Final possible candidates: Dave Dobbs and Phil Plover

The election is here today, and it is everyone's duty to get down there and vote for someone.

One option is Dave Dobbs, who cites is place of residence as a van in Stokes Croft. That's his key positive feature. If you've seen the flyer about how he believes a great flood came from Mars, well, he's clearly barking mad. But so is Gideon Osborne! And Michael Gove! And they have even more power and influence.

Being totally off your rocker should not be a barrier to holding political positions.

Anyone else: Phil Plover.  He's the candidate from the Waltham Forest party.

We had a look at his transport "ideas", as it's the one we care about.

"It might be good if Bristol gets some sort of rapid transport system – maybe trams or some sort of monorail. "

A monorail. People would laugh at as. Has never tried the one at Birmingham Airport?

" Open up bus-lanes - these are typically empty most of the day whilst the lane next to them is chock-full of slow-moving congestion, spewing pollution out for twice as long as necessary!
  Trams never needed a whole lane to themselves, laying empty 99.5% of the time. So, treating car drivers as sensible people who do care about the environment for them and their children, I would like to suggest a deal with Bristol motorists: when you see a bus behind you, pull in and let it pass - like you would an ambulance. It adds only seconds to your journey time!
  That way, we don't need to waste roadspace on separate bus lanes springing up all over the place, and ALL lanes can be available to ALL traffic, ALL of the time.   Simple, safe and sensible. 

This is good. the exclamation marks show him as one of those evening post commenters who can solve the city's issues with the word "simple!!!" at the end of every sentence.

His key idea here is that people should drive down a bus lane, but when a bus comes up behind them, to get out of the way. It's an interesting idea, let down by his naivety

1. Bus lanes are for short stay parking; you can't drive down them for that reason. This is why buses are usually in the car lane.
2. If you've ever seen an ambulance trying to get up Stokes Croft to Cheltenham Road in the evening rush hour, you'll see that people don't get out of the way for it. When they do, each lane pulls to one side, the left hand side half up on the pavement. Nobody is going to do that for a bus, unless it too has sirens and flashing lights.

"Make junctions more efficient ("1 in – 2 out") - to avoid delays and make travelling more efficient for everybody, where there is room, divide traffic approaching a junction into two lanes."

What he seems to mean here is actually have two lanes approaching a junction -as this will make it more efficient.

unfortunately, he appears not to understand basic queue theory -not even the wikipedia article. For Mr Plover then:

1. A queue develops whenever the number of items leaving a channel (i.e a road) is less than the number entering it.
2. Widening the approach to a junction is simply "making a wider queue". It does nothing to the overall throughput.
3. With a wider queue, the jam may not appear as long, but it has the same number of vehicles, the same egress rate -and hence the wait time is the same.

Or to summarise: making the approach to a narrow road wider makes no difference whatsoever to your journey time -unless it encourages more people to drive that route in the belief it will -which will then make things worse.

People complain that politicians have no understanding of maths and science -this person is, sadly, an example.

"Where pavements are excessively wide, reduce them to 4-6 feet and create free parking space, where possible (except where large pavements are used by the community eg Gloucester Rd)"

We don't know where he lives, but in the inner city we view all pavements as parking spaces

Increase free parking wherever safely possible - I believe there are a lot of parking restrictions (double yellow lines and meters) where they don’t need to be – consequently, that roadspace is often underutilised while motorists drive round and round, increasing congestion and pollution, seeking an alternative.

We love this "its the restrictions that cause pollution" -theme, we'll have to use it ourselves. It implies that we do care about pollution as we drive our diesel van with the broken exhaust round the city, leave it running while we deliver some special toys to our customers -and it's all down to the fault of the council that small children die of asthma.


  Open up as much roadspace as possible so people can do what they need to do and go home again

we find parking restrictions like double yellow lines no barrier to "doing what we need to do:
 

Controlled Parking Zones (CPZ) – personally, I would find the idea of having to pay to park in my own road very frustrating. It’s mainly a problem where parking is very badly restricted. If parking were freer, it might not be a problem at all. 

No, this is one naive little bunny. Those residents of the expanding CPZ zone aren't paying 30 quid a year for the right to park outside their house -they are paying for the right to use their car during the day -because they can be confident there will be somewhere near their house when they come home. As for the "problem where parking is restricted", no -is where there isn't enough room for all the residents and commuters, even when the pavements are fully utilised (e.g. montpelier)

There' s a risk here that the "motorists drive round and round, increasing congestion and pollution" theme could come back to haunt him here -in a CPZ, there is no point driving round. Hence the pollution and congestion falls.

The whole theme of this manifesto is that the author doesn't live in the city -he lives in one of the suburbs and gets really frustrated sitting in a traffic jam by an empty bus lane, when he gets into town gets angry the only free spaces have double yellow lines, or you have to pay to use -and that his secret near-centre parking zones are being made residents only in a deliberate attempt to make his life harder

Remove large slabs of concrete - Surely squashing vehicles closer together can't make sense. If there's room to keep vehicles further apart, that reduces the risk of collision and means you have somewhere to go in case of emergency (eg a child or elderly person falling into the road).

It turns out this means "remove the build outs that force you to slow down entering quieter roads"

There's some interesting maths here; a mix of game theory (conflict and reactions to collision risk), and probability. Specifically that "somewhere to go in case an elderly person falls into the road"

With a wider buildout, there is more pavement for the elderly person to fall onto, so P(fall-into-road) is reduced; with the reduced cornering speed the energy in the collision is also reduced. Phil's assertion "you have nowhere to go in an emergency" implies that swerving is the tactic, not braking, and that there is no oncoming traffic, so swerving is a viable action.

If you do swerver, not break, then the original amount of energy going into a person falling into the road depends on the probability of you hitting them

e = P(falling)*(1-P(swerving))*mass*velocity^2

In  the new layout
e' = P(falling')*(1-P(swerving'))*mass*velocity'^2

We'll leave it to the readers to work this out -the quick summary is obviously that the velocity-squared variable is the main factor in damage; the probability of swerving out the way would have to get four times worse to result in the same damage reduction as cutting vehicle speed in half.

Sadly, as Phil Plover doesn't get queue theory, probability and statistics will be beyond him too.

There we have it then. The candidate for the evening post commenters. Someone whose entire world view is based on "obvious" answers, yet without the basic mathematical underpinnings to recognise that his obvious is, to us, obviously wrong.

Dave Dobbs it is then!

B.T. nearly-approved Candidate: Owain George

As we fear that Cllr Gollop will betray us, our next favourite candidate is Owain George, candidate for Clifton

.

He says clearly

• I will recognise that cars are the preferred means of travel & free up the city so they can move about again
• Stop the extension of bus & cycle lanes where they do not work, are counter-productive or actually dangerous
• Deal with problems affecting the flow of traffic in the city
• Welcome businesses with staff who need to park at work
• Create more on street parking so that independent shops & businesses can compete with shopping centres

We actually suspected that he was some spoof candidate, as he's almost the opposite of George Ferguson.

• George Ferguson: red trousers, runs a brewery, praises cycling
• Owain George: blue trousers, runs a pub, praises driving. Poses for a photo with his hand on his "tender parts" to show how sensitive he is.

Our real concern is something different: Owain George owns the Albion Pub, Clifton.

Albion Clifton used to be nice pub in Clifton to which you could drive, leave the engine running, pop in to have a swift 8 pints and then carry on with your HGV delivery schedule. Used to be.


Today, the has council needlessly blocked Boyce's Avenue to parking. Here we have a mayoral candidate that can not even stop the council taking away the parking spaces from outside his own pub. How can this person claim to be able to push back the anti-car actions of our city!

Worse than this though: today the Albion is a gastropub.

Gastropubs are a plague upon the hard-working delivery drivers in the city. Before, we could nip into places like the Albion, the Pump House and many other destinations, to take the edge off a tiring job. If you were really hungry: go to a cafe and have bacon and eggs.

Now those pub owners refuse to serve you unless you sit down and order veal with your quails eggs, and make you pay five pounds for some "authentic" beer.

Similarly, he offers to create more on-street parking. It's a nice promise, but where? Clifton has even run out of corners to corner park on -which would leave the zebra crossing between the Albion and Clifton Village proper -but that's where tesco's HGVs park for deliveries.


 


There we have it. The one openly cyclist hating, car parking advocate for the mayoral elections turns out to be a gastropub owner who can't even prevent the street in front of his gastropub becoming pedestrians only.


This is why we think that even though his opinions may be aligned with ours, his inability to execute on them renders him worthless even as the #1 'disposable' vote.


Who does that leave? Spud Murphy, who appears to have left a Wurzels concert after too much cider -and frankly would make Bristol's reputation for being provincial worse -or that traveller who cite his address as Stokes Croft and judging by the manifesto has clearly imbued too much of the Stokes Croft retail pharmaceutical portfolio. No, not Chris Chalkley -someone else.

Bristol Traffic Mayoral Election -Candidate Gollup: cycling city is safe in my hands:

We now have officially backed two candidates for the City for holding opinions that match with our goals: Cllr Gollop (cons) and Owain George (clifton)

Cllr Gollup has already been documented as the sole councillor prepared to denounce the cycle city program
 As he said in 2001:
"The Cycling City initiative brought in match-funding which has delivered new cycling routes but these have largely been achieved at the expense of the majority of road users - by reducing road space or capacity

That is precisely what we think. Except now he is either lying through his teeth to get elected, or he has completely betrayed us. He is quoted in the Evening Post this year:
"Getting more people cycling is absolutely key to the future of the city because it will also reduce the city's carbon footprint and congestion during the rush hour."

​

Councillor Geoff Gollop says as mayor he would encourage sport and cycling

We hope he's  just taken some advice from his London leaders, and is now is lying to get into power.

But how to know. We've tried to contact him to ask "are you really holding strong to your principles and just lying to get elected, or has something happened to your brain?"

No answer.

The Mayoral Elections

So far we've been silent on the topic of the elections -it's down to the conservative and UKIP candidates to see who gets the white-van vote. Although the tories are targeting the white van constituency at the national level, Cllr Gollop is now being pro-cycling city, which makes us worried. It could just be he's realised that the elves of Somerset and the dwarves of Gloucestershire have no vote, so there's no point promising anything to the commuters who keep this city afloat.

 
What we haven't seen from that candidate is any sign that he really does support these bicycle things, which is why we do think it is just a facade. It's the other candidates that worry us.

Here we are shocked to see Cllr John Rogers, LD candidate for the election, alongside his folding brompton bicycle and looking cheerful, here in the autonomous district of Montpelier, leaning his toy vehicle against the community bike rack put in to help the vans turn the corner.

The Bristol Traffic Project is considering conducting interviews with all the candidates, to see where they really stand on the issues that matter. What questions should we ask? And remember, they have to be questions that support our agenda, not some hippy-hobbist anti-motorist plot

Bristol Council reclaims Thomas St for Parking!

With the rollout of the Kingsdown RPZ, one of the secret parking places of the city was lost.

Rejoice though!

The residents of Fremantle Square have complained about its loss, and they have had their place returned,


No longer double yellow lines.

No longer (as it was before), a fading Keep Clear sign -still shown on Google Maps.. Now there is a sign proclaiming that any resident can park here on weekdays; anyone evenings and weekends!
  
We do note that this is actually marked on the Bristol Cycling Maps as a recommended cycle route, and fear that without formally closing the road the markings are invalid -hence some tax-dodging troublemaker could get cars ticketed for obstructing the highway.

The minor bit of clearance at the corner may be the get-out clause here,

Bristol's answer to Cycle Lane Parking

At last, a solution to Bristol's traffic problems.

Let's just hope the council has ordered enough.

Street Art in Stokes Croft

Here at Bristol Traffic we know nothing about creativity. But we're not slobs. We like a bit of art.

And... we have to drive our White Van about quite a lot when we need to buy a new screw, or pick up a cold pasty. Which means we often find ourselves driving through Stokes Croft heading for the Tesco Express there (with it's convenient cycle lane to park in) at lunchtime before we head to the pub.

Known as Bristol's Cultural Quarter Stokes Croft is home to much of Bristol's artistic and creative community. The area is awash with pop-up shops, cafes, squats, street drinkers and shouters, and general all-round goodness (well, if Tescos is shut, we can always use Slix or Ritas). And, it comes alive with music at night, which makes it pretty much a 24 hour space.

The southern approach to Stokes Croft looks like this:

We buy our paint at the trade counter here, so we know there are many successful and creative artists working out of sight of the general public in places like the Jamaica Street Studios, Hamilton House and The Motorcycle Showroom. Unknown, but also hidden from view, are the many thriving digital media businesses which are also in the area. Their effects are more visible on a web-page or phone app. If your broadband is slow, blame them!

More apparent, when visiting Stokes Croft, are the many Street Artists that have managed to display their various works on buildings and walls around the area. Some are famous, some are not.

What we'd never realised, though, was just who the most prolific Street Artist / Tagger in Bristol is.

It's you!

Your tax pays for Bristol City Council to do some stunning artwork in the streets.

It's April 1st today, but this is not a joke.

Camera Enforcement Vehicle: Bristol declares war on school parents

"Camera Enforcement Vehicle". An odd term. It has a hint of Mad Max's "Interceptor", back in the days when Mel Gibson did half-decent films. In Mad Max, the interceptor existed to catch criminals threatening the streets and the safety of citizens.

We are sure that the council thinks their Enforcement Vehicle is there for the same goal, but we know what it has done: it has declared war on hardworking school parents who have nowhere to park their 4x4 for child dropoff except in the School Keep Clear lanes.

Today: when you see the traffic officers outside the school you know to drive pass, take the five minute hit on child dropoff to avoid the ticket. Once they've been and gone, that's it for the term. Safe. But not now.

Look at this car  R009OVT. It's got a camera on top, a GPS unit lurking inside. Now all it has to do is drive past a school and it can take a photograph of all the parents parked in the parent-parking-zone, then send them tickets later. Because it can do drive-by ticketing, it can cover multiple schools in a day -increasing the risk of getting caught. And you don't get any warning, you won't know to detour on the dropoff that day. After the dropoff: uncertainty. Did they pick on you today?

Worse yet the ANPR school parking car is not just targeting school zigzags, but also anyone stopping in a bus stop. Is it really so bad for people to have to get off the bus in the middle of the road? If people are worried about safety then the bus driver could simply drive on to the next stop (as they are apparently officially expected to do)!

They are enforcing loading restrictions, so stopping legitimate traders like Tesco from stopping their vans outside shops during rush hour. What sort of priority does Bristol put on the economy?

Even worse: the Evening Post isn't on our side here. They have joined the War against Motorists, in the same week the evil anti-car EU bumped up fuel prices by declaring an oil embargo against Iran. This is just victimisation

There's only one way to defeat this: stand firm.

Make sure nobody from your kids school calls Parking Services on 0117 922 2198 giving them the school location and exact time morning and evening when they would catch the most parents on a drive by.

Similarly, make sure they don't email parking.services at bristol.gov.uk giving them the same details, or telling them of your favourite secret bus-stop short-stay parking areas.

If nobody tells them of the places and times they should be enforcing parking at schools or in bus stops -we will continue to be able to exercise our right to do so!

pavement work in Southville

"MB" sends these shots of some vehicles in Greenway Bush Lane. Southville.

He notes that even the trucks are parked on the road.

Only one vehicle is showing how much they care about their paintwork and wing mirrors that they choose the pavepark option.

We don't see what MB is complaining about.The council owns the task of repairing all the pavements in the city, and, as such, have the right to park on it. The only unusual thing is why nobody else parks their either.

Monty regains its van friendly reputation

What with the 20 mph zone and all, some people may think that Monty no longer welcomes vans.

Not so!

First, we are pleased to show the first ever double parking event recorded in Montpelier.

We didn't know it was technically possible, but with the BMW in the yellow line area and the van FH02EKZ up on the pavement, we have reclaimed Picton Street!

Round the corner, Picton Square.

Can you see that? A missing bollard. Finally it can be used again for short stay parking, instead of a wasteland for pedestrians. Today HY08UOK is celebrating this shared space.

Meanwhile, over in Montpelier St Werbughs, the council van RF58NRZ is showing others how to park on a corner with double yellow lines. The chosen parking option allows for excellent visibility and does not hinder the progress of other large vehicles.

North Fringe Route Update

Both cyclists who read this site will be interested to hear that the North Fringe cycle route, linking Abbey Wood with the Farm Pub, will be installed this weekend; the schedule still says "February". Here is the view from the B&Q side.

Sadly, for those cyclists, the council is still looking at selling off the land, so the greenery may not last for long.

Further up the route, the council is preparing for the event by parking vans saying "look out for cyclists" up on the pavement.

By parking directly opposite a road junction, the council van CN06CXR ensures traffic approaching Wordsworth Road will know to look out for bicycles.

Bristol Engineering Projects - Merry Christmas

This is the season of Christmas cheer, so spare a thought for Bristol City Council's "Bristol Engineering Projects Team". This secretive bunch are the people who put the traffic lights in our roads and re-design our junctions.  We do wonder if occasionally, for a little bit of fun, they are behind all those particularly dangerous and annoying cycle lanes, installed as part of Bristol's failed attempt to become a 'Cycling City'. It’s sad to say but in these straightened times they seem to be running out of road “improvements” to carry out.


How nice, then, to see to see them busily working in Redland Green (a park) and discover that they are now finding new places to practice their art.  We love the fence that they are building across the park to make life difficult for cyclists, especially as there is a real chance that the fence might eventually injure or even permanently incapacitate a few of these freeloaders.  The fence on the Green really represents a great achievement because it has been constructed in such a way that it will make it hard for baby cyclists to learn their despicable habits. Quite literally, it cuts them short in their tracks.  Hopefully, they will all learn to drive instead with Second2none.  That is, if they haven’t been too badly injured by crashing into the fence, or crushing their driving fingers in the finger trapping gates (the gates are particularly impressive and may even prevent a few mothers and buggies from even making it to the playground).

The Bristol Engineering Projects Team appear to have cleverly managed to do the whole thing without even telling Bristol Parks. Let’s hope they can do it again and again so at last we will get some of these scruffy areas fenced in and preferably paved over.


Bristol Traffic applauds councillor Sylvia Townsend for her spirited defence of the fence at a recent Neighbourhood Partnership meeting, especially as she was entirely alone. We don’t attend such things but our spies tell us that the miserable local community objected to the fence one and all and have written hundreds of letters and emails against these forward-looking proposals.  Can you image that some of them even had the audacity to ask what the fence was for?  How mean spirited and narrow minded of them.  Clearly these residents are deluded in thinking that Redland Green is meant to be an open area of park for people to enjoy when we know it represents a great opportunity for highways thinking.

At the other end of the Green some road construction is already happening and a forest of railings going up to catch unwary cyclists and even a few small children.  We’ve been disappointed to see railings and bollards disappearing from roads because the nanny state panders to the whims of busybodies who pretend to care about the serious injuries to pedestrians and cyclists.  Well, we at Bristol Traffic are made of sterner stuff and we salute you councillor Townsend.


Pushed out of the highways maybe, but we are happy to report that highways engineering is alive and well in our parks.  


We feel that parks offer many opportunities. The area inside the fence must have already been earmarked as a car park which will at last make some proper use of this redundant space and who knows, there may even be a traffic light or too. Modest maybe, and we realise that this is a far cry from the major road schemes of the past, but there are so many things to be done in parks that we can be sure that the Bristol Engineering Projects Team won’t now run out of work.


Merry Christmas!

Sense at last

Common sense seems almost to have returned to Bristol City Council following their unsuccessful attempt to turn Bristol into a 'Cycling City'.

Whilst we object to not being able to park the Bentley in Boyce's Avenue during the day, we note with glee that a proposed new 'Pedestrian Zone' will also exclude cyclists, who will not be able to nip under the arch and so get into victoria square safely. With the moving of a taxi rank to a currently wasted double yellowed lined area on Clifton Down road for the installation of new loading bays and disabled parking, even cyclists not trying to use the short-cut will find their life less pleasant, which cheers us up.

We'll have our roving reporters out there, 10 - 6 every day, ticketing any cyclists that dare to disobey. 

Unless, of course, they object in sufficient numbers by 17th December to 

david.sarson@bristol.gov.uk

citing "Proposed pedestrianisation scheme, Boyces Avenue, Clifton" as the subject.

Luckily we know that very few cyclists read this blog, and we know that they're unlikely to ever find the Consultation Document on the web as they're probably to busy making lentil sandwiches for Christmas.