Clifton: take the corner!

The candidate for Clifton, Owain George, didn't get elected, so his plans to introduce more parking has failed.

Clifton Residents are forced to make do with what they can get.

From the distance, you can see it's cornerish parked but not the details.

Get closer, and you can see that they'vehad to take the pavement of people heading along the road

BG54OYD has also managed to assert their ownership of the adjacent corner

That's two pavements and a chunk of the road -enough that the Fiat Ka behind it may have a hard time getting out.
 
Other drivers just aren't in the same league

Clifton Cornerish Parking

The reason the Clifton residents have fought so strenuously against residents parking in the rest of the city is not for the sake of those residents, but for the sake of clifton.

They know that the parking problem in Clifton is the residents -and if an RPZ was ever rolled out here, traditional corners would be taken away, instead of effectively used by WU59TUX

They'd have yellow paint on them, and you'd get tickets for using them, even on a quiet saturday
 
But corners are sometimes the only places left to park.
   
Why should a residents parking zone make cornerish-parking for residents like the owner of WP59LGN a crime?

Mountain Rescue at Avon Gorge

Thursday Lunchtime in Clifton. A fire engine nonchalantly parked across the Clifton approach to the Suspension Bridge stops anyone from getting through.


A couple of cyclists are experiencing what it is like to cross the bridge without someone important in a Mercedes driving 6" behind them.


 
Why the closure? looks like the fire brigade are rescuing someone off the Avon Gorge, just to the side of Giant's Cave Buttress (you can see the ropes over the lighter limestone)
 
The climber seems be being evacuated from the bottom of the climb.
We hope all is well.

(PS: for anyone thinking of using these photos, this particular are released under the CC 'with attribution' license, meaning the site "Bristol Traffic" and URL http://bristolcars.blogspot.com should be used. To publish without crediting us is a copyright issue)

This is why we use a van

Over in London the militant tax dodgers are asking the hard question "why are lorries and HGVs allowed in our inner cities?" An interesting question, but here's another one " why do tax-dodgers cycle on the roads that the HGVs have to use? There are plenty of back roads. In Bristol you can recognise them because they have hills on them. If the cyclists go down Gloucester Road or the A4 and say "there are lorries there", well, there are alternatives: the hills of Montpelier, Totterdown and Clifton. HGVs do not normally go there.

Except today, when the BBC has some footage of an HGV getting wedged in the hairpin at the top of Clifton Vale.

We've looked at this problem before.

1. On the way up, if you can't see anyone in front of you, go for it. 
2. On the way down, hang back enough to get a view, and go for it if nobody is obviously coming up. But swing wide before even beginning the turn in, or you won't be lined up to take the next corner

You can't do this in an HGV -which is why we deliver our "adult entertainment products" to the Clifton area in the official Bristol Traffic white van. It takes the corners, and if it gets a couple of scrapes on the way -not only does the van not look any worse, but it doesn't leave anything more incriminating than some white paint.

Don't get stressed over paveparking. Have a coffee

Good people of Clifton, especially pram pushing parents going to the Zoo. What better way to relax and unwind from the stresses of walking, than a refreshing coffee from the Clifton Coffee company.

Taking postive advertising and paveparking to a new level.

Correct Parking Alignment

One of the ongoing debates in the country is "how far from the kerb can you park". Indeed, there is a (very abusive) web site dedicated to criticising drivers.

We are different, and strive to praise everyone for their efforts.


Here, for example we can clearly see that BX54FVC has managed to get their kerb-side wheels as close to the kerb as is possible without damaging them,  and both wheels are perfectly aligned.

This is skilled parking here on Brighton Mews, Clifton. Residents of Montpelier should consider themselves show up by such skill -except they have to fit into narrow gaps on the pavement, whereas this car probably didn't even need to reverse, just drive up on the dropped pavement.

Disabled Thinking

Historic landscapes and conservation areas are important across the globe. UNESCO knows this, and justly identifies the historic core of Amsterdam as of world importance. Which is why we enjoy going there, taking photos and enjoying the views and the general aesthetic of the place. Even though it's overrun with cars and bicycles.

Clifton Village is not a UNESCO world heritage site, but it is of a similar era, and is also overrun by cars and bicycles.

Which is why Boyce's Avenue has had both banned for much of the day in order to make shopping and walking through there a more pleasant experience.  

Oh? They don't quite look the same? 

That'll be the UK's obsession with paint. These fantastic new yellow daubings on the kerbs of Boyce's Avenue are there for a reason. Which is really important in historic settings.

Number 3 in an occasional series of Porsches parked outside supermarkets (parts 1 and 2). Double yellows? Check. Don't want anybody else parking too near. Well out from the kerb? Check. Don't want to scuff the tyres. Personalised plate? Check: K7KKY. And in a moment of compassion, they've gone to Tesco in order to help reduce the £4bn drop in profits, rather than Waitrose. Thoughtful.

Forward Planning

We've discussed before planning strategies, such as the MiniMax algorithm, and how a limiting factor is how far ahead you plan. The planning horizon limits your options, and often the game is won by whoever plans furthest ahead.

We are perfectly happy with a planning horizon of one: what is the next thing in your way. However, we are pretty unimpressed by this video which was sent to us of a car in Clifton who'se planning horizon was zero. When a car is coming towards you, you either do two things -commit at speed or back off. What you don't do is go alongside the bicycle at 15 mph with a car coming towards you at 20 mph, as that leads to an exchange of details and some insurance premiums, especially now that tax-dodgers are starting to carry cameras and no doubt willing to supply their videos as evidence.

If you are going to overtake with oncoming traffic, put your foot down!

KY57PZF: it's going to make a great video

It's interesting to compare cultural differences between Montpelier and Clifton. Soon, Montpelier. Today: Clifton. As we've noted, the local anti-cycle policy does encourage driving rather than cycling, so someone on pedals is unexpected; people don't know what to do.

At the same time, for all their driving, the wide streets of Clifton, and the higher value of their cars, means that Monty-driving-techniques just don't apply here. If you've ever been held up in your van while some fancy car hits the "mirrors in" button and then crawls along, you'll know what we mean. There's a fear of scraping your mirrors against other vehicles. In Montpelier, the locals don't have wing mirrors, have pre-scraped cars, and know the technique: drive close enough to the right to be almost touching the parked cars, let the left hand side look after itself.

That lack of skill and excessive protection of their car puts the Old Cliftonians at a disadvantage. Look at this video here, on Beuafort Road, Clifton, one weekday morning.



There's a bin lorry collecting rubbish. Nothing unusual there, except in Clifton the rubbish is better. Empty bottles of fine Bordeaux wines, not crumpled up cans of Tennants Export -"brewed in Scotland for the English Bastards".

Where the bin men are, there are delays. Here the oncoming bicycle goes past them, only to see KY57PZF blocking the way in front, waiting for a chance to get through. Why haven't they done that gap already? It's wider than many of the Montpelier 2-way streets, and there's excellent visibility. We'd have gone for it. Of course this Peugeot 207 1.4S is in better condition in our van, but our dents and bashes were our way of learning the exact dimensions of the road.

Because the car hasn't got the nerve to commit through this -massive- gap, it ends up blocking the gap. The cyclist -who believes they have some right to be there- waves at the car to reverse a bit. The driver -rightfully- points at the (obvious) lorry and clearly implies they are going to sit there and wait. The tax-dodger has none of this and tries again. Here the driver of "KY57 PZF" provides some feedback in the form of the clearly mouthed "Fuck off". For some reason the cyclist doesn't take this hint and again, encourages the driver to back up.

Don't they see the disabled sticker on the car? This person is clearly suffering from some disability, which not only prevents them from walking, it probably hurts to reach down to the gear lever and put it into reverse. Yet the insensitive cyclist doesn't recognise this, they just sit there bullying this innocent motorist to go backwards or get on their side of the road to let him pass.

At the end of this incident, the troublemaker says to the driver "It's going to make a great video", which the driver doesn't hear. Reaching for the window clearly causes more pain, so the tax dodger opens it and says "It's going to make a great video look for your registration number on youtube" before disappearing.

We are surprised that the car driver doesn't complain to the evening post about such harassment.

Update: Road name corrected from Belmont Road to Beaufort Road. Credit to an attentive Richard.Howe8!

Clifton: we can dream, but the bollards deny

A Sunday in Clifton, and the owners of the 4x4s like WF58EZG are forced to use the raised body height to help get up on the pavement.

There just aren't enough spaces for that VW Touran, or the Jeep Grand Cherokee WU53HGD below, famous for, in the words of the NCAAP safety tests, earning just two stars for pedestrian safety, "this car was not designed with pedestrians in mind"

Well obviously not. People walking take up parking spaces.

Which brings us to Waterloo Street, Clifton Village. Bollards. Worse, Bollards with bicycles attached.

Our Clifton councillors have done what they can to discourage cycling: resisting cycle parking in the village, proposing taking away yellow lines, but it isn't enough.

It's not the yellow lines that are the problem -it is the bollards. They remove space from us, the important residents of the area, and give to them, the pedestrians and the cyclists. It's as if they were more welcome than us.

Every Bollard is a sign that the War on Motorists continues!

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.

pamperbanana: introducing PaveClaiming to Clifton

Our recent coverage of Clifton has generated more contributions from the area, and here we are pleased to show some photos from "G", showing the imagination that the locals are forced to apply to the area's parking problems, as all the councillors can think of is removing a few yellow lines under the guise of traffic calming.

These photos actually introduce a whole new concept, here in Hurle Road, Clifton: PaveClaiming.

First, what's that in the distance? A car on the pavement, poking into the road. Nothing unusual there -even in Clifton. Lots of people don't have driveways big enough for six big cars.

When you get closer, you can see it's not a house, it's "pamperbanana", a body grooming shop. Offering "A fresh and vibrant welcome awaits you to indulge in one of the many luxurious treatments" Again, nothing too unusual. Our favourite Stokes Croft massage parlour has a vibrant welcome allowing us to indulge in one of the many luxurious treatments -and dedicated bike lane for us to park in "when we're in a hurry".

No, what's interesting is this. The bit of pavement that FA07YMJ is parked over has a sign on it "reserved patrons only." In fact, if you check the web site, it says this explicitly: "Customer parking avaliable outside salon" (sic)

That's why we call it PaveClaiming. "The act of claiming ownership of a piece of pavement so that only you can park there." Nice. Given the nature of Clifton, you can't expect residents to walk or cycle to the salon, so this is what the team had to come up with to encourage visitors.

Sadly, not everyone seems so positive about the idea. The council planning department appear to be investigating the apparent change of use of the front of the establishment. This worries us. You can't call PaveParking a change of use -it's as traditional to Montpelier as getting drunk and having a fight on a weekend evening is in The Centre. No permission needed there.

Hopefully it's just the PaveClaiming that they are worrying about, not the actual paveparking. That would threaten the stability of whole regions of the city.

Fuel Costs and motorbiking

We've heard sob stories about people having to go without food to keep their cars fueled up, but nobody has looked at the impact on the tradition of motorbiking to your mates to a pub. Not only are road taxes and petrol taxes on the rise, but beer taxes have gone up too.

This is a group of pub goers have been forced to cycle to the Vittoria on Whiteladies road pub for their afternoon beers; a row of chopper style pedal cycles lined up as a forlorn statement of a lost dream. Still, it adds to the beer money.

That blocked up building, The Ranch, is not damaged by any riot. It's just shut down -people aren't going out and drinking enough, so the Vittoria must welcome all traffic, even these push-biker-gangs

Looking at the zebra crossing, we can see someone didn't quite manage to make the corner here. At least that's one good thing of the plastic keep-left signs: they bend out your way and don't damage the paintwork.

This is the zebra crossing that the WoEP wanted to move away from the road crossings as part of the showcase bus route. Whatever the claimed reason, the real reason is now becoming clear: Tesco are putting in a mini-mart where the Texaco garage used to be.

As we've seen elsewhere in the city, a zebra crossing provides excellent short-stay parking opportunities for anyone nipping in to buy one or two items. Not petrol bombs though, as that bit of the site will be going away. Anyway, who could afford them?

Miffed

We're a bit miffed.

Over here in Bristol Traffic HQ we endlessly debate the best personalised number plates we'd like on our vans and 4x4s. We've even got one on the company Porsche.

We know that the really good ones have all gone (we've still got PEN 1 S on the Bentley, and D 1 LDO on the X5, mind), but we were really upset when we received this photo:

Yep, that's UPU51R, spelling out it's owner's attitude to other road users in a really succinct and pithy way. In Clifton. Nice.

Smart Car: Park all your preconceptions with a test drive on Clifton Downs

While the Harbour Fest is going on in the city, what should we see up in Clifton but SmartCar employees offering test drives on Clifton Down in their little car KP11OYZ. As the text on the back says "take a test drive with a difference".

Obviously, the two threats to any car are cyclists and pedestrians, but the fence across the footpath keeps pedestrians away

And the no cycling sign keeps the area safe from bicycles

During discussions with the staff, apparently they were allowed to drive on the downs as the council had approved it.

Well, we said only a few days ago that the best use of the area would be for parking; right now it's a premium price Zoo-visitor service for peak weekends, when really it should be open to all residents.

The fact that the council are giving Clifton residents the opportunity to try driving and parking on the downs -as the Smart Car advert says "Park all your preconceptions", could be a step in the right direction.

We are interested in what the legal status of this is: can you really block off a footpath this way, and when it becomes a designated road, are people on bicycles still banned? And what the process and cost for doing this is. If it's affordable, we will create our own pay-to-use car park here.

Hotwells Primary: the parking problem

While down at Hotwell's Primary, we thought we'd have a look round to see where else parking restrictions could be relaxed.

Well, there's a bit by the school marked "school keep clear" that looks like a good opportunity.

Round the corner there a build out with bollards and four bike parks, stopping even important parents from using it.

There's even a sign "stopping on zig zags is dangerous and selfish". But as that's not live evening and weekends, that's a problem for commuters rather than residents.

Round the corner -on a weekend- no parking problems at all, with a pavement where you can park close enough to the fence to ensure that neither side of your vehicle gets scratched.

This is why we think the proposal to take away one short-stay dropoff point on Hope Chapel Hill to add at most two parking spaces is misguided. There's lots of pavements to park on outside of the weekday, and if you add two more spaces, well, that just adds room for two more commuters -people who aren't in the Clifton wards, so aren't going to vote for Barbara or Terry in a fit of gratitude. It's the school-run parents who will be most inconvenienced, and they who are the biggest threat.

Walthamising Hotwells

One of the Clifton Traffic Calming proposals -voted for, with support from the Waltham Forest Faction of the ruling LibDem party, was to remove some yellow lines from this road "to calm traffic", with a key justification being this is near a school and it would improve safety. This perfect Walthamisation: to improve the facilities for us, the motorists, using the walking and cycling part of the council budget, and claiming it is for "their own good". Waltham Forest excels in this, such as in the downgrading of a route to the Olympics, though we are surprised at how much it cost to make it so easy to PavePark. We in Bristol don't need such help.

This is the road covered. There are some buildouts already, one positioned to protect the wingmirrors of cars, and room on the other side of the road to park. The target area must be further down the hill.

Ah yes, here it is. A narrow stretch, two chicanes and then a wide space -wide enough to get two small cars into.

But here's a question: is this worth spending political capital on? Barbara Janke, Cllr for Clifton (Waltham Forest Ward), is in charge of a minority council that often cites its green foundations as a way of differentiating it. To remove some double yellow lines "to calm traffic" is going to get bad press in the green-troublemaker news outlets (fortunately, not the BBC or Evening Post), and embarrass others in the council. For what? Two parking spaces.

It may seem odd, but we in the Bristol Traffic project are against the proposal for two reasons. One is this: there are more important places to add parking areas that a back road near Hotwells

The other --and this is key-- is this: double yellow lines provide Clifton parents with designated dropoff areas on the school run. Those two parking spaces would be wasted on residents or commuters, as only two people a day will benefit from each new space; four people per day on a weekday, dropping down to one person/day on a weekend. Twelve vehicles a week. Whereas as a short-stay parking area, you could have ten parents a morning queuing up to do dropoffs, push the kids out and carry straight on into the city, without having to get out the car.

It is far more valuable for parental dropoff than for resident and commuter parking, and if the councillors don't realise this, they are talking to the residents and not the school parents. If we sent our kids to this school, we'd be in touch with Barbara Janke and others defending our right to park here, instead of saying "yes, we think two more residents should park here." Who cares about the residents? That's four voters, compared to the possibly twenty that ten families could offer.

The other thing is that traffic calming claim looks, well, weak. You could push it for Pembroke Road -you can get up to speed. But here? Even with a buildout dropped enough to let vans go over it, you can't keep your speed up, you have to give way at the bottom anyway.

For the sake of twelve extra vehicle parking opportunities a week, Barbara and Terry are going to make enemies of everyone in the school, as well as devalue the entire "LibDem are green" brand. Admittedly, their Westminster School and Parliament compatriots are doing the same thing, but if you look at the recent election results, not only did the Green party take a LibDem seat, they came second in a few other wards. The cost of adding two parking spaces here -both financial and political - doesn't justify it. Two happy residents, some commuters who aren't even in the same ward as the councillors, and 40-50 annoyed parents plus the local green troublemakers blogging about it -and maybe even letting the evening post in on the joke, so that Barbara gets laughed at as much as Gary "bus stop" Hopkins did.

This is just political ineptitude.

Clifton: resisting cycling city

Even as we complain for the current and aspiring councillors for their lack of imagination over car parking -compared to the residents, we must praise the area for holding back the cycling in the area. If they didn't you could imagine families happy to cycle over the suspension bridge to get to Ashton Court, to pootle up to the downs, or even nip over to Clifton village for a bit of shopping.

They've managed -without anyone noticing- to get away without adding any bike lanes, contraflows on existing one-way streets, pass-throughs on dead-ended roads, or any of the cycle city innovations intended to make cycling a viable alternative to driving. They have invested in some no cycling signs, but they are discreet and in keeping with the area -while the Keep Clear paintwork is being allowed to fade.

Looking the other way, sadly, three bike stands. But as the area was bollarded off, no parking area is lost, so the car S215BPN can stay happily parked on some more fading keep clear paintwork.

In the village itself, it looks like three people have chosen to cycle in. The provisioning of nothing but bollards to park against does its best to discourage people from attempting this, but still they come and park here on Waterloo Street.

The problem is, despite what cycling city advocates, there isn't room in this narrow street to add any cycling lanes or bicycle parking. There's not enough room for cars to pass each other, and, unlike Montpelier, some of these people are in cars they value, so the road has been made one-way for the safety of the paintwork of expensive vehicles like the BMW HK60CZZ.

We know that people are pushing for the removal of the in-village yellow lines to add parking, but we don't see the point. The yellow lines act as a way of ensuring there is always space for somebody important. Without them, poor people from other parts of the city would take away all the parking spaces.

Pembroke Road parking opportunities

Driving further north on Pembroke Road, we come to an area where all the parking spaces are taken. But it's still a wide road, and you can easily get up to 45 along it. No junctions, no zebra crossings, no mini-roundabouts, nothing to get in your way. Perfect. Admittedly, there's one or two bicycles to swerve past, and few schoolkids sprinting to the safety of the traffic islands, but a quick tap on your horn sorts that out.

Look in the other direction, towards the city. The roads are wide, but now there's a bus stop, a pedestrian, and a cyclist.

And everywhere: double yellow lines.

This leads us to our real metric of "where is there room to remove double yellow lines?" It's obvious, when you think about it.

Wherever there is room for people to cycle without getting in the way of important people in cars, there is space to add more parking.

There you have it. A nice simple metric of where we can put more parking. And its important to do this, because otherwise, the pedalling and walking factions, who are secretly defying the Waltham Forest faction in the council, would love nothing better than to put in bicyle lanes along stretches of road -and in a road this wide, they could even try segregation. Because of the double yellow lines, nobody is going to fight back to say "No! This removes the place where we have parked our car for years!"

This is why we need to Walthamize this stretch of Pembroke Road -because it is the only way we, the important people, can resist the so-called "progress" of those subversives, a progress that is really the continuation of the War On Motorists in a different disguise.