Colston School declares more war on parents

No sooner had we issued a call for more low-quality pictures than one reaches our inbox from "M", showing how Colston's Primary School is persecuting parents.

It's bad enough they have bicycle parking in the playground, now they have a large sign in front of the keep clear zone.

Welcome to Colston's Primary School

Around our school please drive safely

DROP THE 'DROP OFF' HABIT

The yellow lines protect our children. Stay off them!

Irresponsible parking endangers our

children's lives and is reported to the police.

Ignoring the fact that when you push your child out the door while keeping the engine on in neutral and not even bothering to put the handbrake on isn't technically parking -just unloading -it is needless persecution.

We look back fondly on how it used to be, when small children could get views of motor cars that they could aspire to own in later years.

It was only back in 2008 that we started documenting our city, and today we must mourn the many parking spaces removed for build-outs and bike parking -and now, even School Keep Clear zones are taken from us.

Camera Enforcement Vehicle: Bristol declares war on school parents

"Camera Enforcement Vehicle". An odd term. It has a hint of Mad Max's "Interceptor", back in the days when Mel Gibson did half-decent films. In Mad Max, the interceptor existed to catch criminals threatening the streets and the safety of citizens.

We are sure that the council thinks their Enforcement Vehicle is there for the same goal, but we know what it has done: it has declared war on hardworking school parents who have nowhere to park their 4x4 for child dropoff except in the School Keep Clear lanes.

Today: when you see the traffic officers outside the school you know to drive pass, take the five minute hit on child dropoff to avoid the ticket. Once they've been and gone, that's it for the term. Safe. But not now.

Look at this car  R009OVT. It's got a camera on top, a GPS unit lurking inside. Now all it has to do is drive past a school and it can take a photograph of all the parents parked in the parent-parking-zone, then send them tickets later. Because it can do drive-by ticketing, it can cover multiple schools in a day -increasing the risk of getting caught. And you don't get any warning, you won't know to detour on the dropoff that day. After the dropoff: uncertainty. Did they pick on you today?

Worse yet the ANPR school parking car is not just targeting school zigzags, but also anyone stopping in a bus stop. Is it really so bad for people to have to get off the bus in the middle of the road? If people are worried about safety then the bus driver could simply drive on to the next stop (as they are apparently officially expected to do)!

They are enforcing loading restrictions, so stopping legitimate traders like Tesco from stopping their vans outside shops during rush hour. What sort of priority does Bristol put on the economy?

Even worse: the Evening Post isn't on our side here. They have joined the War against Motorists, in the same week the evil anti-car EU bumped up fuel prices by declaring an oil embargo against Iran. This is just victimisation

There's only one way to defeat this: stand firm.

Make sure nobody from your kids school calls Parking Services on 0117 922 2198 giving them the school location and exact time morning and evening when they would catch the most parents on a drive by.

Similarly, make sure they don't email parking.services at bristol.gov.uk giving them the same details, or telling them of your favourite secret bus-stop short-stay parking areas.

If nobody tells them of the places and times they should be enforcing parking at schools or in bus stops -we will continue to be able to exercise our right to do so!

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.

Christchurch school, Clifton -no yellow lines here, yet!

While looking for places where yellow lines can be removed from Clifton "for traffic calming", we say, with a knowing smirk, we are pleased to see that the roads by Christchurch School, Clifton, as seen here at 08:30 on a schoolday, have no such problem

Residents are free to park on the pavement without fear of harassment.

So can parents who were forced to drive here early due to the congestion problems caused by a city that failed to provide a city-wide motorway scheme like Glasgow. This family is stuck waiting 15 minutes for the playground to open, so have no choice but to park here. It would be dangerous to let the kids out to play on the pavement.

Now: the bad news. The council is proposing putting some parking restrictions in. No worry though -as our coverage of other schools in the area will show, it's completely unenforced, so provides a lovely parental drop-off zone -provided there aren't any pedestrians in the way. The careful parking of residents and parents alike here ensure that there are no schoolkids on the pavement. That said, the school has just won a Sustrans Award. That was for the kids, not the parents or residents, obviously.

the luxury school run

We are sent an email by "Mike" showing the proper way to get the kids to school, here with a stretch limo outside Colstons Primary School on, what, Cotham Grove

The submitter of this photograph seems a bit, well, unhappy about the incident, and we can see why: a vehicle like this can take up the entire school keep clear area, so stopping other parents doing their dropoffs.

However, people need to recognise the hard truth: taking the kids to school in the family 4x4 is, well, common. Twenty-five years ago, yes, most kids walked to school and those that got driven were taken there in the mini metro, but times have moved on. From the metro, to the VW polo, then the VW Golf becomes car #2, now it's one of the little Audi or BMWs, while family car #1 has grown up from an estate to something with more status. Nothing has more status than a stretch limo -which CN55PZS clearly is.

Jealousy, that's what the other parents are suffering from.

Stretch Limo school runs: you saw it here first!

St Pauls School Run problems.

By way of the Legacy Printed Press, we see this video of a car being forced to push a Ford Ka out onto the road by the school entrance to Cabot Primary School.



The comments on the E.P. Article are pretty polarised.

On the one hand, this is someone exerting their right to get their car out of the garage despite the selfish actions by lazy parents who themselves park on the keep clear zones just to drop the kids off faster. On the other, this is someone potentially endangering children who if not walking to school, are being dropped off by their parents outside it and expected to walk across a road. It's hard to say who is most wronged here.