Now, here at Bristol Traffic, none of us do Twitter.
It's not our thing, so we leave that to others like @ipayroadtax to point out how cyclists continuously get in our way, without contributing to the costs of our roads.
More importantly, we don't do twitter because we know how it can be used to persecute us.
Take this example: here's an innocent tweet from a motorist (@andythomas365), sitting waiting for the lights to change just north of Stokes Croft:
Nothing wrong with this, you might think, except some clever clog spotted it and has now alerted the Police to the use of a mobile device to take photos whilst driving...
"RP" -our Gloucester Road correspondent, shows us some secret parking places:
FV55 PYO has been parking on the footpath round the back of the shops next to the disused toilets under the arches on the Gloucester road on a daily basis for well over a year. To be precise, the practice started at the same time that "Do 'Lil Coffee" opened next just next to the disused toilets next to the arches on the Gloucester Road. Not that anything should be read into this of course.
Now this is a great example of resourcefulness. The footpath here is wide and although bollards suggest that cars are not welcome on this pedestrian cut through onto Cromwell road the driver is often able to leave plenty of room for both the car and those on foot. On other occasions, FV55PYO is joined by a second car (peculiarly this seems to coincide with times when Do 'Lil Coffee is doing a lot of business -- Saturday mornings for example).
Then it becomes a little more awkward for pedestrians who have to decide whether to risk damaging parked cars as they squeeze pushchairs, bikes and shopping past the cars or, probably more easily, abandon the footpath and take to the road instead. Anyway, we digress.
To reward this feat of ingenuity and long-standing service to resourceful parking, Bristol City Council now routinely fix yellow stickers to the windscreen FV55PYO. Here is one example from a little while ago. This recognition of success has obviously not gone unnoticed as are now many other luxury cars who feel they don't want to be missed out.
"was this the famous Bristol Traffic Van? It drove out of Ashley Road after the light changed to block the traffic heading north to Cheltenham Road. Many of the drivers on Stokes Croft were somewhat unhappy about this, as the junction was already blocked and the driver ended up even stopping cars heading south from getting through"
No not us. It says Lloyds Pharmacy prescription delivery on the side, while ours clearly says "pornography delivery"
We're going to credit this cyclist coming up Bath buildings and crossing Cheltenham Road for actually looking and only going out when it is clear to do so, and waiting at the traffic island for a gap in the other lane.
Again, being a bit fitter and climbing up the mild incline on Bath Buildings would have saved time, and if you can't climb that when what faces you straight ahead, Arley Hill, is going to hurt. Looks more like this RLJ-er is going to right turn onto the Gloucester Road bus lane though.
Not so suicidal to be called a ghost-rider, just, well, pointless. The taxi in the ASL isn't going to run him over when the lights change as the cars blocking the hatched junction remove the option to pull out fast. Why then?
0:01 cars coming from Bath Buildings get to go left or right onto Cheltenham Road; cyclists can also go straight on for a contraflow.
0:12 Arley Hill gets green, cars and cyclists set off
0:14, A woman on a bicycle goes straight past the camera.
We are sure the tax dodging online press will be pleased at the gender balance of our RLJ footage, but can they at least tell the cyclists to look both ways when they run a red light? If your light is red, there are two meanings
Everyone has red, it's pedestrians you are going to hit and other cyclists that will hit you.
One or more lanes are green and you will become the statistic.
Hypothesis #2 is the one they should worry about. If our van had been in the Arley Hill ASL, our "launch on warning" system would have kicked in and we'd have pulled our foot off the clutch while texting the final message to our next delivery. Anyone cycling directly across our way, 14 seconds into her red light period is someone that the post mortem would say "she chose to die".
In Germany they have the phrase "Geister Fahrer" -Ghost Driver- to describe someone who chooses to commit suicide by driving the wrong way up an Autobahn. Here in Bristol we have the less well-off doing the same, the Geister Fahrader.
The rule of junctions is that if you don't acknowledge the other people on the road, they aren't there, so you have done nothing wrong.
Usually its done when you block a junction or a roundabout. Today, something different: a cyclist RLJ-ing the Cheltenham Road/Bath Buildings Junction.
For some reason, the camera crew aren't impressed by this and not only shout to get their attention, they are mildly abusive -which the tax dodger in the viewfinder ignores.
Next they will be writing in to the Evening Post to complain.
As to why the cyclist jumped the red light, some possibilities spring to mind:
they were in too much of a hurry.
their visibility of Arley Hill was restricted due to the large lorry blocking the pedestrian crossing.
their life is empty and meaningless and a bit of danger makes it more precious.
their brakes don't work and the way they came off the pavement forced them into this action.
they're an idiot
all of the above.
Well, they are now famous. Purple-topped mountain bike rider: welcome to Bristol Traffic!
Centre manager Andrew Lowrey said: "We have had several complaints that people are either riding or wheeling cycles through the centre and ignoring requests made by our security team not to do so
"The safety of our customers, visitors and staff is extremely important, therefore a decision has been made to ban cycles at Yate Shopping Centre with immediate effect.
"We encourage people to visit the centre and to travel by bicycle. However, we would kindly request that cyclists utilise the ample cycle racks located around the shopping centre. We expect a noticeable increase in footfall when the new Tesco Extra store opens on October 24, so hopefully these new measures will prevent future issues and make the shopping centre a safer place for all shoppers."
We expect this will rapidly improve the revenue in the shops and help it recover from the threat posed by the fact that Emerson's Green is five minutes drive away. Emerson's Green does welcome cyclists, so Yate should actually be able to market their Morrison's supermarche on this feature "Yate: nobody on a bicycle will be there".
Tesco Supermarkets would like us to remind our readers that their shop in Cheltenham Road is accessible by people on foot, public transport, bicycle and car -the bus/bike lane providing the parking area for the latter.
It became clear during the week that even Boris Johnson was out of his depth. After some final words of advice from Sarkozy -whose strategy of containment doesn't actually work when we have to drive through the areas of unrest, we finally jetted home. And then drove down to Stokes Croft
Tesco is boarded up. It's not clear whether this was due to attacks on it, or the supermarket chain accepting the inevitable and adopting this as their decor. It is still open, providing a reason to park in the bike lane, as KT04TWZ has done.
In the distance there's a woman pushing a fixie along the pavement. Given the abuse of bicycles in the English Riots (to separate them from the Ulster Riots and the regular Scottish "fixtures"), she and the cyclist heading into the city on the road should be pre-emptively arrested.
Further down, the windows of the Croft and Rodak Polish Food at the bottom of ninetree are broken -you can see them behind the bike lane/paveparking van Properbread HK07UKR. If one were to view the riots as either a popular uprising against The Man or a mass looting by consumer-hungry troublemakers, it's hard to say why either establishment was targeted. These establishments are not The Establishment.
There are other places boarded up, but the presence of quality art by Petro, Epok, Sepr and others shows that this is not recent. Overall then, for the area that is now associated in Bristol and the country's mind as "the first 2011 riot" is quiet and back its normal life.
On that topic, can we point out that the graffiti covering Annabel's at No 9 actually predates the sex-shop art we covered previously. We apologise to the Annabel staff for this accidental neglect.
People have asked us who, given all the people like Max Hastings are writing bollocks, and David Starkey saying "it is because they is all black", why aren't we being paid to appear on television and spout some random bullshit about the causes of the riots and the measures that need to be taken?
Most of the shallow bollocks has already been written. You can blame thirty years of liberal thought, two years of government cuts, and then make up some opinions on what needs to be done next. When the Evening Post did ask for some opinions we provided some defensible data showing how civil unrest is strongly correlated with economic downturns -at which point they hung up the phone.
It seems that to get the TV and press coverage we deserve, and the appearance money- we need to have an agenda more outrageous, which blames the recent events to some downfall in society. The obvious events are, in no particular order
Legalising same sex marriages.
Banning slavery.
The creation of the NHS.
Making it legal for two men to hold hands in public.
Allowing people of different racial groups to settle in the country (ignoring Vikings, Angles, Saxons, Romans, and all other pre-20th migrations except those from Ireland)
Banning schools from being able to beat children.
The end of capital punishment.
The end of internment in Northern Ireland, rather than its rollout across the rest of the country.
The end of National Service.
Rap Music.
Jazz Music.
Rock and Roll Music.
Punk Rock.
The rollout of 3G networks and the addition of TCP/IP protocol stacks to mobile telephones.
The World Wide Web.
Twitter and Facebook.
Television.
The publishing press.
Widespread literacy.
The Human Rights Act
The ending of the death penalty.
The ending of deportation.
Many of these have been covered by other commentators. Even so, these are mostly symptoms. The root cause hasn't been addressed, namely that we aren't able to execute people based on verbal evidence from a single witness. If we had that, all the criminals would have been dealt with a long time ago.
That's right: since we stopped executing people for alleged witchcraft, Britain hasn't been the same.
Bring back Burning Witches based on hearsay! It's the only way to save the country!
01:32 P232YEU. Seen them. 03:46 Eagle Coaches coach waiting in the bus lane. Seen them. 04:45 Family walking across the road. Seen them too.
When even independent videos include content that we already have on our web site, we can conclude that our attempts to build a mass-surveillance infrastructure out of google's datacentre facilities and community contributions are successful. At least for Montpelier, Stokes Croft, Cheltenham Road and bits nearby.
Does this mean it is time to retire: Our work is done? Maybe. But first, time to visit some other parts of the city.
There's a lovely piece of advice for anyone naive enough to believe that they'd be welcome cycling up the dedicated contraflow cycle lane or Arley Hill. It says "try the lanes of corwall"
What WA58BVD really means is "dont' try these bike lanes". We thought it was funny.
If there is one criticism -a minor one- the lorry is making it hard to get down the road and hence to the M32 for those of us who have paid for the privilege. A bit of forward planning, like, say, coning/dustbinnining off the front of the house would have let the removals van load up without taking any road space away from us.
We're reproducing a message sent out today, in order to prevent any misunderstandings if our email became public through other channels, just like that recent incident involving "Quercus", twitter and a naked man on a unicycle. First, we need to make clear that we do not in any way support the use of bicycles or public transport in the city. We are, however, concerned that the delivery and shopping processes of the Cheltenham Road Tesco Mini-mart are making it impossible for us to drive down the bus lane then swing left into Ashley Road, so avoiding the bearpit roundabout while heading out of town on the M32. Furthermore, the congestion caused by buses trying to swing back into the single-lane traffic is creating tailbacks as far as the Gloucester Road/Zetland Road junction, which makes nipping into Booze express harder. We couldn't come out and say this as it would make us appear shallow and self centred, so instead we pretended to have unified interests with the people that Jeremy Clarkson only this week denounced as anti-capitalist subversives.
Here is the letter
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Bristol Traffic Date: 21 June 2011 15:17 Subject: Express Cheltenham Road, Bristol To: expressqueries@uk.tesco.com
It appears that you are looking for feedback w.r.t the Tesco Express, Cheltenham Road, Bristol, the one that recently became nationally famous due its unfortunate history of catching fire late at night.
The Bristol Traffic Project wishes to provide some feedback about the newly re-opened mini-mart.
In case you are unaware, we are a web-based community project to build a defensible dataset on who drives, parks, cycles and walks badly round Bristol. Our stokes croft coverage dates back to 2008, and so forms one of the largest dataset on road usage in the area. As a result, the search terms "Tesco Stokes Croft" invariably lists one of our articles in the first page of responses, despite the recent national and international media coverage.
One conclusion of our three year dataset is that the number of people cycling along Cheltenham Road is increasing. This is something which the council believes is a good thing, which is why the Cycling City program deliberately set out to encourage people in Bishopston, further up the A38, to cycle to work -down Cheltenham Road. For this reason, the Greater Bristol Bus Network offers a mandatory bus lane during some parts of the day; this ends outside Tesco Cheltenham Road, where a non-mandatory cycle path begins. While historically the bus lane only ever existed on those rare days that Bristol Parking Services enforced the rule, the roll-out of in-bus camera and CCTV enforcement of lane-blocking legislation means that compliance is now higher, except amongst those entities that are prepared to view the penalty as an operational expense.
Within the last ten weekdays of the supermarket being "live", community contributions show that
There is invariably a large HGV blocking the end of the bus lane and the beginning of the bus lane between 10:00 and 10:30
The official Tesco deliveries, while scheduled for 10:00-10:30, render the bike lane inoperable for a minimum of 30 minutes out of every working day. This bike lane being, as mentioned, the primary cycle route into the city from north Bristol.
This official blocking of the bus lane impacts bus schedules, inconveniences passengers across the city, and may even lead to financial penalties to FirstBus.
Other organisations with an apparent relationship with Tesco (e.g. G4S) are prepared to block the bus lane during its operational hours, and therefore presumably view parking tickets as an OPEX. This reduces the availability of the bus and bike lane even further.
Customers engaged in a park-and-shop process are prepared to short-stay park in the bus/bike lane through out the day, so rendering it unusable to buses, cyclists, and anyone coming down of Arley Hill who wants to nip down the bus lane before turning left on Ashley Road towards the M32.
Customers engaged in a park-and-shop process are prepared to short-stay park outside the shop during the evening bus-lane hour, so creating congestion that runs as far back as Zetland Road and so has a negative impact on all road journeys.
Overall, then, the combination of scheduled Tesco deliveries, possibly scheduled visits by partner organisations, and short-stay parking by customers has effectively rendered this bus and bike lane unusable to anyone in a bus, bicycle, motorcycle or taxi, or anyone simply prepared to nip up the left lane to get to St Pauls, an action to which a blind eye has historically been turned.
Given the role of the road and the fact that the loss of this lane is leading to congestion morning and evening, we consider this outcome unacceptable.
We would recommend some actions to mitigate this. Sadly very few actions spring to mind other than the closure of the mini-mart.
Your cost model is built around an optimised supply chain that uses the same vehicles for delivering to Tesco Express outlets as other Tesco sites, so the HGVs could only be eliminated by the adoption of a new city-friendly supply chain.
Your cost model does not include the external costs of the impact on the journey times of non-customers, or other externalies such as the increases in their fuel use and pollution.
Passing motorists popping in to shop may have been explicitly or implicitly included in the business model of the shop. It may be possible to enforce a "do not sell to people who park in the bus/bike lane" policy by refusing them entry, however this will not help customer loyalty.
It is hard for you to enforce policy on how your strategic partners such as G4S arrive and park outside your premises.
What is possible is for the local council to act in such a way as to mitigate such issues, independent of any of your actions:
Use the CCTV camera at the junction of Cheltenham Road and Arley Hill to enforce the existing bus lane parking rules. This does not require any legal process and could be rolled out almost immediately.
Use existing the CCTV camera to enforce the 15 minute loading/unload time limit. Again, no legislation necessary.
Uprate the cycle lane from "optional" to mandatory, so earning all vehicles which park there a £120 fine.
Enforce the then-extended cycle lane driving/parking rules using the same CCTV camera
Increase the physical presence of Bristol Parking Services staff, so offering more of a visual deterrent before 10:00 and after 16:30.
Being a data-gathering exercise we shall be using the FoI process to track the number of parking tickets issued in this area, so see if it correlates with the increase of delivery and customer parking which our data implies is happening. We shall also encouraging our existing community base to collect more photographs of the situation, which we shall then place online along with the vehicle registration numbers, and so help build up a better dataset of who chooses to block this invaluable facility, and when.
Please thank your staff, partners and customers for their participation in our experiment.
The Bristol Traffic Team.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
As stated, do not interpret this as some form of subversive activity. It is just that the tailbacks prevent us getting down and parking on the pavement outside Ritas or sprinting over to the M32. We are, as people should recall, a data gathering and analysis project, so we welcome documentary evidence from everyone on this issue, even people engaged in un-British activities like walking, cycling, and getting on a bus as opposed to standing there hoping that one will turn up. The threat of using FoI information to collect ticketing statistics is real, and we enjoy the irony of having the CCTV camera put in "for the mini-mart's own protection" being used to ticket people parking in the bus lane during its hours of liveness. Expect updates in future
We are impressed. Every day that one of the team members has been down to Cheltenham Road this week, there's been a vehicle or two outside Tesco. What was once one of the showcase "cycle city" and "Greater Bristol Bus Network" routes has been returned to the tax paying driver -and as vans and lorries pay more road tax, they deserve to use it first.
"Slug" sends a couple of Pics from 09:15 on Friday 17 June showing a security van outside tesco,
And right outside the credit union, another lorry, MX07GJV
As slug says " It can be very dangerous for a cyclist to cycle in the cycle lane because it is to the left of traffic turning left. So the lorry driver out of concern for the potential danger that inexperienced cyclists are putting themselves in, decided to park on the double yellow lines ... ignoring the no unloading sign.
Behind the vehicle you can see all the way to the security van that is also parked on the cycle lane -and in between the lane is completely empty! Mission accomplished! no cyclists Left Hooked at Ashley junction this morning.
Interestingly, we have a different video of the same stretch of road from someone else taken about ten minutes later. This video is interesting because it is from the perspective of one of the tax-dodgers, someone who is trying to get across the city "after 9am because the roads are quieter." See that? These people have deliberately chosen to commute outside "the rush hour" because they prefer it. But that reduction in road traffic creates an illusion of safety -and encourages more of such behaviour.
At 0:03 there's another cyclist on Freemantle Road -heading towards the university or Clifton, then our underemployed camera-enabled tax-avoider descends Nugent Hill, an option forbidden to cars, especially since they put that island in at the bottom to stop right turns, a feature few motorists have managed to deal with. Our troublemaker negotiates that island by abusing the contraflow bike lane on Arley Hill, then flips into the left lane to undertake the stationary traffic to wait for a green light.
While waiting we see important people in cars and taxis, some public transport users, and unimportant pedestrians, and another cyclist at 1:58 crossing over to the contraflow. Because The A38 here, it could unify or divide the city. The council wanted to make it a showcase for the cycle city program, encouraging people from Bishopston (out of town; to the left) to head into the city centre, down this very road!
That is something we need to stop, which is why we are grateful for Tesco and its support. Because as well as unifying the cyclists, it could divide them. It and Muller road are the two roads that anyone cycling around north Bristol has to encounter, and if we can only roll back any pro-cycling "enhancements" there, then we can discourage anyone not just from cycling on these main roads, but even get across them.
That is why it is so essential to fight them on the streets, and why the Tesco delivery process is helping transform this road, and hence the whole of north Bristol.
At 2:14 you can see the bicycle head in to town. Although they think they have a lane to themselves, at 2:22 you can see their mistake -the security van has moved on since 09:15, but another delivery van has taken its place. Then at 2:34, a car half on the pavement, half on the bike lane. That bike lane is considered unsafe anyway, which is why they and the next lorry are blocking it. What's changed since the photos earlier is that the lorry seems to be deciding to pull out now; it's flipped its indicators on. The tax dodger goes past, and at 2:47 you can see another paveparked van; a 2:49 a similar car. All it takes is one or two vehicles doing this, all the time, every day, and people will be discouraged not just from commuting along this road by bicycle, but across it.
At 3:04 our troublemaker does a U-turn and heads out of town, showing that the bike lane there is in its usual state: short stay parking for shop customers and staff. This bike lane has been reclaimed!
At 3:36, they are now waiting to turn right towards montpelier, where you can see that the row of vehicles blocking the left lane do actually turn it into a bikes-only lane, albeit because nobody actually wants to turn left. Anyone turning left will have to swing over from the right hand lane, which might be a surprise to anyone cycling down it, of which we can see a couple at 3:50.
Then, finally, at 3:54, our errant tax dodger turns right, and then left into Montpelier, where they can feel slightly safer.
You see that? How the quiet bits of the city, Cotham and Montpelier, can be made cycling unfriendly not by adding any anti-cycling infrastructure, but by making it unpleasant to cross the roads between them. We don't need to ask the council for special anti-bicycle features, the way they do in Waltham Forest, all we need to do is park our delivery vans where we want on the roads the cyclist have to cross. It only takes a couple of HGVs to set an example, and once it's begun, every else will copy. What was a bike lane has become a parking area, not just to achieve the tactical goal: park outside our destination, but to achieve a strategic one: to knife the cycling city dream in the back.
Whose streets? Ours! For parking in whenever we want!
What we hadn't expected was how rapidly it would transit from a boring, functional bus lane and bike lane into a short stay shopping street. Tesco have brought the high street back again!
Notice here, on Thursday June 17, 10:18 am how the delivery staff have placed some warning signs out. At first we thought they were to warn cyclists not to go straight into the back of the lorry, and were a bit worried that Tesco may be starting to care.
A closer look reveals the real isse. Because the lorry has a loader that drops to ground level, they don't want any shopper to park their car on the double yellow lines too close to the back of the lorry. They are concerned about the customers, not the passing underpeople.
Here's a video of the same scene
Notice how you can just make out the bike lane underneath the lorry as it raises the floor.
Many of the troublemakers have complained that Tesco moved in to the area to profit from a road going upmarket. Untrue. Tesco moved in there because it wasn't upmarket enough, because people walked and cycled round, even though it was a main road with plenty of room for lorries and parking.
Tesco moved in to the area to save Stokes Croft from itself!
There are lots of theories about who torched the new Stokes Croft Tesco
Some squatters made petrol bombs and tried to torch the mini-mart in a protest against supermarkets.
Lots of drunk people reacting to the police blocking their road home.
A group of hardend "black hat" anarchists secretly infiltrated the city, created a riot and then retreated to a nearby pub, returning two weeks later to the Anarchist Bookfair to buy the Banksy memorial posters and then resell them on eBay.
An active service unit of Stokes Croft street food vendors torched it as any supermarket outlet selling chicken only five days past its best-before date would raise expectations excessively amongst their existing customer base.
We have a new one: Firstbus did it. Watch this video, taken before 18:00 on a weekday, to see why.
See how the vehicles coming from Bath Buildings only have time for the front two to pull out on red before the cars coming down from Arley Hill get out and block the junction. Then Cheltenham Road gets the green light, and all vehicles heading into the city get held up -including two FirstBus buses. What is happening?
The answer is, out of camera, a parked car is blocking the bus lane. This stops buses from getting through, and it stops any car coming off Arley Hill and heading left towards Ashley Road and the M32 nipping in to it and heading off to the motorway without being blocked in the tailback stemming from the bearpit.
This holds up cars, but for the buses it is worse: it holds up the entire schedule, on which they can pay financial penalties.
This then, is who has the most to lose from a Tesco on Cheltenham Road: FirstBus management, whose company will pay fines caused by short-stay shoppers parking in their bus lane, and whose bonuses and stock options will be threatened. These people had far more to lose than Slix or Ritas, far more to gain than the anarchists could make from reselling Banksy prints. This is why we believe that the police should study their CCTV camera footage for the signs of any FirstBus bus going down this road after 11pm. Normally all FirstBus buses would be in bed by then, so any bus going down the road is clearly full of FirstBus operatives, planning to create a riot, destroy a supermarket, and so avoid penalties for late bus schedules.
The Tesco Express has re-opened on Cheltenham Road.
It shuts at 18:00, so anyone wanting value beverages after that time is recommend to walk past the Arches, turn left to Zetland Road and go into Booze Express, who are happy to serve discounted vodka and red-bull throughout most of the evening.
Being closed at 6, the bike path in front of Tesco is unused.
What is interesting -and worth knowing- is now that the troublemakers have been evicted from the Telepathic Heights squat, there's room for two cars or vans in front.
Before there was always the risk someone on the roof would drop a brick or a bottle full of petrol onto your paintwork, but now it is safe.
With Cheltenham Road becoming safer and more popular, knowing the secret parking places is becoming important. This is a new one.
A quick trip in our van at 09:59 shows the delivery van YR59YUD happily ensconced in the bus lane, waiting to deliver to tesco.
We say waiting, because apparently as long as they don't start unloading until 10:00, it's OK. This actually makes sense. Anyone who is trying to use public transport or cycle at that time of day are clearly low-income people whose time is effectively worthless, according to the D of Motoring spreadsheets.
What is more interesting is later the same day, now at 18:37, we spot the "Mighty Banana" van of Stokes Croft, now parked outside Tesco. Has someone driven up from the Croft to get their weekly shop in?
Possibly, but they would have found their way blocked by a large group of strangely dressed people. That said, anyone driving up from the croft wouldn't find this unusual, or interfere with their daily shop.
What could, however, would be the police enforcement of parking rules. And here is where we saw something so shocking we almost dropped the mobile phone from our steering wheel hand (the other hand is for gear changes and the horn). Yes, a policeman actually went up to the van to note its registration number. We were in shock. This could destroy Bristol as we know it. Watch the video.
You see that? Panic over. It turns out that the "Mighty Banana" Van, W878MDC, is actually Chris Chalkey's van, and the police are only doing it for a laugh. In the voiceover you can hear Cllr Jon Rogers -whom we suspect of not being in the Waltham Forest Faction of the LibDem council- explaining this and why it's all a setup. Chris see's what's happening, starts waving his masonic hand-waves at the police and all is well. Masonic Handwaves, incidentally, are the van drivers' version of the Masonic Handshake -make the secret wave to any traffic police and they'll let you past.
False alarm: panic over. There's no problem with parking in the mornings, no problem in the evenings either. We were worried there, but at least everyone has come to their senses and realised that if there's one group of people in the city not to mess with, it's us van drivers. Those videos of people shouting "whose streets? Our streets?" wouldn't stand a chance against a roadblock of us going "whose short-stay parking areas? your bike lanes!"
We feel really sorry for the Bristol Evening Post. Most of the real journalists have moved on, leaving only a few people who are actually valued for their knowledge of the area and their willingness to type what senior management want them to write (Ian Onion), and, to replace the others, some unpaid interns trying to learn how to write HTML content to put local journalism as an item on their resume.
In the latter category, then, can we welcome Laura Local, who is now our favourite third-tier reporter for the Redland People subsidiary web site of the Evening Post. We think "redland people" is a bit overambitious, as it implies all the residents check it every morning saying "what's happened in our part of the city?", but that doesn't happen. Nothing much happens there except when some drunk students put some traffic cones on some cars, or the helicopter over stokes croft keeps people awake. Even then, reading about in the Redland People site isn't the way most people discuss some items. In fact, given their readership count, we believe the site would be called "Redland Eight People"; the eight being friends and family of the authors.
Laura, we are pleased to see, is trying hard to get the audience into double digits by printing an anti-cyclist rant. We do that ourselves, which is why our daily audience is in the high double digits, and we can see why a commercial site that tries to make money through advertising revenue would aspire to be as successful. Hence this lovely article, Redland cyclists among the worst in the Bristol? Here's the opening paragraph
I was turning right out of North Road by the Arches when a cyclist, who wasn't wearing a helmet I hasten to add, whizzed by in the middle of the road heading the direction I wanted to go - towards Gloucester Road. I pulled out behind him, as I would have done had he been a car and he stopped in front of me all of a sudden and started mouthing off before jumping the red light.
Maybe I was a little too close to him when I pulled out but I felt any criticism was rich coming from a guy who was bombing down the centre of the road without a helmet and straight through a red light!
We aren't going to defend the tax-dodger, but we will provide some constructive feedback to the author
It's not actually a legal requirement to wear a helmet. The only time you should criticise them for not wearing a helmet is when someone gets run over by an HGV driver on the phone, then you can say in the daily mail comments section "were they wearing a helmet" and so absolve the whole of society for their death. We do.
It's not illegal to cycle down the middle of a lane. Yes, it annoys us as it stops us driving above 25 mph, but for the troublemakers, it gives them more options avoiding being hit by redland residents who are too lazy to drive to the gloucester road shops, and who open their doors without looking or pull out without indicating.
If you were the first vehicle to pull out, and you were parked in the ASL under the arch itself, the cyclist may have crossed the traffic light while it was still green, then if you pulled out aggressively he may have had some reason to express concern.
Don't ever admit in print something like "Maybe I was a little too close to him when I pulled out." It removes your ability to take the moral high ground. We never discuss our own driving actions for this reason, or make videos from our van -the police might want them.
Gloucester Road isn't Redland. It's Bishopston, on one side, St Andrews on the other. When when it becomes Cheltenham Road it's called "the arches" until you end up on the disputed Cotham/Montpelier/Stokes Croft region where the new Tesco is. Not Redland. If you have to drive outside your own reporting area just to get content to rant about, well, that may show some weaknesses in the "Redland cyclists amongst the worst in Bristol" story. We recommend spending some time in Cotham Hill, which, while again not quite Redland, is full of pedestrians, cyclists, school-run parents and us vans, so creating a lovely mix for new articles, such as "Redland Van drivers amongst the worst in Bristol?", "Redland students amongst the worst pedestrians in Bristol", and of course "Redland school-run parents amongst the worst in Bristol". Together this will keep your article quota fulfilled for a month with only one morning's worth of research. Or you could walk along Chandos Road and have a geographically correct region for the "Redland parkers amongst the worst in Bristol" article.
Do try and back up your articles with photos other than faded bike path signs that may convince everyone, motorist and cyclists alike, that Bristol's cycling facilities are dire.
If you do want to get a video of someone cycling through the red lights on that stretch of Gloucester Road, stand there with a camera on a weekday evening and wait for one lights cycle: it's not hard.
Anyway, Laura -welcome to the tier-3 anti cycling rant pages of Bristol. Those of us already in the business welcome new competitors, as it keeps us on our toes. Just try a bit harder and we might even feel slightly threatened.
People say to us "did you nip over to the Stokes Croft streetfest on your day off from driving a van round the city"
We reply "Those of us who work in the Bristol sex-trade supply chain don't consider Saturdays a rest day -we were making deliveries on the Croft as usual." People who were there would have seen us. Question is, who were we?
The white van FG80741, outside the Polish Shop? Possibly.
The car KF03DXT in the bike lane near the now-famous Tesco express (not open at the time this photo was taken), and opposite the equally famous Telepathic Heights (more on that another day)?
The car LB57TXG in the bike path outside Slix? Perhaps.
Slix wasn't that busy, while Rita's was closed. While many of the bars and cafes were overflowing, the availability of low-cost, raw-in-the-middle yet burned on the outside BBQ-d beefburgers on sale on the street corners meant that the two main fast food establishments had competition -competition who won on cooking ability, cost and freshness.
Or were we the car X258CBR with the disabled sticker and the hazard lights on, the wingmirrors flipped back, on the double yellows?
The answer is: that's something we can't disclose. Once people recognise the official Bristol Traffic van, our coverage quality will degrade to even worse than it currently is.
Now that the police have gone, the bikes and bus lanes have returned to their key role in the city: providing parking.
Here we see the outside of Uplands Mobile Multimedia, vendor of sound systems for cars.
Only customers and staff can park on its driveways, hence the large warning of 7x24 wheel clamping, £125 pound unclamping fee. If only we'd voted for the SNP, such things would be illegal, and we'd get free parking at the BRI. As it is, you can get clamped on private land. What to do.
Well, the shop provides a nice answere underneath:
PARKING NOTICE Parking in the BUS LANE `is permitted' between 10am-4pm Monday-Friday & All day Saturday Your co-operation is appreciated THANK YOU
Technically that's wrong, as parking permitted all day sunday too, and after about 6:30pm weekdays. And if you are really important, you can park in it whenever you want.
What's interesting here is the "your co-operation is appreciated" phrase. Who do they want to co-operate? It's not the people parking -they don't need to co-operate. No, it must be the bus drivers, the cyclists, and the council, who must be kept an eye on in case they ever want to extend the bus lane hours to the whole day so as to help people on bicycles and public transport.
