we must denounce the people who have a two-child tagalong to tow their children to school
Not only does it start to make the children think that there was an alternative to sitting in a car every morning, their parents are actually permitting the children to sit on the bicycle without putting their helmets on.
Neither of the children are wearing any hi-viz.
We are pretty confident that these kids are in the 47% who pay no tax whatsoever.
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,
These flats on Cotham Road South opposite the junction of Kingsdown Parade and Horfield Hill were built only a few years ago with the car in mind. The ground floor level includes garages with access across the pavement to the road. However, I wonder if the developers failed to realise just how useful garages are for keeping other things in apart from cars ?
Perhaps they did as their clever design hints at the existence of a driveway in front of the garages. This hint has not been overlooked by this tax-payer who is presumably pleased that the bus stop outside the garages gives pedestrians the satisfaction of making good use of what we all regard as an underused part of the road network.
Indeed we should applaud this as an example of "integrated public transport". I was unable to stay for long and determine the effect on pedestrians of an approaching bus.
Yours dearly, "R"
This is a fine example of integrated transport. We also suspect that as this is in the Kingsdown RPZ, such imaginative parking will allow the resident to avoid needing to pay extra anti-motorist tax on their vehicle.
Some people expect us to come out the newspaper's side. Sorry, we're a data driven project which means we drive out to get the data.
1. The RPZ makes it easier for us to get past bicycles as they now keep closer in to the pavement. Result: time saved, and with less fear of dooring, even the underpeople seem happier.
2. The spaces that were normally used by commuters are now free for delivery vehicles.
We don't get held up by vans in our way who don't move until we sound our horn and shout at them.
Our vans can park outside their destination without having to walk or double park and get harassed by people trying to get past.
Kingsdown is one of our popular destinations in the sex-trade-supply-chain, especially as some of the massage parlours use our services to give the punters a lift up the hill again "after you get it up -we get you up", the slogan goes. Having easy parking makes this faster and more discreet.
We suspect the Clifton-faction, the "Keep Parking Free" people will be foaming at the mouth at the expansion plans. Already the Clifton Conservatives are complaining that it has made illegal parking worse in other areas. This is not something our dataset shows, and we have data going back three years now.
We actually look forward to the rollout of an RPZ in Clifton, as that's another popular delivery destination for our products and faster journey and parking times will help our business model. They should get out more -we'll give them a ride home!
What do the Southwell Street changes mean? It'll be hard to tell until next term. Already, though, it seems to create the (false) impression that people on foot are welcome, and the zebra crossings appear to act as traffic calming too.
The restored pavement is in use. This will reduce car/pedestrian conflict, so actually be beneficial
That said, it also reduces bicycle/pedestrian conflict, while increasing bicycle/car conflict. This puts the blame on us, not them. Of course, put a van in front of these bollards "Only 15 minutes, guv", with another van on the pavement, and the old regime will be restored.
You can also see that the bollards are set up for a hard right turn into the pay and display car park. This makes it important to keep people off that pavement. It also makes us suspicious that the bollard placement was explicitly designed to remove the short-stay parking option on that side of the bollards. You can't park there without blocking the car park. Yes, you may be able to park the other side, but it's a ten minute journey round the block to get there.
Overall then, the bollards, the pavement and that deviously moved row of bollard don't appear to help us much. It's interesting to compare this with the original proposal, which was very much van-friendlier. Drive-in/back out parking spaces instead of pavement, room to park for delivery on both sides of the bollards. Assuming they dont' actually enforce parking in front of the bollards in the spaces currently in use, the physical parking capacity has been reduced by four. That's going to create tension, and making the bollards "opaque" to people on foot or pedals will create more. Now they will be upset if we park there, whereas before we could do it and not feel bad.
The key tactic here will be to set everyone's expectations up now. During the university holiday. We can take over the bollard area for parking, nobody will get used to cycling through it, and when term time begins, it will stay that way.
The gate has been removed and replaced by bollards.
Yes, you can still park a van against them, but as they are the people doing the roadworks, that may change.
More shockingly, the "ex-pavement" that was to still have NHS vans echelon-parked over it, has been reinstated as public pavement! This goes against the whole "shared space" theory, or, as we van drivers call it, the "our space" road design. It's all ours, see.
The car exit is as before, except the signs blocking off that pavement have been replaced with less bent ones, and anyone walking down that road gets to get in the way of cars pulling out -as you can just make out here through the windscreen of the beetle.
We think that zebra crossing is new. It's hard to see why they bothered.
Interesting they chose the phrase "hit by a car"; in London they tend to describe the bicycle as hitting the car, before going on to discuss whether they had a helmet on.
The location was describe as the junction of St Michael's Hill and Horfield Road. We've noted how this isn't that much fun in a car. This collision happened at 22:22 on a Friday, so congestion would be minimal -and there is more chance of cars driving around fast.
Judging by the signs, the collision wasn't with Park Row, it was further up the hill. There's no further details yet on what happened.
Some possibilities:
Car and bicycle heading down the St Michaels Hill, collision.
Car and bicycle heading down Horfield Road, collision.
Bicycle heading up St Michaels Hill, collides with car also going up St Michaels Hill
Those are the normal two vehicles in the same-direction incidents. This junction adds some more, all of which tend to lead to side-on collisions:
Bicycle heading down St Michaels Hill, collides with car going down Horfield Road, or up St Michaels Hil.
Bicycle heading down Horfield Road collides with car pulling out St Michaels Hill and heading downhill
Bicycle heading up St Michaels Hill towards Horfield Road, gets hit by a car going straight up St Michaels Hill
Nobody rational turns from St Michaels Hill into Horfield Road; its too tight. There are other options further up the hill.
The highest risk actions on a bicycle are probably
Heading down from St Michaels Hill, where you are exposed to vehicles heading in either direction. Gravity works in the bicycle's favour here, it pulls the bicycle forward and minimises the time side-on to traffic.
Heading up towards Horfield Road, where the bicycle rider is curving right and pushing slowly up something steep -any vehicle heading up St Michaels Hill in a hurry may turn over them. It's like a left hook only without the car making the left turn, it just goes straight on (hence faster), even though the road lanes turn rightwards.
On a bicycle, before the building works started, heading up through the BRI car park (the former Terrell Street) was apparently a lower hassle option. Follow the signs to A&E from Park Row, then head out to Horfield Road, or turn right to Marlborough Hill and a final bit of climbing.
We have no more details than the BBC article -and wish the cyclist a speedy and full recovery.
The tax-dodgers are complaining about Shared Streets this week -that they really mean "streets mostly for cars and vans". Exactly. Given a choice between a pedestrian area and a shared street, we'd go for the shared street. Once you get a hang of the chicanes they can be quite fun.
Southwell Street, our unofficial logo, is being "improved". We know that, as the vans to do it are parked there this week. Expect photos soon. But before that, the plans.
As people will recall, the concerns by the non-drivers about this area were
uphill pavement turned into NHS parking, possibly illegally.
no way for bicycles to get through except on the pavement
the pavement was blocked to give priority to staff cars
both dead ends were used as short stay parking for vans
Overall then a van-and-staff friendly area, with pedestrians as an afterthought, and one of those deliberately created bike/walker conflict zones to divide the opposition, all on the premier walking route from Gloucester Road to Bristol University, and hence full of students. By creating such conflict we could discourage people from trying to do this.
We were initially worried, then, when this draft plan hit our inbox, "a shared space".
Then we saw some emails from Ben Hamilton-Baillie, who we thought would approve of this fusion of walking and driving. Yet he seemed unimpressed
Most residents in Kingsdown feel, as I do, pretty insulted to be presented with a sketch of such pathetically poor quality for Southwell Street.
If the UHB really believes that Southwell Street and other streets in and around Kingsdown can be treated with such contempt, we should not give them any support. I have seen work experience students aged 16 produce more intelligent work than AECOM’s output for UHB. I only hope the hospital trust is not having to pay them fees as well....
Finally, we saw this video from a tax-dodging pavement cyclist who encounters the designers, and provides some feedback.
At 00:10 the Ginster delivery van does a U-turn without indicating, at which the troublemaker engages in discussion with the driver about, that and the fact that it isn't making any beeping noises. Well, the lorry pays more road tax, and isn't of a size where it needs the beeps. That shuts them. Remember that lorry though.
At 1:02 they execute the highly illegal "pavement bypass" option, so endangering pedestrians.
At 1:16 they meet the a hi-viz'd person planning the traffic calming area -and say to them the plan sucks, because painting a bit of pavement, whether it's in coloured paint or some cobbles down the middle of the road is utterly meaningless. They mutter on a bit, and we think their key point is that taking one pavement off for car parking and closing the other off for safe car park access is somehow wrong.
At 1:38 the cyclist, who is standing in the middle of the "person on the road" lane is actually forced to wheel their bike backwards to let a car out of the staff carpark. This shows to us how the "shared space" design will have no effect on our daily lives, so may as well be permitted. There is a risk of some benefit to people trying to cycle here -as they won't be quite so discouraged by having to hop on and off the pavement, but if we block the bollards with vans often enough, they'll be discouraged differently.
At 1:48 the troublemaker demands some of the pavement back. We'd hoped to have some good news there, but based on the building work it looks like these people have got their way. Somewhat. Wait until tomorrow for the specifics there.
At 2:02 they express concern that the dropoff area in front of the hospital is chaotic, and it will remain so. Well, that's why it's called a dropoff area, isn't it? If people were expected to do dropoffs and pickups on St Michael's hill, there'd be an area there instead.
at 2:20 their rant finishes and they finally head off, presumably to the relief of the site team. They then proceed down a road that clearly has room for parking all down one side, yet lacks it. And there are an oddly large number of pedestrians, given the effort the NHS has gone to here to discourage walking.
At 2:43 you can see some people trying to cross Horfield Road. Notice the wide five-junction crossing here. It's a dangerous exposed crossing and people shouldn't attempt it, not when there is a zebra crossing further up the road, as the video shows at 3:07. If people aren't prepared to cross the road where a crossing has been provided, well, it's like people on bicycles not using the bike lanes.
At the zebra crossing they do a U-turn, and at 3:08 show what is paveparked over yellow lines round the corner: Ginster delivery van HN58LVK. Purely because Southwell Street doesn't support through traffic, that van had to do a 180 degree turn in a narrow drop-off street, turn right up St Michael's Hill, right again on to Myrtle Road, then onto Alfred place. One U-turn and two right turns -not just a philosophy for the coalition government, it's costing the company money. The DfT puts a financial cost on critical business motoring, and its clear that closing this road has tangible costs to that key part of the economy: the white van.
Therefore, although the proposals don't take much away from us, they don't deliver what we need, either -the removal of the gate and the re-instatement of Southwell Street as a van-friendly rat-run!
The real issues in the city are surfacing now that Stokes Croft is calming down. Parking in Kingsdown -which is the place you want to be if you want to throw bricks down at the police, or have a quiet lunchtime beverage or two in the Hillgrove.
The good news is that someone is selling day passes on gumtree. 40 days for £50. Not bad, if these are the first fifty of a household -the ones you get free. If not, well, you can get 50 for £50, so you make £10 on each 40 you sell. We congratulate the vendor, Tom, for their entrepreneurial spirit.
update: the ad got deleted, so we've reproduced it except the phone number
40 x Bristol Kingsdown Visitor Parking Permits £50 kingsdown, Bristol
Reply to this ad or tom on (deleted)
Park in the kingsdown areaof bristol for roughly a pound a day.
Bargain. using a machine to payanddisplay would cost you a fortune
What we can't do is praise their information security tactics. Tom lists his phone number. Which, if you search for on google, brings up other references to someone called Tom Arkell, and their facebook page. We hope that he isn't the same Tom Arkell that's listed on the university law department rugby team, as one expectation of people studying law is reading and understanding things like the RPZ regulations which say that one-day passes "However, it cannot be transferred between households and must not be sold on."
Really, that's just incompetent. Tom: invest a couple of quid and get a disposable SIM card just for such transactions -or use a disposable email address. We would -if we had any permits to sell. As it is, we aren't interested, as with a disabled sticker on our van we don't need them.
Amusing view behind a bicycle on Cotham Road South.
As you can see the car, RJ53SPV, coming from Clevedon Terrace pulls out right in front of the bicycle. It's a clear day, no visibility problems, so why do that? Because the bicycle isn't important. It's not just to save five seconds, it's because its only a bicycle you are pulling out in front of, not, say, a bus. So it doesn't matter. The council can put as many "look out for bicycles" signs as it wants, they still won't matter. Same for pedestrians. If you matter, get in car.
Just a few photos here to celebrate Southwell St, by the St Michael's Hill hospital. What was once a road has been successfully turned by the BRI into a useful hospital facility, with lots of staff parking.
The presence of paving stones under the cars above has created some tension with the residents association, especially as no evidence has been found proving the pavement was "given" to the hospital. We say there's nowhere else to park.
We also understand why blocking the pavement and forcing pedestrians onto the road was the right thing to do. It is for their own safety.
Furthermore, painting a little sign of someone walking along what was once a pavement makes them feel grateful -and ensures that if they do get hit by a car and were walking anywhere else, well, they didn't follow the signs.
Like we said, we have heard rumours of change here. We now have the documents and some of the emails -and very interesting they are too.
But before publishing them, consider this: this road will be the first sight of the city for all children born in this hospital. To try and make it friendly to pedestrians and cyclists would be an attempt to redefine our city, not just for the adults, but for these newborn. Therefore we want to be the first to say that we are glad that the hospital is attempting to do the least it can get away with, namely painting the bits where pedestrians are meant to walk in more solid colours. We could call them "walking superhighways".
One amusing consequence of the RPZ is that as the fine for parking without a resident permit in the "permitted parking" area is the as for parking on double yellow lines, if you aren't resident, you may as well park where it is most convenient to you.
Nice, though S826TAW could have pulled forward a bit more. We would have.
Freemantle Square, the council is happily making us pay even more for the right to park near the inner city, and ticketing those who resist!
Fortunately, just down the hill, the zone ends, and on Springfield road, you can double park provided you stay far enough away from the yellow lines as to not infringe them.
Cyclists coming up Ninetree hill should be grateful for this considerate parking by V281MGO
Marlborough Hill is 25% gradient zero visibility at the bottom. When the council was asking for places to put in contraflows for bicycles, this was one where even the tax dodgers consensus was "no, too dangerous" -though as they have ninetree hill as their secret cut-through, they have less need of it than us motorists. Usually.
This rider is brave, and descends at a speed where there would be no opportunity to steer out out the way or stop were something big to come out of a side road.
You can see it in the video -and hear it to; the sound of hign-end knobbly tyres on wet tarmac. tyres which offer less surface area on tarmac that slick tyres, and hence can sustain less braking force in the wet. Mud, they work, but on road, not so useful.
We've covered the rules for aggressive downhill work before: runout, align, commit! This MTBer is aligned, and 100% committed, but the runout looks dubious. All it takes is a vehicle to pull out from the upper of the two road, the one he turned into, and it's game over.
What's also interesting here is the sheer number of people walking up and down this hill. Walking and cycling activists could make the case for downgrading this from a road to a pedestrian/cycle path. We're against that, obviously, because it would eliminate a secret rat-run from Kingsdown to Dighton Street -one used by cars, cyclists and pedestrians alike
Good to see that there are still some parking places hiding away in Kingsdown, like on Fremantle Square.
Although there are double yellow lines on each of the corners with Thomas Street, if you park your car right in the middle of the bollarded route, as BF02FVK has done, you aren't on any. It appears to be legal to park here. Why the bollards? Its a cycling city route, see.
Incidentally, for anyone who thinks that Kingsdown is now upmarket, what with the residents parking, we disagree. The Cotham Porter Stores pub is its very own bit of darkest Somerset, while Thomas Street boasts its very own Banksy. Here it is, framed.
Opposite, on a side of road that will soon apparently get yellow lines, that other sign of city life: someone has broken the window to steal something.
Question is, was it the classic -satnav- or was it one of the new resident permits?
The BBC has finally covered this alarming trend of cyclists to video their commutes then complain about them. Unlike most BBC new articles, where Adam Rayner gets paid to laugh at the cyclists, this article seems come out in favour of the cyclists, rather than say they deserved to get beaten up for being in the way and not paying road tax.
Fortunately, the commenters noticed this, and corrected the bias. Hopefully they will be writing in to the BBC to complain about a lack of balance too. We'll quote a select few
177. anjuna
We have cycle lanes all over Rutland, which are regularly ignored by cyclists. Instead the choose to ride 2 abreast on the road, causing hold ups and hazards. I think cameras in cars to capture bad cyclists would be a good thing. How about "identifiers" on cycles, so the police can prosecute bad cyclists?
Problem: it's not currently illegal for bicycles to cycle in our roads and hold up traffic behind. We understand why it makes you want to kill them, but then you not only lose the moral high ground, you have to stop the email you are composing on your phone.
208. Flaunder
When are cyclists going to have to pay to use the road? why shouldn't they have a registration plate on the back, or a speed metre when they are going at super speeds down a pedestrian footpath! Some cyclists don't even wear a high vis vest or have lights! Why shouldn't they be fined on the spot! Most cyclists have no regard for cars on the road! maybe we should film them!
Problem: we just checked the highway code and nowhere does it say "cyclists MUST wear hi-viz clothing". This makes it hard for police or PCSOs to fine them on the spot for non compliance. Now, you could push for it to be a law, but really that doesn't address the true problem, which is they shouldn't be there in the first place.
226. Barton71
Obviously the van driver in this story was out of order and his reaction was way over the top, but as a van driver myself, I understand the frustration cyclists can cause. There is nothing worse than having to slow down to 10mph every few hundred yards, because a group of cyclists have all bunched up or because there is no room to pass a single cyclist who is struggling to get up a hill.
This identifies one of the real issues. It's not just that these unpaid criminals are on our roads -they are in our way on the roads. They slow us down, then whine when we sound our horn, or criticise them in the local or national press.
One thing we do have to fault some of these community reporters for is making unsubstantiated claims. We like defensible data, yet people were saying "all cyclists run red lights", which isn't true. You only see the ones running the red lights, so end up self selecting. It's disappointing to see such use of inadequate datasets, and with defensible photographic data being key aim for our site, it's time to look at the issue in more detail.
First, Whiteladies Gate/Whiteladies Road pedestrian crossings. Our unsuspecting cyclist reporter dismounts with their small child and walks over a zebra crossing and then the whiteladies pedestrian crossings.
Note how the white van waiting to turn gives way to the pedestrians. At the pelican crossing, the family waits for their turn to get across. The lights change frequently here, giving them 15s to sprint across.
Except what happens today? Someone on a bicycle just rides up through the crossing. Yes, he does have hi-viz and a helmet on, so commenter Flander will be happy -no need to fine him- but he does cycle straight through the red light that is being used by pedestrians including parents with children.
There we have it then, 100% of cars, following the law, 100% of cyclists: criminals.
Now, the cycling campaigners will say "But what about cars that...", but that is only a subset of cars. We know this, again from our defensible datasets -such as on Marlborough Hill last week:
See? Four cars drive up the hill, before one car, BP52XAR, drives down past the no-entry signs and the big paintwork saying no-entry.
Five cars, only one completely ignoring the signs. That means the number of cars choosing to break the law this weekday morning is 20%, compared to 100% of cycles in our previous survey.
There you have it then. All cyclists are criminals who should be fined on the spot, while only some drivers are a bit naughty. And when drivers do something to get round this anti-car city, they get videoed and their actions appear on web sites like Fight bad driving -with their registration numbers. Whereas when the cyclists appear, all that can happen is people who know them will say "hey, you made Bristol Traffic!" and they can snicker amongst themselves.
Because of this clear evidence, we, the drivers, can retain the moral high ground.
We've been driving round the new RPZ; watching. It's not until the students are back with their cars and their lessons that we'll see how it works, so right now it's in a transitional phase.
What is interesting is how much empty space there is. Here on Dove Street, the entire side of the road that you can park on legally is empty, though the Mercedes driver still wants to avoid the challenge of crossing the road.
Perhaps they didn't have a permit, and as the penalty for paveparking by a yellow line is the same as a non-resident in the resident area, you may as well park closest to your destination.
And along the road, a view of what the houses must have looked like in Georgian times, before modern inventions came along.
Most interesting was on Somerset Street, which is yet to be repainted. Look closely at the ground here, on Spring Hill
That faded paint implies there has always been a keep clear zone here. We never knew that -all we could see that it was an ideal place for wide vehicles to park. The markings on the ground imply the anti-motorist council will not just leave the obsolete signage to fade, they will be adding double yellow lines instead.
We close by sending our team cyclist round the area (sorry, but we did wait until a Sunday), to get a video. This shows us a number of things.
There are some interesting pubs in the area.
A loading zone is no substitute for zebra crossing zig zags if it involves more walking.
Someone has added parking spaces to Nine Tree Hill.
That final point is interesting. Until now, Nine Tree was lost space, you could park there, but then you could get a ticket. Now locals can park there. How do they get out of this dead end? Presumably by reversing down the road which today is only used by cyclists and pedestrians walking up the hill. Even so, four extra spaces there barely compensate for all the lost corners. Our footage of this area will have to be preserved for posterity, "Kingsdown before the changes came"
Jan 3, 2011. RPZ-day minus one. Despite a majority of people outside the new KN RPZ zone being against it, kingsdown and the university quarter are going residents only plus guests tomorrow. We can see the changes, and compare it with previous coverage.
Before: a convenient place for art students to park to stroll into their early afternoon lectures.
Now: double yellow lines, even on the corners, and the bits without yellow are (mostly) for residents only.
Some bits are pay to park, and that's interesting as it adds much more short-stay parking behind the university than the proposed cycle parking area was going to take away. For that subset of students who have money to spend and only want to stay a maximum of two hours, this actually is beneficial. For those who have enough money for a car and fuel but not parking fees, the subset of students who were willing to get to this road before 8am weekdays, a secret parking area for them and commuters has been lost.
People ask what we in Bristol Traffic think about it, are we with the keepparkingfree people?
To be honest, no. Double yellow lines provide extra short stay parking for our vans, and there will be more legal spaces for those with disabled stickers, which, oddly enough, all our vans have. For us, removing the space occupied by commuters increases the semi-legal options for us, while reducing the number of people who will park across corners -people who never think about needs of us transit van owners when they park so insensitively. Then they get upset when we scrape them during the turns. This new zone will provide more parking options for us delivering special products to customers in the area, or nipping in to the newsagents for some more beer and cigarettes (there's a special loading zone there). We feel vaguely sorry for the commuters who will have to park a bit further away to walk in, and if there is an increase in pedestrians in our way, then we will have reason to complain.
We like coverage of pubs, today, the White Bea, which:
is in the student quarter
has free wifi
has a big white bear statue in front of it and one painted further up the wall.
has an RAC van up on the pavement in front of it next to the "no parking" signs
What's interesting about the RAC van VN07KYA is it is parked over new double yellow lines, as this area becomes residents parking in three weeks time. This will make driving to the White Bear trickier, except that as you can park free for 15 minutes in the zone, if the bar staff are nippy you've got time to park, grab a couple of pints, then carry on.
The same time we were getting a video of one driver, X108YDY, prepared to fight the anti-car city and use the secret rat-runs of Kingsdown, we were also getting some shocking footage of parents walking their kids to school.
Some were clearly going on to cycle to work, so instead of driving their children to school in comfort and safety, they were being forced to walk alongside a bicycle -while the parents push them without even a helmet on!
Others were actually encouraging their children to cycle to school.
Such actions not only endanger the children, they threaten the bodywork of those of us who drive the wrong way down one-way streets as an alternative to traffic lights. Can't these parents see that we are in a hurry!
