This is the roadspace they are stealing

Over in the cycling mailing lists -which we spy on- lots of people are complaining "where is the road space that Cllr Gollop says the cycling city program has stolen"? They point out that the big infrastructure projects are on parkland, public commons and pavements. In the city centre, no road space has been re-allocated from motor vehicle to bicycle.

This misses the point. Every bicycle on our road is stealing roadspace just from the taxpayer who could fit in the same space. What is worse, by slowing down the vehicles behind, they are slowing down important people to their speed.

Here is an example, Stokes Croft at about 9am one weekday.

You can hear a car sounding its horn -it's the black golf turning left at 0:12. Why is it upset? There is a bicycle going straight on in its way. It should not be there! There is a small cycle lane in the left side of the road used for parking, and if the cyclists aren't using that, they are holding up people in a hurry -they deserve to be harassed.

We count 10 bicycles going towards town in a minute -one every second. They have effectively stolen the left lane from important people. Admittedly, that left lane is a bus lane right up to the soon-to-open "tesco minimart designated parking area", formerly known as "the cheltenham road bike lane". We know that bus lanes are for important people to drive in or park in, and these troublemakers are denying us this right.

This is the real failure of the Cycling City program, that during its lifetime the number of cyclists on the road has increased, and that by doing so, they are taking away road space from the city, even without any new bike lanes or paths appearing in the city centre.

Railway Path Signage

As the extended route through Wickham Glen goes on, signs are already up on Alcove Road pointing to Eastville Park

Similarly, there are signs off Fishponds road letting pedestrians and cyclists know that their reserved route is nearby

To help cyclists get to this oasis, Avon Home Carers of fishponds have graciously parked both cars WU10LLV and WU60MHN up on the pavement, so creating a wider road for the cyclists.

We hope the tax dodgers are grateful, for, as the logo says "we care"

Breaking news: a new route for cyclists arrives

While dark things were happening in London; a new movement set up to bring cycling to the masses, and troublemakers in Filton were painting bollards to make the cycle paths somewhere safe to cycle, here in Bristol the council spent the weekend trying to bring cycling to Horfield, at least Dovercourt Lane, which now has a route between their houses and B &Q that doesn't require 120-140mm of front suspension.

We had hoped for something that would create pedestrian/bicycle conflict, one where S Gloucs council would have to come down, show them city folk how it was done, and add some white bollards down the middle and gates at the end to calm down the cyclists and make the whole thing generally unpleasant. We call this the "Coronation Road" gambit: a cycle lane impossible to cycle down.

But this looks, well, wide and inviting.

There's a gentle rise, with visibility. People will be able to get from Dovercourt road to Muller Road without even going to any effort, to get the farm pub in St W's without working up a sweat. Compare that with the frustrating effort to drive to the same pub on a friday evening from the same location -all because the same council refuses to open up Boiling Well's Lane as a through route between Muller Road and the city.

We are shocked and disappointed.

Our big fear now is that the council will use this as an excuse for making Dovercourt Road and Wordsworth Road pleasant to cycle along. We shall be monitoring this, and ask for contributions from local drivers to resist this fundamental attack on the Bristol lifestyle.

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"

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.

Abbey Wood Bike/pedestrian path changes

We've sent the team to the North Fringe for a few days, to see what the fuss is about regarding Abbeywood and Bollards. In order to cover this accurately, we have had to recruit someone on a bicycle, for which we apologise. If it makes the audience feel better, they think they are being paid to be a courier for paperwork. Normally we just pay them to carry old phone books around, as it slows them down, and about once a week they have to deliver high-strength home-grown Montpelier herbs, an action which would get them put away for 20-25 years if they were caught with them, a thought which always cheers us up when we send them out.


Returning to Abbeywood, some people may recall the fuss made last year when someone cycled into a bollard that S Gloucester council stuck in. These are white bollards with a white stripe, no hi-viz markings, and on a path that is only intermittently illuminated. Well, yes, a crash was inevitable. Yet we agree with some the comments made in the Evening Post and Daily Mail -while we sympathetic to the lecturer's injuries, they have only themselves to blame for being on a bicycle.

We actually saw some of the bollards going in, but didn't think it was interesting enough to cover. Now that we see it is, we can go through the back records and find the video.



Now that the bollards are here on the eastern side of the MoD land, we are disappointed to see that it does so little to discourage cycling. Instead our courier can travel down the bike path at speed, slow down for the road, where apparently off camera someone driving a car actually gives way to the bicycle, hinting this green paint is giving some mistaken impression about rights of way to MoD staff.



Last year, this path had a proper anti-bicycle gate, which the subversives used to ignore by going through the vegetation, forcing the MoD deployment of an anti-vegetation-cycling feature, before they went and removed it, eventually adding this new bollard.

The bollard does not stop people cycling to the North Fringe. The only way to prevent that would be to improve A4174 traffic by widening it and banning bicycles from the ring road, while downgrading any adjacent bike paths. We may have some good news there, in a week or two.

For now, this side of Abbey Wood does little to discourage cycling. We shall visit the other side, which was where the crash took place to see if it is any better.

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.

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.

Tiley of Bristol embrace Cycle City Hartcliffe Way

Hartcliffe Way, the southern bit of the A4174 ring road. Now, with the cycle city program, with a bike path along it.

How will the people use it? Well, we don't care about pedestrians or cyclists, because, well, they aren't real people.

What we are pleased to see is Tiley Motors of Hartcliffe Way recognising that anyone walking or cycling is deficient, but there is an obvious solution: get a car.

Tiley's have parked their budget vehicles on the bike/foot path, so attracting the attention of the underpeople, while clearly making the point that for just £795 the poor unfortunates could get themselves a motor and join the grown-ups.

Now, when the cycle city money turned out to only be 4X that spent on a single slip road to the Cribbs Causeway shopping mall, yet these new paths offer shopping opportunities, then even we cannot denounce this cycling city initiative any more. Tiley of Bristol! We salute you!

Pavement blocking: does it help us motorists

October's bike park movement on Cotham Hill was apparently to help the local cafe -the one that is being repainted as "manga manga" have some outdoor seating. Well, we don't know or care about that, but one thing that does interest us is whether the newly positioned bike parks do enough to discourage walking?

The combination of some seemingly accidentally badly placed bike racks with some shopping signs put out for passing cars does make it very hard indeed to walk across this road, and so should discourage students from doing so. FirstBus and we motorists will benefit from this, obviously.

But does it work? We can still see people trying to squeeze past all the furniture.

The bike racks make cyclists feel welcome, even if the one we see is heading towards a junction which we hope the GBBN proposals will make impossible for them to cross.

Furthermore the other side of the road is still open to pedestrians, and if they can't skateboard down the pavement, they just switch to the road instead.

It may make walking less pleasant, but it isn't enough to stop the locals and students from getting in our way.

Muller Road update

One of our cities unicyclists was complaining last month about some barriers up on the approach to the Muller road bicycle buildout

What about the blockage at the lower end? The side of the lane is marked out with concrete blocks, and there's a bloody great "bear right" sign across the entrance. It's hard to tell whether this is just to prevent cars from parking/driving in the cycle lane, or if the whole thing is supposed to be closed. However, the effect is to make it quite dangerous to enter the lane at that end, even at the relatively low speed and high manoeuvrability of a unicycle. I can't imagine trying to use the lane on two wheels.

Well, we are pleased to note that the works are removed, there is a keep right arrow for cars and an arrow on the ground for bicycles

This provides them with a safe approach once they get past the car transporter parked in the bus stop

Something that appears to be a semi-permanent fixture of the road.

We hope the unicyclists are now happy!