Bristol's Balloon Problem

Sometimes the congestion in the city is so bad that people take to the air, but if you try that in a helicopter you soon discover that not only is the cost of fuel excessive, everyone on the ground assumes that there's trouble on the ground and comes out watch. You could create a riot just by hovering over Bedminster on a Saturday night.

What else then? Obviously: balloons.

But here there's still heating bills to run up, and the fact they tend to only go west to east.

This is why inbound commuters from the west of the city use them in the mornings -maybe even to Bath- but other mechanisms are needed to get home. We propose allowing ballonists to get towed by the trains from Bath to Bristol, but we think some of the bridges may cause problems. Experiments are required.

Incidentally, this post-RPZ photo of Cotham Road shows some consequences of the actions. The bus- only parking area is now only used by buses; school-run parents have many free parking spaces, and, interestingly, bike/car conflict is reduces, as now the bicycles can get to one side of the road. Admittedly, there are a couple of build outs and the odd car for them to swerve round, but it is actually easier to drive along -at least until you get to Cotham Brow. For everyone but the commuters who wanted to park here, it's better.

Which causes us to worry about these Clifton proposals to add more parking "For traffic calming". We don't want calmed traffic. We want to drive round fast without bicycles in our way. Yes, we'd like more parking, but it shouldn't be at the expense of slowing us down, or providing short-stay parking areas marked in yellow lines.

We'll be looking at "the Clifton proposals" more next week.

Kingsdown RPZ permits for sale!

The real issues in the city are surfacing now that Stokes Croft is calming down. Parking in Kingsdown -which is the place you want to be if you want to throw bricks down at the police, or have a quiet lunchtime beverage or two in the Hillgrove.

The good news is that someone is selling day passes on gumtree. 40 days for £50. Not bad, if these are the first fifty of a household -the ones you get free. If not, well, you can get 50 for £50, so you make £10 on each 40 you sell. We congratulate the vendor, Tom, for their entrepreneurial spirit.

update: the ad got deleted, so we've reproduced it except the phone number

40 x Bristol Kingsdown Visitor Parking Permits £50 kingsdown, Bristol


Reply to this ad or tom on (deleted)


Park in the kingsdown areaof bristol for roughly a pound a day.


Bargain. using a machine to payanddisplay would cost you a fortune

What we can't do is praise their information security tactics. Tom lists his phone number. Which, if you search for on google, brings up other references to someone called Tom Arkell, and their facebook page. We hope that he isn't the same Tom Arkell that's listed on the university law department rugby team, as one expectation of people studying law is reading and understanding things like the RPZ regulations which say that one-day passes "However, it cannot be transferred between households and must not be sold on."

Really, that's just incompetent. Tom: invest a couple of quid and get a disposable SIM card just for such transactions -or use a disposable email address. We would -if we had any permits to sell. As it is, we aren't interested, as with a disabled sticker on our van we don't need them.

Equal penalties, see

One amusing consequence of the RPZ is that as the fine for parking without a resident permit in the "permitted parking" area is the as for parking on double yellow lines, if you aren't resident, you may as well park where it is most convenient to you.

Nice, though S826TAW could have pulled forward a bit more. We would have.

The front line of the RPZ

Freemantle Square, the council is happily making us pay even more for the right to park near the inner city, and ticketing those who resist!

Fortunately, just down the hill, the zone ends, and on Springfield road, you can double park provided you stay far enough away from the yellow lines as to not infringe them.

Cyclists coming up Ninetree hill should be grateful for this considerate parking by V281MGO

Changes on Woodland Road

It's been a few weeks since the RPZ rolled out, a year since Chris Hutt last commented on it. Time start looking at the impact of the RPZ on the city.

The RPZ has devastated Woodland Road and the rest of the university quarter. With some of the staff having parking in the (former) front gardens of the buildings, these roads used to be a lovely commuter spot, just before the pay to park area. Students got up too late to get look in.

But now, well, completely empty at 08:30. That not only makes it bad for commuters, it makes it a more pleasant place to walk and cycle. At least on those days when some Big Society volunteers act as community lollipop people.

The sign of cyclists just makes things more painful, as we know that not only do they not pay to be in traffic jams, they don't have to pay to park.

Fortunately, we managed to get our white van to the BRI-managed "shared space" area that is Southwell Street, which had a little bit of pavement left for us.

Important: we have heard rumours of changes planned for that road/NHS parking area.

Any anonymous documents or emails are welcomed at the usual email address. We like them to remain consistent with our mission statement "be 12-18 months ahead of any breaking news covered by the Evening Post". If we don't get anything in the next few days, we will have to make something up.

Kingsdown RPZ, interesting, but too early to reach a conclusion

We've been driving round the new RPZ; watching. It's not until the students are back with their cars and their lessons that we'll see how it works, so right now it's in a transitional phase.

What is interesting is how much empty space there is. Here on Dove Street, the entire side of the road that you can park on legally is empty, though the Mercedes driver still wants to avoid the challenge of crossing the road.

Perhaps they didn't have a permit, and as the penalty for paveparking by a yellow line is the same as a non-resident in the resident area, you may as well park closest to your destination.

Elsewhere, the new restaurant Alfred's has space outside it in Alfred Place for lunchtime customers.

And along the road, a view of what the houses must have looked like in Georgian times, before modern inventions came along.

Most interesting was on Somerset Street, which is yet to be repainted. Look closely at the ground here, on Spring Hill

That faded paint implies there has always been a keep clear zone here. We never knew that -all we could see that it was an ideal place for wide vehicles to park. The markings on the ground imply the anti-motorist council will not just leave the obsolete signage to fade, they will be adding double yellow lines instead.

We close by sending our team cyclist round the area (sorry, but we did wait until a Sunday), to get a video. This shows us a number of things.

1. There are some interesting pubs in the area.
2. A loading zone is no substitute for zebra crossing zig zags if it involves more walking.
3. Someone has added parking spaces to Nine Tree Hill.

That final point is interesting. Until now, Nine Tree was lost space, you could park there, but then you could get a ticket. Now locals can park there. How do they get out of this dead end? Presumably by reversing down the road which today is only used by cyclists and pedestrians walking up the hill. Even so, four extra spaces there barely compensate for all the lost corners. Our footage of this area will have to be preserved for posterity, "Kingsdown before the changes came"

Kingdown RPZ and the school run

The government still pushes out its lie that the war on motorists is over. How can that be while the cost of oil is so high -and the exchange rate with the dollar so bad? The only way to end this war is for the price of oil to come down, which could done by  revaluing the pound -regardless of its consequences to industry or the economy. After all, that's what Thatcher and friends did in the 1980s, back when they were on our side.


Yet not only are Cameron and his cronies in London secretly cycling round, laughing as they pedal past petrol station, here in Bristol, the libdem allies in the coalition are making it harder for commuters to drive to work, by not providing enough free parking -and taking it away from the park-and-walk zone nearby. Kingsdown was ideal for this, not just because it was somewhere where your car would probably still be there in the evening, mostly unscraped, but if you drove in from the western end of town, you could void the anti-car features of "the triangle" and "park row".

Now, one interesting consequence of the RPZ zone is up here at the western end of Cotham Road, looking at Cotham School.

This area here is going to be mixed resident and pay to park - with 15 minutes free parking. This is actually going to make school dropoff easier, especially for people within the zone, who will also have the ability to park near their home after doing the dropoff. Until now, nobody in Kingsdown could drive their kids 500m to Colstons, Cotham, St Peter and Paul or St Michael's schools, because some commuter would steal their space while they were gone. Not now. With space at both ends, the school run just got easier by car than by walking.

It's also easier than cycling, on account of the hills. Here we see a couple of cyclists who have struggled their way up the hill, in the cold. Do they look happy? Not to us.

They are just getting on with their suffering while a whole new short-stay parking area awaits us, the important people.

We'll keep an eye on this area to see how it pans out.

It's only once the university students are back that we'll see the full consequences.

One thing we are worried about is the BRI physio department at the end of the road, because its paveparking area (yellow lined) is now a paveparking area in a resident parking zone. Will the pavement by the dropped kerb at the mini roundabout no longer be a staff parking area? This we will watch.

RPZ day has arrived

Over in London, the Politicians tell the BBC that the war on motorists is over, and the BBC believes them, naively, unquestioningly, because they want it to be true. We know different. No, we aren't talking about fuel price rises, because we've seen the forthcoming price rises on trains and buses -which will go up more believe us.

No, we are talking about the war on motoring that is resident parking.


Today is  the big day - the Kingsdown RPZ is live. We hear some of the locals will be going to a pub to celebrate -presumably now they can drive there and back again.

We also hear that for the first few days the council will be issuing warning notes, not tickets; we'll see how that goes.

It's going to reduce the value of those houses where more than 40% of the house volume is dedicated to parking, especially as the council only issues one RPZ permit if you already have an off-road parking option. Try to explain to the parking services dept. that your garage isn't for parking as you are growing a large quantity of high-yield marijuana there and see if they care.

This actually reduces the value of all houses who turned their gardens into tarmac. What was a feature is now possibly a liability.

What about the bicycle parking that some houses have? Where does that fit in here? Should we be able to impose a limit on the number of bicycles that a household in the area has?

How can the government say the war on motorists is over when there is no limit on the number of bicycles people own in the inner city?

Brislington Traffic! Welcome!

Quick pointer to the wonderfully named Briztraffic, who have recently started providing coverage of the Brislington area of the city. For our readers out of town, most time in the area is spent by non-residents in the A4 in traffic jams at this point. There's a nice part to the north, by the Avon, which has pleasant paths along the river. Paths which, if turned into new roads to Bath, could reduce A4 congestion. But no, the war on motorist continues and these paths are wasted on families walking their dogs or cycling happily around.

We have added a link to the site in our quick links list.

To follow up their coverage of the Kingsdown RPZ issue, apparently the yellow lines over driveways were something residents could opt out from. On Victoria Walk leading to Fremantle Square, there are some that have clearly done this. Even so, during RPZ hours, they'll need a permit to park there. We are busy sorting out one for the one white van in the team that doesn't have a disabled "park everywhere" permit. Apparently the council doesn't actually check with the DVLA that the vehicle is registered at an address in the RPZ; you just need to provide a gas or electricity bill that shows the vehicle owner lives there. As producing fake utility bills is easier and cheaper than telling the DVLA that you've moved, this should be fairly straightforward. We shall be reselling our "Workers' Chernobyl and Belarus Gas and Electricity Collective" bill template for others to re-use, once we know it works.

One other interesting feature is any new "low vehicle use" buildings/conversions in the area won't be eligible for more than one permit, which means the builders who say "green housing" to get to use more space for housing rather than parking really will get to mean housing with only one car per household.

RPZ day is coming: Highbury Villas

Jan 3, 2011. RPZ-day minus one. Despite a majority of people outside the new KN RPZ zone being against it, kingsdown and the university quarter are going residents only plus guests tomorrow. We can see the changes, and compare it with previous coverage.

Look at Highbury Villas.

Before: a convenient place for art students to park to stroll into their early afternoon lectures.

Now: double yellow lines, even on the corners, and the bits without yellow are (mostly) for residents only.

Some bits are pay to park, and that's interesting as it adds much more short-stay parking behind the university than the proposed cycle parking area was going to take away. For that subset of students who have money to spend and only want to stay a maximum of two hours, this actually is beneficial. For those who have enough money for a car and fuel but not parking fees, the subset of students who were willing to get to this road before 8am weekdays, a secret parking area for them and commuters has been lost.

People ask what we in Bristol Traffic think about it, are we with the keepparkingfree people?

To be honest, no. Double yellow lines provide extra short stay parking for our vans, and there will be more legal spaces for those with disabled stickers, which, oddly enough, all our vans have. For us, removing the space occupied by commuters increases the semi-legal options for us, while reducing the number of people who will park across corners -people who never think about needs of us transit van owners when they park so insensitively. Then they get upset when we scrape them during the turns. This new zone will provide more parking options for us delivering special products to customers in the area, or nipping in to the newsagents for some more beer and cigarettes (there's a special loading zone there). We feel vaguely sorry for the commuters who will have to park a bit further away to walk in, and if there is an increase in pedestrians in our way, then we will have reason to complain.

RAC visiting the White Bear

We like coverage of pubs, today, the White Bea, which:

1. is in the student quarter
2. has free wifi
3. has a big white bear statue in front of it and one painted further up the wall.
4. has an RAC van up on the pavement in front of it next to the "no parking" signs

What's interesting about the RAC van VN07KYA is it is parked over new double yellow lines, as this area becomes residents parking in three weeks time. This will make driving to the White Bear trickier, except that as you can park free for 15 minutes in the zone, if the bar staff are nippy you've got time to park, grab a couple of pints, then carry on.

Kingsdown update

Shocking footage in Kingsdown, where we can see the paint lines for the resident parking zone going up, even though the zone isn't going live until 2011.

We even have video coverage of a drive-by review of Freemantle Square, showing two things

1. They've even yellow-lined the corners
2. The parking area is to narrow for a premium SUV -it's almost as if they want us van drivers to feel unwelcome.

That's OK, we are used to be hated. And we aren't scared of yellow lines on corners. Indeed, this fellow driver has managed to park on two corners at once

This is something to be impressed by.

If the council had not selfishly put bollards up by the double yellow lines , it would have been able to park on the pavements instead.

While admiring our own upload, youtube recommended this related video, which is quite entertaining, by one bristolcyclista, who is getting pretty irate at WR54HRW for turning over them.

Bristolcyclista -if you had not been on a bicycle, you would not have been nearly hit. Therefore, you are the cause of the situation. You may think "but what would she have done if I was in a car", but the answer there is simple: it depends on the car. Everyone gives way to a battered white van or a 1970s volvo.

Kingsdown RPZ trouble.

Lots of fun following the Kingsdown RPZ plans. Apparently the local councillor is getting lots of hate mail. We think he should be grateful for the publicity, and considering how much grief his colleagues got on the Sainsbury's Ashton Gate proposal, be glad it's not death threats.

Anyway, the plans are going ahead. Some places may be removed as parking options. Even before the zone is rolled out, someone is ticketing cars parked on non-double-yellow lined pavements, such as here on Spring Hill. Now, this is a narrow road, and with the steps on the pavement either end it's hard to negotiate when there is a car in the way, but this is the summer holidays. The kids are out. This is a lovely bit of traffic calming, yet T198NEF gets to pay a parking ticket, for parking in a way that wouldn't raise an eyebrow in Monty, except the distance from the wall, the two wing mirrors and overall bodywork state would say "outsider". Here on a weekday in Kingsdown, it says "resident".

This is where we differ in our opinions from the No Group. They say "everything just about works, keep parking free". But does it work?  Because it doesn't take that many tickets on your car to justify the cost of a residents permit. So parking isn't really free, is it. It's only free if you don't get caught. That's like saying driving round is free because you don't need a tax or MOT. Yet those DVLA cameras watching us, watching the entries to the city, driving round the back street, find us, eventually. 

The Kingsdown RPZ

As many readers will know, Kingsdown and some bits of Cotham have voted to become residents parking only.

When the plan is rolled out, it will be illegal for a non resident to park discreetly up on the pavement, the way N982WCF is doing on Kingsdown parade on a weekday.

Question is, will the residents be allowed to park on this pavement? That is, will the RPZ markings make these pavements locals only. If that's the case, then maybe Montpelier will follow them after all.