Eastville Park: will you be my friend?

Word trickles down of a new group "Friends of Eastville Park", who are fighting back against the plans to formalise the pump trail with something in tarmac, and the development of cycle routes through the park. Why the cycling city maps say you can cycle there., and if someone or their dog gets hit by someone on a bicycle, whether the council is legally liable.

For visitors from out of town, Eastville park is the park to the east of the M32 flyover.

At least today. A large chunk of the park was given over to that flyover, with nothing but a Glasgow-style concrete picnic bench underneath as a memory of families coming down there for picnics.

We find it amusing that only now are people complaining about bits of the park being turned over to transport rather than greenery, rather than, say, 40 years ago.

More importantly, we worry that if the Friends of Eastville park have their way, they may not stop at the bicycle access. They may start asking for the bit of parkland that is known as the M32 motorway back. This would not be good. We hope, therefore, that the Friends of Eastville park are regular users of the M32 and can see the tangible benefits of it remaining in-situ. Be believe this is likely, given that they clearly don't cycle. And as nobody takes their dog for a walk on the flyover, the liability issue there isn't important.

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!

More biggerer and betterer.

Bristol is often referred to by many ex Londoners as being like a "little London". While we can appreciate the comparison we at Bristol Traffic know that with the proper building of new bigger wider roads to allow more cars into the city it won't be long before Bristol becomes bigger and better than London. Better because we won't leave our motorways unfinished on the outskirts of the city. Ours will penetrate right into the heart of the city centre creating a vibrant city environment that everywhere else in the world could only dream of. After all we already know that car drivers are the only people who ever spend money in cities and allowing anyone else to get in their way is a sure way to help businesses lose trade.

We have a good start already in the M32 but there's more work to be done if our vision of the future is to come to fruition.

Here as a reminder of why the plan must be seen through is a short film by a young man highlighting where London failed to match up to our vision.

Glasgow

Only last week were were criticising Bristol's town planners for a lack of vision in the 1970s, for a failure to regenerate the neglected inner city by building enough motorways through its core. We only have the M32. One city in Britain has had the vision, and stuck to it, turning their neglected victorian era housing and under-utilised parkland into motorways, so that wherever you walk round the city, you can hear the background hum of high speed motorway traffic. With this motorway through the heart of the city, we believe it is possible to drive from the M32 to the scottish highlands without having to stop for a red light or pedestrians.

Yes, we are talking about Glasgow, and unlike the Copenhagen Cycle Chic team, who think it is a nice place to cycle, as is Aberdeen, we know that Glasgow is our kind of city, as documented by our allies, At War With The Motorist, on their trip to Glasgow, premier city in Scotland.

We like best that the integrated advertisting on the phone-viewer brings up an advert for Robbie's Driving School, who will teach you how to drive round either city, Bristol or Glasgow, in Style.

Congratulations Glasgow, and come on Bristol, get your act together! How else can you solve this city's traffic problems?

Memory Lane

When the M32 was built it was known as the Parkway.

Probably because the authorities of the time thought it would be nice to call a four-lane highway after the type of land it was built through.

Remnants of this era linger on despite the upgrading to "M32", and downgrading to 30mph in part, and the installation of a central bus lane.

What concerns us though, is the sign "Parkway Subways", here in City Road.

The Parkway has been known as the M32 for over twenty years, and Subways has only been selling sandwiches in this country for about 10 years, so who put this sign up?

We have a sneaking suspicion that  Bristol Cycling City was planned when the Parkway was built, and has been waiting, like a Cold War mole, for the time to strike. Further proof is here in the Old Market sign which is for pedestrians and cyclists. Although if you do go there these days, you'll need to watch out for the busses.

It's either that, or Subways have had a secret presence here on UK soil since the 1960s.