Kate Alison Wrigley - Killed Sept 21, Ashley Road

When these photos were taken in October, flags and flowers marked where another Bristolian was killed walking across a road  - Ashley Hill -on the border between St Werburgh's and Montpelier. She was killed by someone driving a silver BMW -no further details are public at this point.


There is not even a traffic island on this stretch of road. There's one further up, but not a zebra crossing, even though a lot of schoolkids use it.

Here, although it says "20 mph", is a busy and often fast road. Cars heading up the hill are acellerating up something which, by virtue of the walls on either side "feels fast". Certain if you are on a bike, it feels safer to go on the old ashley road, parallel to this.

Kate lived on Milverton Gardens -you can see how pedestrian friendly that is.
If you live here, there is nowhere you can get to without crossing this road or walking all the way down the hill. 


On our last visit, the same cars were parked in the same places. They must be "their" bits of pavement.

Because this is just within the 20mph zone, the anti-20mph people will cite this as an example of how 20 mph zones don't work. Sadly, in this instance -it wasn't enough.

The Mayoral Elections

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

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

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

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

20 mph! for the whole city! Disaster!

Terrible news reaches us: the council has voted in 20mph speed limits on all residential roads in the inner city.

This is heartbreaking. It doesn't actually mean much as the only time you can put your foot down is in the 11pm+ "minicab hours", where 40mph is the defacto speed limit -but it's the thought that counts.

This proposal is clearly pandering to the people who live in the city, at the expense of the commuters from the edges of the town, from North Somerset and South Gloucestershire. Those people, the wealth bringers, need to drive in to the city in their status-vehicles, and now have to face a council even more war-on-motorist than before.

Why do the councillors choose such a short-sighted policy? It's because of the forthcoming mayoral elections. The wealth bringers outside the city don't have any vote in the election, so their needs can be ignored. Such a plan can only bring financial disaster to the region.

One councillor, Peter Abraham, has been bold enough to stand up against this, "it will cause frustration to motorists" he says, before slipping the code-phrase "driving at the right speed for the right conditions". This is the secret handshake of ABD, just as the phrase "indigenous people" is to the BNP.

Sadly for Peter Abrams, the ABD are as completely out of touch with a modern city as the BNP are. Look at our previously documented video of the 20 mph zone of Montpelier:

The frustation that YY03YGM, experiences is not the 20 mph speed limit, which they manage to get past while overtaking the cyclist. No, what is frustrating is

1. The cyclist with the camera doing 18-19 mph in the 20 mph zone.
2. The oncoming bicycle at the junction which forces the car to come to a complete halt.
3. The person walking their dog in the road at 0:56
4. The oncoming bicycle at (1:03)
5. The oncoming bicycle at (1:06)
6. The two children playing in the road on a pogo stick at 1:15
7. The bicycle at 1:25
8. The people walking the road carrying a box at 1:28
9. The car parked in the road with its hazard lights on at 1:30.

These are the problems. Not the speed limit, but the way it encourages people to walk, cycle, -even play in the streets. This is the real problem. It downgrades the residential streets from "rat runs where the right conditions are 30mph even through corners" to "quiet roads where people are walking, cycling and playing there as if it was 1908 and cars hadn't arrived; a country where people driving are viewed as unwelcome invaders instead of an essential part of the life of the city".

This is exactly what threatens us. When the council says "encourage walking and cycling", it means "encourage anti-motorist activities in the city".

As Peter Abraham says, "Are we going to harass the motorists every mile they drive?" 

If you look at Montpelier -that's exactly what they are doing. And it's exactly what the council is planning on rolling out across the entire city.   

Ticketing: its for your own good

Here in St Andrews Road, Montpelier, we are shocked to see two cars getting tickets for being slightly on the pavement

slightly shocked, but not completely surprised. As there is almost enough space for someone to walk by on the inside

That will hinder passing traffic

And as can be seen here on upper Cheltenham Place, if you don't get fully on the pavement, you get to pay the wingmirror tax.

Note that vehicles in these photos include a fiat, a VW and at least one Vaxhall Astra -built in the UK to a German design.

Now that Cameron has finally stood up to the European oppressors with their plans for friendship and co-operation across countries, we hope that the owners of these vehicles will recognise the error of their ways and buy morris minors. Say goodbye to vehicles that start every morning! Say goodbye to driving over 60 mph on the motorway! these are un-British!

Une discourse dans le village du Montpelier

Vous savez que vous etre dans un petit village quand vous encontrez les residents engagement dans une discourse dans la rue. Les grands villes sont anonyme - ce n'est pas vrai pour villages comme Montpelier.


Aujourd'hui nous pouvons voir des residents en conversation sur le sujet de droits de passage. Est-ce-que la priorite a les autos de Bath Buildings, ou pour les voitures qui faisant la traverse de St Andrews a la Rue de Cheltenham?

Nous ne savant pas que les residents ont decidee. Notre journaliste a dit as nous "J'ai pas attende a voir qui a gagne parce-que je pourrait pas culee" [1,2]

[1] an incorrect translation of "I could not be arsed"
[2] note how the descending tax dodger flips the 20mph light on the way down, yet the BMW in front appears not to.

Importance

It's important to remember that our white vans are the lifeblood of the city. This is why we think the government should treat us like farmers, airlines and buses and give us tax free or tax discounted fuel.

You can tell we are important in a number of ways

1. We are in a rush
2. We are on the phone a lot

Here you can see FP54DYU doing both at the same time while finally escaping from the tangle of streets in Montpelier, here on Brook Road, where you can make the most of the 20 mph limit in a road with no wingmirrors to bump against.

It's surprisingly hard to text one handed, so we hope the audience is impressed.

DVLA Harassment in Monty

A van partially pavement parked, and with a police ticket. Why the ticket?

OK, the road tax expired at the end of June. And what's that in the background?

It's another car, this time fully DVLA clamped up while paveparked on double yellow lines.

But what does it's tax disk say? July 2012

Either they've just (belatedly) stuck in the disk and are hoping to be unlocked, or the DVLA computers are playing up.

Speaking of DVLA computers, someone has put in an e-Petition to make it illegal to park outside someone else's house at night. Having "space" outside your house in the inner city is some unrealistic vision: you park where you can. These people may live in some suburb where Avocados and Coffee Percolators are items of wonder, but the rest of don't run to the window and go "ooh" when a strange vehicle drives down our road, or start fuming when they are still parked outside at 10pm, forcing us to park five metres further away than normal.

Then there's enforcement. Will the police, randomly pick on cars, go up to the house it is in front of and verify that it is theirs? What if they dont' answer because they are asleep?No, enforcement would have to involve the DVLA scanner vans driving round all night.

But we're going to ignore that and worry about the implementation details. You can't use the DVLA address data as it doesn't handle company cars, second homes or students living away from home. That means a new table in the database for every car to have multiple addresses; a mapping of registration -> (postcode, house)+. Except that's a table that needs to be updated a lot more than once a year. What if you go on holiday? You'll need to update it. What if you go to a friends for a weekend? You'll need to update it. Which means a government web site to let you update the legal car parking spaces even from a phone. Which you can defeat with a satnav smart phone that gives you the location of where you are parked and automatically registers you.

No, unworkable.

Bristol Pedestrians Association: the Evening Post Party?

We are fully aligned with the Evening Post: progress is good for the city, progress means roads, roads mean progress, and people on bicycles threaten this. Whether its on the pavement or the road, there should be laws against them.

If you look at the commentators on any article, you can see that most of the newspaper's web site's readers share these opinions; you can see from the complaints. But complaining isn't enough: Actions speak louder than Words. Which is why, while the rest of press was distracted, the Evening Post launched what appears to be its own political movement, the Bristol Pedestrians Association. The focus on this will be to act as a counterweight to the organised cycling lobby, and fight back against people cycling on pavements, including those bits on the city centre and coronation road where they put a bit of white paint on to add a bicycle path and expect everyone to be grateful.

We have mixed feelings about this party. On on the one hand, they seem to mirror many of our own writings, but rather than just complain, intend to act.

On the other, we worry about them. Just as both Labour and the Conservative parties turned on their leader, Rupert Murdoch, and their parent corporation, News International, could the Bristol Pedestrians Association ever turn on the Evening Post?

It may happen, if they ever look round the city and realise there may be other causes of problems on the pavements of the city, problems that force pedestrians into the road, where again, they their children in push chairs and their pets are at risk from cyclists.

Or they look at the statistics, and realise that while pedestrians and cyclists have died since this project was founded, all such deaths were a result of collisions involving motor vehicles, that this may be statistically significant, and therefore that other issues may need to be addressed first.

This is why the Evening Post needs to keep the group under control, to stop them going off-message. It's one thing creating conflict to derive web site viewers and hence advertising revenue, it's another to create threats to the status-quo.

Montpelier: is our work done?

Youtube referred us to this (nonembeddable) video of an eight year old doing the school run by bicycle from York Road to Colston Primary School.

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.

Welcome to Clifton Week at Bristol Traffic!

Discussions with the BSM and other Bristol Driving Schools

We always have a special place in our coverage for driving schools, as they have to teach beginners the hard art of driving and parking in a city which, excluding Clifton, is anti-car.

Here, up in Filton. Evolution WM10YHO show that the way to park is up on the pavement.

In front of it, a shared space. This eliminates the pavement entirely, and makes for some fun high-speed chicanes.

Speaking of driving schools, our ongoing discussion with one has had a new comment. The instructor does provide some good insight into what it's like driving a bus in the city, so those commenters slagging off FirstBus drivers should really save their anger for FirstBus management.

He also raises the issue of which laws should be ignored first:

I completely agree with people should not park on double yellow lines or zig zags or to close to junction corners all of which cause a danger to other road users but I do not count parking 2 wheels on the pavement in a very narror street that was never meant for parked cars in the first place as the same level of offence.

We don't bother with making decisions about which action is more defensible than others. We ignore them all, hence save time thinking about which action is more right than others.

We also note that we haven't seen that particular driving school in our database. The driving school that most pops is the British School of Motoring. The BSM may have more market share, but they are to be commended for something else: they are the only driving school that we have documented teaching people how to park in Montpelier. The other schools, they pick you up, then take you somewhere safe to learn to drive. The BSM actually hold their lessons in Montpelier.

In-town, in Richmond Road, Montpelier, we have a heartwarming sight. No, not the cyclist going up the hill with the Sainsbury's bag on the handlebars -it's the BSM instruction car WV60WJF.

We don't think driving and parking in Monty has its own test yet, so we're assuming it's a lesson. As Richmond Road is one of the hardest to drive and park on, we congratulate the BSM for showing their pupils the way forward -or at least the way up on the pavement without damaging your wheels, hitting the wall or paying the wingmirror tax on the way up the road.

So far, nobody from the BSM has got in touch with us. However, we are pleased to have video coverage of a discussion between some under-employed tax-dodger and the BSM car WR60CUY, which can be seen driving into the ASL on the red light: the bicycle doesn't get their green light until Shaldon Road is on red, so the car has had five seconds of red before it comes to a halt.

When queried about what the driver thinks the penalty for driving into an ASL is, the driving instructor comes back with the correct answer: anyone who cares about such things doesn't have a life. We actually think this summarises the entire country's cycling activist groups: they only do it because they don't have real lives.

Congratulations to the BSM for putting this tax dodger in their place!

Cornerish Parking

Now that Aberdeen Cars appears to have the edge in PaveParking, we are going to share another parking secret from Bristol. It's "Cornerish Parking"

We define Cornerish Parking as "to park one's vehicle within sight or walking distance of a corner, but not actually on the corner itself"

Here we see it in Kingsdown, just of St Michael's Hill. It is far enough away from the double yellow lines to be exempt

In Clifton, someone is showing, well, less imagination. That issue with Clifton and it's lack of imagination is something we'll have to get back to,

For now, just note that the further east you head, the more imaginative you have to get.

Even so, not even Kingsdown stands a chance against Montpelier.

Here at the junction of Cobourg Road and Old Ashley Hill, we can see a '205 that's been cornerishly-parked so long the front left tyre has gone flat.

Clifton isn't even a contender here, while Kingsdown, it tries, but doesn't really stand a chance. 

Stokes Croft: Picton Street is normal

There's some paint on the road at the Stokes Croft/Ashley Road junction

The Bristolian Cafe is offering special "Riot Fry-Ups"

Claims were made in the press that people had been digging up cobbles and throwing them, but the only cobbled street we know of nearby -Picton Lane (good secret parking, BTW), is unchanged, except there is now a security person sitting in the sun at the back of the mini-Tescos (not photographed).

The local stores have a police car blocking the usual staff range-rover parking

but as there is still some spare yellow line space, this is not an issue.

Again: normality.

Where are the 20 mph zones they promised?

Someone posted us this video complaining that it shows a car driver unable to think ahead, because the driver overtook a bicycle aggressively on the way into Montpelier, whereas everyone knows that you only put your foot down on the way out. The tax-dodger not only ended up being held up by the Audi YY03YGM, they had to drop down Brook Hill, sprintg along Upper Cheltenham Place and then squeeze past the car on Picton Street blocking the road with the hazard lights on, while the Audi was still stuck on York Road negotiating rights of way with whatever was coming from the other direction.

We feel that the whole incident documents a more fundamental problem. The 20 mph zone isn't delivering what was promised.

The opening sequence shows how a bicycle doing 18 mph held up the car, but as soon as they go a little above 20 mph to get past them, there's another oncoming bicycle before the blind zig-zags. Even the bicycle video documents the other problems: the pedestrian and their dog on Brook Hill, the two bicycles on Upper Cheltenham Place, the two kids playing with a Pogo Stick in the road -our road- at 1:14, and then another bicycle. At least the car with the hazard lights on has paid for the right to be there.

Where are the 20 mph zones? The signs show them, but the car would have been lucky to have an average speed of 10 mph across the entire journey. We were promised 20 mph limits, yet it only takes one or two people walking, cycling or even pogo-sticking around and you brought screeching to a halt. We have been betrayed.

Monty regains its van friendly reputation

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

Not so!

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

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

Round the corner, Picton Square.

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

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

Bad timing

The van BK58CNV chose a bad day to park on the double yellow lines on the ASL on Bath Buildings, hence the ticket on the windscreen.

The road was closed while a 30T load got delivered by HGV, and PCSOs were manning the junctions to make sure nobody tried to turn into the road. With the police by the van for a number of hours, eventually one of them was bound to notice it and ticket it.

Unlucky!

YA55DVY - caught letting Medina Dairies Down

YA55VDY is a cult van to us. Never seen to park legally, instead encountered driving up onto pavements, sounding its horn at pedestrians to get out of the way. A delivery van's delivery van.

Yet what should we see on our travels round the city than this very van outside the Star And Garter pub, Montpelier

That's right. The famous van, parked kerbside, on a road with no yellow markings. No wheels on the pavement.

This is a shocking site, and makes us question the entire delivery model of Medina dairies "avoid refrigeration by driving fast and parking close to the shops".

Fortunately, we have evidence that the van driver's colleague who has the Dovercourt Road delivery knows what to do with the van LK08LDN

When given a choice between parking legally in a gap four times the length of your vehicle or double parking, go for the easiest option.

Dark Times in Montpelier

Look at this shocking footage of a cyclist making their way into Montpelier

There it is, just near the end of the sequence. A big 20 mph sign on the road. And it's not just here, on Picton Street. The zone begins here, but spreads all the way to Easton. Even Ashley Vale is 20 mph in the bottom half. The high speed rat-runs like St Andrews Road will never be the same again, now that some sanctimonious cyclist or smug prius driver can pootle along in front and not feel guilty about holding our van up.

Monty Van issues

This video has gone up early so that the owner of a red nissan micra further along Cobourg Road has more details of the van YK57BHZ- that scraped their car on the way out of the road. The camera was off at that point, but that bit of pavement where your car was is narrower than this stretch, and as you can see here, it's a bit close, and one has to question why the lorry chose to continue, instead of going up to Fairlawn Road. Indeed, one has to question what it is doing in the area in the first place.

At the end (above the camera), the top of the approaching van is touching the van heading away; people have to help push the smaller van's body away to reduce the scraping it would otherwise get.

Clearly this is an anti-van part of the city, one where it isn't wide enough for two to pass each other, even when both are up on the pavement. So why don't the drivers' satnav units start sounding off the moment anyone picks up a route that goes anywhere near it, like those airplane collision avoidance systems that shout out "Pull up! pull up!" should do the same for any large vehicle approaching monty. With narrow streets and -soon- 20 mph limits, we've lost this part of the city.

The cult of YA55VDY and the impact of the Whiteladies Showcase Bus Route

Mid life crises. What do do? Sports cars? Mamils? Fixies. No: stalking. It's under-respected, and what the Internet, from Google to Facebook was made for.

We in the B.T. Project have taken up stalking one vehicle, and are pursuing it round the city. YA55VDY: the van that we are proud to have never ever seen parked even vaguely legally.

It's more than just a protest against anti-car, anti-van features, this takes dedication. Here, for example, you could park parallel to the double yellow lines, unload safely and pull out without having to back up blind into Picton Street first. But no, the driver has chosen to park 1m away from the kerb, echelon style, to make a statement. Deliveries matter.

We also have some footage from one of our secretly-instrumented cyclists going down Cotham Hill -you can see the distinctive shape of the van enables our tax-dodger to recognise the vehicle from a distance. This van is now famous!

Now, what's inside the van? We couldn't be bothered to drive over and look, but one of the cycle activists we were haranging here in Monty did -Captain Bikebeard says "yoghurt". Now we know.

In fact, this van is now so famous it deserves its own Facebook fan page. One van, one driver, prepared to stand up against an oppressive state by refusing to park where they make him, instead always -even if it means going out of his way- parking "illegally", as if the state gets to decide where is and isn't legal to park your van.

A few days later, we see it now on the double yellows on Whiteladies Road. 

The showcase bus route proposes changes here, so where the van is parked to unload will become a dedicated left turn into Cotham Hill, with its own light sequence. The Cotham Hill zebra crossing will go away, be replaced by some lights which will allow us to drive through while pedestrians wait to cross (as if we didn't do that already), while the addition of a new lane and pedestrian refuge will make walking across the road harder -and well-nigh impossible for any parent with bike plus child trailer or tagalong, which our secretly instrumented report appears to be doing.

This is why we have mixed feelings about the showcase bus route proposal.

Against:

• Removes commuter parking from Whiteladies Road.
• Encourages bicyclists to cycle up and down the road

Pro

• Increases short stay parking on Whiteladies Road.
• Removes a zebra crossing used during the rush hour by slow-moving children and students.
• Adds a dedicated feed-in lane to Cotham Hill.
• The feed in lane will suddenly abandon the cyclists from the safety of a dedicated lane to a situation where they have to merge right into the Whiteladies Road lane just at the same time that all the Redland Mum traffic turning left is trying to swerve left to get into this lane, so putting off the cyclists from every trying to commute by bicycle ever again.

One of our concerns here is that, in the age of austerity, we don't see why any money needs to be spent so that cars can cut in from Whiteladies Road to Cotham Hill. We force our way through the zebra crossing anyway, so all it does is actually increase the likelihood that we get held up by a red light; removes the option of turning right from Cotham Hill to Whiteladies Road, and makes it harder to get a lorry through the corner.