Hurlingham Road -we have lost the battle

Shocking pictures reach us of how a rat run has been stolen

The presence of a cycle contraflow shows that this was put in by an anti-car council. Is it a coincidence that the councillors for the area are Jon Rogers and the green councillor Gus Hoyt?
 
They've even put in double yellow lines at the new parking bay.


We also hear of a petition for a safe pedestrian crossing on Ashley hill, which will add even more delays on our journeys.

When will this outrageous war on motorists ever end?

At least central government is on our side -but what use if that if road-by-road, the rat runs go away. This is even more insidious than 20mph limits, which you can ignore completely if you are on a hurry. This is total rat-run theft.

Gloucester Road #2: an eerie calm over the A38

Normally this road on a Saturday is pretty chaotic: through traffic, shoppers trying to park outside their shops, either in the designated areas, or in the bus stops, the buses trying to get through, pedestrians trying to get across without walking 200m to the lights and back again; then there are the cyclists.

Today: silence.

Police to keep things calm, close the road and keep people on foot out the way.

One conclusion you can draw from the emptiness of the parking area is that the area really is only used by shoppers and shop staff. Today there's just a Paul Roberts car and a fireman -who does walk around with helmet and hi-viz clothes with identification details, the way we think everyone should dress.

There's also a command unit with a CCTV camera to the top and a satellite uplink pointing towards something in geostationary orbit above Africa.

The odd thing is everyone assumes at first that the troubles have come up from Stokes Croft -an eviction, another bank wrecked. But not today. It's worth visiting though, just see what Gloucester Road is really like when closed to traffic.

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!