Gloucester Road #3

Update #1: Nail Creations Salon, next to the Thai place.

Update #2: we have a link to a video.

The commentary is perfect given the circumstances. For those concerned about them Franco and colleagues are OK. At least they were at 12:00; if they stayed in the Blue Lagoon all afternoon, they may be a bit worse for wear by now. There was someone walking in the road asking if they knew a good hairdressers. "Well, there used be Francos", was the response. We'll have to see what state it's in later. Hopefully it'll be OK.

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.

Gloucester Road Incident #1

Some breaking news here: Gloucester Road is closed on account of the Thai Nail Bar Corrections Nail Studio near the co-op and just round from Franco's Hairdresser's blew up at 10:00 today; Gloucester Road is closed.

1. The good news: no serious injuries.

2. People are free to re-use these photos with accreditation, though they would be better off contacting Franco and team -last seen outside the Blue Lagoon having early beers, as they have better photos, on account of being at work three doors away at the time. No haircuts are on offer today.

Gloucester Road is closed off even to foot traffic from the Breadstore to the Hobgoblin pub.

You can just make out on the pavement some burned out bits of shop.

Apparently they have chemicals on site; the owner was upstairs.

The road is closed to cars from Zetland Road; people are being directed to Elton Road or right onto Cheltenham Road and Cromwell Road.

There was some concern by outsiders looking to get to the cricket match that they didn't know where to go. Turn onto Cromwell Road, head up to the first left-turn that isn't no entry, head along that road all the way and you end up at the cricket ground. For us locals, that's faster than the A38 anyway.

Wishing anyone injured a fast recovery.

Update: Allotmentqueen says: "Creations Nail Studio, actually, next door to Simply Thai. But then, as a van driver, I don't expect you get your nails done that often. "

Tesco Stokes Croft: did FirstBus torch it?

There are lots of theories about who torched the new Stokes Croft Tesco

1. Some squatters made petrol bombs and tried to torch the mini-mart in a protest against supermarkets.
2. Lots of drunk people reacting to the police blocking their road home.
3. A group of hardend "black hat" anarchists secretly infiltrated the city, created a riot and then retreated to a nearby pub, returning two weeks later to the Anarchist Bookfair to buy the Banksy memorial posters and then resell them on eBay.
4. An active service unit of Stokes Croft street food vendors torched it as any supermarket outlet selling chicken only five days past its best-before date would raise expectations excessively amongst their existing customer base.

We have a new one: Firstbus did it. Watch this video, taken before 18:00 on a weekday, to see why.

See how the vehicles coming from Bath Buildings only have time for the front two to pull out on red before the cars coming down from Arley Hill get out and block the junction. Then Cheltenham Road gets the green light, and all vehicles heading into the city get held up -including two FirstBus buses. What is happening?

The answer is, out of camera, a parked car is blocking the bus lane. This stops buses from getting through, and it stops any car coming off Arley Hill and heading left towards Ashley Road and the M32 nipping in to it and heading off to the motorway without being blocked in the tailback stemming from the bearpit.

This holds up cars, but for the buses it is worse: it holds up the entire schedule, on which they can pay financial penalties.

This then, is who has the most to lose from a Tesco on Cheltenham Road: FirstBus management, whose company will pay fines caused by short-stay shoppers parking in their bus lane, and whose bonuses and stock options will be threatened. These people had far more to lose than Slix or Ritas, far more to gain than the anarchists could make from reselling Banksy prints. This is why we believe that the police should study their CCTV camera footage for the signs of any FirstBus bus going down this road after 11pm. Normally all FirstBus buses would be in bed by then, so any bus going down the road is clearly full of FirstBus operatives, planning to create a riot, destroy a supermarket, and so avoid penalties for late bus schedules.

Stokes Croft: the street fest

People say to us "did you nip over to the Stokes Croft streetfest on your day off from driving a van round the city"

We reply "Those of us who work in the Bristol sex-trade supply chain don't consider Saturdays a rest day -we were making deliveries on the Croft as usual." People who were there would have seen us. Question is, who were we?

The white van FG80741, outside the Polish Shop? Possibly.

The car KF03DXT in the bike lane near the now-famous Tesco express (not open at the time this photo was taken), and opposite the equally famous Telepathic Heights (more on that another day)?

The car LB57TXG in the bike path outside Slix? Perhaps.

Slix wasn't that busy, while Rita's was closed. While many of the bars and cafes were overflowing, the availability of low-cost, raw-in-the-middle yet burned on the outside BBQ-d beefburgers on sale on the street corners meant that the two main fast food establishments had competition -competition who won on cooking ability, cost and freshness.

Or were we the car X258CBR with the disabled sticker and the hazard lights on, the wingmirrors flipped back, on the double yellows?

The answer is: that's something we can't disclose. Once people recognise the official Bristol Traffic van, our coverage quality will degrade to even worse than it currently is.

News update

The team is being too lazy to do some serious reporting right now, but here are some news updates.

1. Crap Walking And Cycling in Waltham Forest is offline, along with all its artwork. While some people discuss why this is the case, and consider whether any of its comments about the Waltham Forest NHS or local council have, in some way, been considered libellous, we are pleased to provide the true explanation.

Waltham Forest acted as a control group in the Cycling England project. Some cities were funded to add more facilities to their city to encourage poor people to cycle. How would it be possible to determine if any increase in cycle usage was related to this work, compared to other trends like the rising cost of fuel? The answer: a control group. Waltham Forest, then, was encouraged to spend no money at all on improving walking or cycling in the city. To see whether motivational newsletters alone would suffice, Waltham Forest was funded to produce joyful "wouldn't it be better on a bicycle" leaflets and such like, things that could be stuck up at NHS hospitals that the staff and all patients would drive to -to see if this alone was sufficient. As the crapwalthamforest blog showed: it was not. With the wrapping up of the Cycling England project, Crap Walking and Cycling in Waltham Forest has been terminated. Note also that Waltham Forest itself will be terminated -however the lessons from the Waltham Forest experiment have been learned, and councils all round Britain will be encouraged to Walthamize their neighbourhoods.


2. An M4-A4174 link route isn't going to get funded, as noted by the BBC, "Hopes for M4 link to Avon Ring Road dashed".

We have some bad news for whoever in the BBC wrote that last article, with phrases like  "Hopes for an M4 link to the Avon Ring Road near Bristol have been dashed for at least another four years" and "it could have an important impact on the Bristol and Bath Science Park".

Dear BBC provinical reporting team: there is an M4 link the Avon Ring Road; it is called "the M32". Please consult a map of Bristol before writing an article next time. There is also an option of getting to it from the M4/M5 junction and down the A38, and while a bit longer, it avoids the kingswood to M32 traffic jams caused by people trying to drive round the ring road from Bath to the North Fringe.

The article should in fact be titled: "Hopes for yet another  M4 link to the Avon Ring Road dashed". It could then raise the fact that Chris Skidmore, the Conservative MP for Kingswood, doesn't understand the theory of induced demand any more than the head of North Somerset council. Specifically it isn't enough to add a new link road for today's demand; the new link road will encourage more traffic, more driving in, more people living out of Bristol and commuting by car to the North Fringe area. It would have been better to admit this and rather than push for a single extra link road, push for a new link road to be added every five years, so as to keep up with planned demand.

Walthamize the planet -and have a nice day!

Bristol Cyclista meets RL54OHG on Gloucester Road

Youtube recommends this video to us, of a cyclist being passed by a car that proceeds to stop to pick up their friend waiting by the roadside.
Personally, we don't see the problem and hence why the rider was arguing with the driver

1. Even though the future passenger was waiting right at the corner, the driver did pass the cyclist rather than swerve straight in. This forced the driver to drive longer, and the pedestrian to walk a  bit. Such selfless acts are not acknowledged by the cyclist.
2. The car did actually indicate when turning in, and all its brake lights were working.
3. By pulling in to the bike lane rather than waiting behind the cyclist, the three cars behind were not held up.
4. Despite the abuse the Bristol Cyclista lays on the tax payer, he is gracious and polite.

A38 update

After putting up an article on The Fringe hairdressers, we got some odd search traffic hitting us, people asking questions about the death of a hairdresser on Cheltenham Road.

We know nothing about it, except that the fringe has a sign saying "Business is now closed", and the web site gone. We hope everything is all right, that these searches don't mean what they could mean, but don't really know what's happening. Hope all is well.

To finish on a brighter note, the Prince of Wales has been repainted really nicely.

Beer is reasonable too. It's a nice tradition Bristol is gradually developing of painted pubs. Makes pub crawls more interesting. Lots of parking nearby of an evening, and there are some bicycle racks to the right of the establishment.

Bus lanes: there for the taking

A lot of our fellow warrior-motorists complain that bus lanes have taken up away a lot of the road capacity of our cities. Far from it!

They have only taken away road capacity from those drivers too timid to use the bus lanes!

Look how here on a weekday evening on Cheltenham Road, the showcase bus lane provides a fast alternative to a congested private vehicle lane -for anyone bold enough to get in and use it!

If there's only one complaint, the moment the bus lane ends, someone in a 4X4 has half parked up on the pavement, so forcing us to swerve back in to the main traffic route.

This is insensitive parking that fails to take into account the needs of fellow motorists.

Is "The Fringe" a sign that Cheltenham Road is being gentrified?

We like that bit of the A38 from the Arches to Stokes Croft: our bit of the city. Wide roads, bus lanes to drive and park in, and shops for our lifestyle. As well as the minicabs, there's the car stereo place before Kwik-fit.

Which is why, while we were out stalking the pedestrian from Cromwell Road that we saw something to shock us. A new hairdressers, the fringe.

Looks pretty, doesn't it? But what's that in the window?

A sign

CYCLISTS

SPECIAL

OFFER

(From Monday-Friday)

"HOP OFF & CUT"

£7.50

Apparently cyclists can bring their bicycles into the hairdressers and get a haircut while their bike is kept safely out of the rain, secure from theft or damage.

Can you do the same with a car? No. You can't even park in the bus lane for half an hour for a haircut, not with the CCTV enforcement that's now underway.

The sign in the hairdressers is is a terrible sign. What it really says "we are at risk of losing Cheltenham Road".

Secret Gloucester Road parking

At the end of Cromwell Road, just under the arches, there's a lovely wide bit of pavement by the double yellow lines.

It's a safe place to park even a nice car, such as the BMW LX06UXU thought the presence of bike racks on the roof worry us. Are these perhaps cyclists?

Whatever, we like to show that nobody is inconvenienced and unable to get past. Here we can see a pedestrian can easily get by with only one wheel of their child's pushchair in the road.

Bicycles on the A38, vans in Monty

We are secretly recording cyclists through the city, then buying them beers and finding out how their day was -as a result, we are starting to understand their (invalid) reasoning better.

Here is Stokes Croft of a morning, the cyclist is waiting to turn right, and watching the two incoming lanes.



Note how two cars get their lane choice wrong and decide to go straight on in defiance of left-turn signs for that lane. Yet still some tax-dodger decides to RLJ their left turn onto Stokes Croft.

At 1:00, the cyclist gets their turn in, skids left onto picton street, passing a van on the pavement to their left. Some people think parking blocking the pavement is wrong, but in this part of the city it is that or block the road entirely. At 1:14 you see someone doing that, and you see the bicycle proceeding to the left of the van, despite the fact that in our post-mortem we can see the door opening, and the passenger forced to retreat by the passing bicycle.

We understand why you wouldn't wait for the van; in monty that could be a few hours waiting. But why not go up on the pavement, the way most tax-dodgers would do.

The answer to that becomes clear on a later video. You can be sure that a van isn't going to veer into the parked cars, but you can't be sure that they aren't going to swerve up onto the pavement and drive along for a bit. We see this hear on the "Richmond Road shared space", an area to the side of roads that would elsewhere be called by its old name, "the pavement"



The van graciously waits for the parent and pushchair blocking this pavement, and once gone gets up on it and carries on, before eventually parking. The cyclist then passes them, continues down to Bath Buildings and Cheltenham Road, where we can watch the chaos with bemusement. The first cyclist, the BMX-er dodging a turning car probably just ran orange, or was past on red but, well, slow. The second one, the one that nearly takes our our tax-dodger as they ride across the road, he has had 10 seconds of red before he goes. That's three cyclists and three vans in our camera. All three vans are trying to find somewhere safe to park, which anti-car montpelier makes excessively hard. Of the three cyclists in the video, two of them seem blatantly oblivious to red.

Helmetless

It's 16:15 on a weekday and there are bicycles here on Gloucester Road. Look you can see one waiting to walk over the pedestrian crossing, and another going to the bike lane. Two pedestrians are stopping to talk just past the car parked over the dropped kerb. Nobody, walking or cycling, is wearing a helmet.

Further in towards town, again, two more cyclists, helmetless. They may be entering a bus/bike lane which is valid from 16:00 onwards, but that is no excuse. All the cars heading in to town are forced to use that bus lane to get past the turning Porsche blocking their lane.

Even further in, you can see a number of vehicles parked here, fifteen minutes into the operating hours of this, a showcase bus lane.

These cyclists using it do not have helmets and do not have insurance. If any of them were to hit a car parked in the bus lane, who would pay for the damage?