cafe needed some space for tables. That's the green shop all whitewashed windows, which hasn't re-opened since its extended summer break.