It isn't enough -the freedom of freeways

Our main reason for a trip to the US was to learn from the road builders. Just as the cycling activists go to Denmark and the Netherlands, we, along with the West of England Partnership, head to America.

Look at this scene: flyovers and flyovers, heading into the distance. San Francisco

Up in the sky, from one freeway, another one above. So much choice, and that word, Freeway. Freedom. The American way.

From above, you can see wide city streets. What can you see from the M32? Eastville.

But it isn't enough. It's never enough. They built the roads, the people came, the economy grew. And the roads filled up.

What can be done to help the US -or UK economy. More roads. It's obvious really.

A roadbuilding program is never finished, never done. Yet in the UK we stick in a couple of flyovers and declare "Mission Accomplished". Only Glasgow recognises that the work is never done; that you need to keep planning motorways; more flyovers over the city; more bridges. We understand them.

We also see what the cycling troublemakers miss: the same thing applies to bicycle routes. Their adoption of "vehicular cycling", to cycle in our roads, means to surrender to our needs. Yes, they can get on our roads, while we sound our horn behind them, if we see them at all. But we drive the cars, going past them at 40 mph with six inches of clearance, saying "look how insane you'd have to be to cycle out there, it's really dangerous." They get out there, they have near-death experiences, they give up, drive, and the economy moves forward. It would only be by adopting a freeway-style program, one of cross-city routes, that they'd ever get anywhere. Yet in the big UK cities, nobody has noticed this. The only big in-city equivalent of a freeway for pedestrians and cyclists is of course the Bristol-Bath Railway Path, a flat, nearly uninterrupted route between the cities of the South West. Which is precisely why we and the WoEP want to put buses on it. Not only does it get buses off our roads, out of our way, it kills their dream: a walking and cycling version of a freeway.

Facebook Issues

The Bristol Traffic team met many of our strategic partners in California, too many to mention. One thing we will flag up is our concerns about the Facebook visit. The Non-Disclosure Agreement prevents any discussion about what went on indoors, what their offices look like, or whether or not the team met The Man. It's not important; what matters is that two of the world's best datamining organisations got together to discuss areas of mutual interest. And the Bristol Traffic logo (a stylised version of Southwell Street) is now on graffiti wall on the right past security.

What we will raise is this. The entrance, of 1601 California Avenue. HQ.

This in the head office, the developers all work here, with Mark in the private room in the middle. Someone worth many billions of dollars, hosting Obama shortly after our visit. But where is the fancy parking area? There is more prestigious parking are outside the UWE vice chancellor's office than here, where the vehicles that can get closest to the entrance are a shuttlebus and bicycles.

It is trends like this -giving bicycle parking pride of place in the foyer of the global web companies- that worry us.

At the junction of Google and Ampitheater

Over in Waltham Forest, Freewheeler has been expressing some concerns about google.

We too have issues, which, during the teams visit to our strategic partners in California, also cause us to question our long term relationship with them.

Ampitheater Parkway. Like the Bristol M32 Parkway except less congested, and there's a bike lane in the hard shoulder for pickups to sideswipe. All is well.

Ahead, the centre of Google-land, with a little "google maps" pin to show you where the Google maps team is based. All is well.

But what's this we see from our SUV?

That's right: it's a Google employee, on a Google staff bicycle, cycling between offices, while holding a phone.

This is Google, not just encouraging their employees to ride bicycles, but to check their email as they do it. And they aren't even wearing a helmet!

It is unacceptable, and concerns us deeply. Is Google really on our side. We know Microsoft are, because they gave the internet the Comic Sans font, the official font of the Association of British Drivers, Drivers Protest and the like. But Google? By encouraging such reckless behaviour by their staffers, we now have doubts.

Side streets

Just as in Bristol, there isn't enough space for all the important customers, even with echelon parking.

Here is where the Palo Alto council have realised the problem, and corrected by adding free two hour parking in open parking lots. Even there, someone has tried to sneak a bicycle in.

The side streets also offer unrestricted parking, making it easy to get from your SUV to your restaurant.

As with the main road, "University", there is no space in a city with such narrow roads to add any bicycle lanes.

None at all.

Yet what do we see? Somone has snuck in a bicycle and chained it -probably illegally- to a bus stop. They should be reported to the police!

Threat #2, integration between the university and the town

Stanford University is on one side of El Camino Real, the town Palo Alto on the other. There is a road over El Camino, providing a safe way to walk or cycle over. But does it make people using such substandard transport options welcome?

Thankfully no.

There's an under-illuminated path for cyclists and pedestrians to share, creating fantastic conflict. If the US had the Daily Mail, this would be the kind of place they'd be using in their complaints.

Ignoring the four lanes of road alongside it.

This is wonderfully reminiscent of the Evening Post underpass, which exists to remind people cycling and walking into the city that they are not welcome. It's like being home again.

Away doing important things

In case people are wondering why the posting rate of this site has dropped, it is that team is off over easter doing Important Things with Important People. Just to make it clear, those readers who walk or cycle around Bristol or other cities: you are not important.

In our trip to the US, we have been with really important people, in a country where pedestrians know there place

Like here, where the crossing lights on the four lane road are taped over to stop people getting the mistaken idea that it is safe to cross. We look forward to this idea being adopted in the UK.

In the meantime, we shall have some photos covering how we, the important people, are important. We shall also consider whether cycling is becoming as much a threat in the US as the press makes out.

Helmet legislation

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Bristol Traffic
Date: 1 February 2011 22:31
Subject: Helmet legislation
To: p.ramsey@sdlp.ie


The Bristol Traffic project exists to document the traffic issues in the city, of Bristol England ones we normally blame on pedestrians and cyclists.

Yet occasionally we use photographs from out of our fair city, "abroad", to provide commentary, and we have covered both Northern Ireland and your constituency town and its issues have surfaced
http://bristolcars.blogspot.com/search/label/ireland
http://bristolcars.blogspot.com/2009/02/new-cause.html

On that topic then, can the team thank you for giving us something new to make fun of. We love the idea of a country coming out the thirty years of darkness, picking on unified enemies, and cyclists make such a wonderful outgroup, we can imagine everyone all unified, all marching (or at least driving) with a common narrative for the region: cyclists are the common enemy. Except the cyclists of course, but that's not your problem or ours.

Thank you for giving us something new to talk about, sorry if it means you get more email criticising you!

The Bristol Traffic Project!
http://bristolcars.blogspot.com/

Fun in the Forest

We're a bit concerned about government plans to privatise the forests. This is not because we have taken up mountain biking -even though we appreciate such activities do not get in our way, we fear that they encourage the riders to get fit during the week by commuting.


We're slightly worried that even our papers, like the Daily Telegraph, are expressing doubts. But frankly we don't care that much about dog walking, horse riding or other daytime leisure activities.
 
Some people may think we would be in favour of cutting down the trees, putting in more shopping malls, new suburbs. Motorways. But remember, we are part of a big society that uses those forests for night time activities too.

Who hasn't nipped up the M4, over the old bridge and up to the Forest of Dean, pulled in one of the laybys and had an intimate encounter with a complete stranger from time to time? It doesn't matter about your sexual preferences, it's classless: MP, priest, van driver, housewife, TV presenter of football or car shows -it's all the same in the dark. Anonymous entertainment, with only the bridge tax to stop us doing more than three or four times a week.


And with our van being a roaming retail outlet for the city's sex life's accessories, those trips can a big business for us. Selling safe sex accessories in the 'dean can be a nice little earner -some of those TV presenters have been round the block a few times, and you need all the protection we can sell you.

The proposals to sell of the country's forest to the highest bidder will interfere with small businesses all round the country. 

There's a national campaign against this organising a petition; everyone should sign. There's also a local group, Hands off our Forest, working for the Forest of Dean itself.

These people have been very active, and have this lovely quote from their conservative MP Mark Harper on Jan 3 2011:

there are not and never have been any plans to sell off the Forest of Dean to developers who would cut down the Forest to replace it with recreation parks.

This is beautiful. If they say, sell off half the forest to developers who cut it down and replace it with recreation parks, the MP was being honest. If they say, sell of the entire forest, cut it down and replace it with suburban housing estates, the MP can say they were speaking truthfully. And if if they do sell of the entire forest and have it cut down and replaced with recreation parks, provided the documentation shows the planning didn't begin until Jan 4, then again, he was telling the truth at the time.

For some reason it reminds of Bill Clinton's "technically we did not have sex" claims, or Tony Blairs' "The legal opinion was that we didn't need a second resolution". A statement which, from a legal perspective is honest, but means something entirely different at the time. We'll have to remember something similar the next time one of the team's drivers is caught in a compromising situation with a local MP up near the Forest of Dean.




This is why we not only support the Hood campaing, we propose a new slogan for the campaign " Fuck in the forest, not with the forest"

Progress in Oregon

Oregon is usually held up as the hope of cycling in "the third world", a part of the US that has returned to bicycles. For us, the motorists, it is part of the front line of the backlash. This is why were an early supporter of the proposed bicycle tax.

That is why we are pleased to see a proposed law that not only makes it illegal to carry more than one passenger in a bicycle that is not designed for this, it will ban all bicycle transportation of children under the age of six!

This is for their own good!

• It gets them used to driving everywhere
• It stops their parents having a school-kid-dropoff-continue-to-work cycle run, so discourages the parents from cycling.

• It stops them getting into riding bicycles, or even learning how to maintain them.

• It stops their parents taking the kids on bike rides at weekends, such as this MAMIL-dad is doing over Willamette Pass, Oregon.

Such measures may seem harsh, but it is the only way to get these children and their parents to conform to what a modern society expects.

Before anyone complains that we exaggerate the problem, all these photos come from a source in Oregon. This state has a population of five million people, yet is only the same height and three times the width of Britain. There simply isn't room for bicycles and cars to co-exist in such a limited space. And if there isn't in this state, just consider how much worse things are in Scotland -with the same population, or England, with ten times as many people, or London, the place with the highest population density in the country.

This is why we are pleased to announce, along with our partners in the printed and TV media channels, our new 2011 campaign, to have bicycles banned from our city streets during peak hours and school dropoff/pickup times.

It's for the sake of the children!

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?

Aberdeen Good, Bristol Stupid

Here's a photo one of our roving reporters took.

Of Aberdeen.

Notice how carefully, and sensibly this city has been planned, unlike Bristol.

There's a railway for poor people to use, a proper road for real people to use, and a pavement for the bins. Luckily, there are no cyclists in sight (unlike Bristol).

Proper job.

Unfortunately, Bristol is full of idiots.

Luckily, the gene pool cleans itself, or so we're told.

Fraternal Greetings to our Aberdeen Franchise

The BBC has some excellent coverage of the anti-car experience in Scotland, where some people are being forced to use the (minimal) underground system round Glasgow, rather than drive. This saddens us.

We are pleased, therefore to announce our own contribution to helping Scotland's transport issues, by opening up the Aberdeen Franchise of our community service. We consider this the Big Society in action.

Apparently in Aberdeen, oil is so central to the local economy as car imports are to Avonmouth, so anyone not driving is rightfully viewed as some kind of social subversive threatening the entire existence of the city. In Bristol, this truth is not reported outside of the Evening Post, and its readership figures are so bleak we fear for the paper's continued existence.

Aberdeen Cars promises to explore the PaveParking opportunities of the city, as well as how to effectively drive and park in the area. Apparently also pagan era midwinter solstice rituals do take place on nearby standing stones, so in exchange for some of their "black haggis" we shall be sending up some "local food for local people" food from a well known stokes croft takeaway that provides special meat products for those they know well.

Aberdeen! Welcome to the Team!

Absolute Vehicle Care Ltd, selling Alloy wheels to outsiders who inconvenience us

Dear info@absolutevehiclecare.com.

Thank you for posting your comment on our alloy wheels are for outsiders posting.

We are aware that we are the highest ranked site when you search blogspot for alloy wheels, and therefore that a comment with some banal chat and back links to your own site would help your page rank. However, as well as using nofollow links to remove them from google's PageRank scores, we have a policy that says if you spam us with attempted to links, we only make fun of you. Therefore, please accept this posting as a gift, but note that the nofollow tag above renders your link worthless and all that you will get is more spam to your email address. Sorry.

There is no point trying to push alloy wheel services to our readers, despite our broad readership in Bristol, because (a) you have a Southampton postcode and are therefore unimportant, and (b) we don't think alloy wheels have a place in the city.

Every driver who has alloy wheels values their wheels. Not only does this prevent them doing operations in the city, it holds up other traffic. Takes this video of the bottom of St Michael's Hill from last month.



The car in front of us is waiting to turn slide into the left turn lane -which has a green light onto Park Row. But it cannot do that as the car in front of it values their wheels too much to scrape against the kerb or to commit more aggressively and get both wheels entirely on the pavement, and they still have a driver-side wingmirror to lose. The selfish decision of the first car to have alloy wheels not only slows them down, it slows down the rest of the city's traffic. And this is on a Sunday! Imagine how much congestion one selfish alloy-wheel owning outsider would cause on a busy weekday morning!

Drivers who value their vehicle's bodywork and paintwork are as much an inconvenience to us locals as pedestrians on zebra crossings and cyclists pootling along. You may not realise this as you live in the provinces and dream of day trips to Portsmouth where you can see three cars in a row, but we city folk know the harsh truth: from a game-theory perspective, alloy wheels place you at a disadvantage. They are easily damaged and, as they are a visible status symbol, everyone else sees that you value your car, therefore are more likely to give way on high conflict roads, such as here, the Horfield Road/St Michael's Hill junction.

Please do not bother posting any more spam advertisement comments, as we will only continue to criticise you for your naive lack of understanding of modern driving techniques and issues, as well as your complete ignorance of game theory and its application in city driving.

Thank you,

The Bristol Traffic Team.

Reminder :4x4 is useless on ice without studs or chains

Now that winter is here, can we drop a quick reminder to everyone driving around not to believe those "buy a 4x4 and cope with winter" adverts. Without studded tyres or chains, all four wheel drive will do is get you into trouble by hiding the problems on the uphill, only for them to surface on the descent. Here is some footage from Seattle last week:
Lots of these vehicles are 4WD, but once you've hit the brake pedal, that's useless. Winter tyres then studded tyres (legal in Washington State during winter) and chains are what you should be thinking of. Otherwise, stay at home. Don't walk down the sidewalks on roads like this either. If you have a 2WD car with traction control features, when that light starts flashing it means "chains on". No chains? Pull over, park on a road that isn't so steep, walk.

New link: road justice

We've added a link to a new site today, Road Justice.

This is a Canadian site which puts up photographs of the terrible thing cyclists to Vancouver, such as cycle around without helmets. They also have that hard taxpayer/cyclist split that we use, though they don't yet call them Tax Dodgers!

Road Justice! Welcome to the debate about the future of transport in the cities of the world!We have one concern though: are they some kind of spoof? I mean, to criticise a cyclist just for standing on the pavement, or not having a helmet? Yes, we hate them too, but there aren't actually laws against owning a bicycle -yet.

They also ask for money, which makes us wonder if they are trying to trick us out of the money we have left after income and petrol tax takes away most of our earnings for bike lanes and buses. We have had enough money stolen without them asking for more.

Anyway, the link is up there, we are keeping an eye on them to see if they stay consistent and aren't some kind of trick site put together by tax-dodging cyclists to discredit us, Bristol's premier traffic news outlet. The fancy web site design and the demands for money are warning signs. If we think they are spoof, we'll delete the cross-link before long.Credit for the Copenhagenize blog for bringing this site of fellow-travellers to our attention.

The Wye Valley Sustrans Path Proposal

Now that even the cycling world has picked up on the Wye Valley Sustrans Path proposal, and Tidenham Parish's opposition, we have to own up to something. We drove our white van over the sea to Wales to lend our support for the "Say Yes" photoshoot. Not because it will increase Tidenham Parish council tax rates by 40% -apparently- or because it will encourage cycling, but for some other reasons.

1. There are many fine pubs along this path, including the Bridge Inn, Chepstow at the rear of the photograph below. Fine pubs, with proper English beer on one side of the river (Stella Artois and Kronenbourg), and strange Welsh beers (Brains SA) on the other.
2. Having a bike path that goes all the way up the valley will offer us excellent pub crawl opportunities - a trip from Chepstow to Symond's Yat and back would earn about nine pints.
3. The path will go all the way to Chepstow, and, through Bulwark, over the Severn Bridge to Aust.
4. If you park and pedal from Aust, you don't have to pay the bridge tax, which costs you about two pints.

Therefore, we support it not for those cycle commuters or family rides, but for lowering the costs of pub crawls up the Wye valley. The fact that it will be funded from Lottery money, charity donations and Tidenham Parish makes it even better.

Therefore we encourage everyone who fancies a pub crawl across two countries to lend their support to these plans.

Note also that the supporters all came out with their helmets on, heartwarming. The joyful sight of a small child scootering along at walking pace in full body armour gives us hope for the future.

Returning to Tidenham Parish Council, note their web site encourages visitors,  advocates visiting nature and promises the cycle path will improve the area:

"Nature reserves, walking routes, cliffs for climbing, caves for exploring are only a few of the attractions available to both residents and visitors and there are plans for more such as the Wye Valley Cycle Path Scheme."

It is interesting, then, that the parish council is against the proposal. -and their key complaint is the increase in parking. Well, its our inalienable right to park the Bristol Traffic White Van wherever we want, be it the city or the countryside, so that offends us -that's war on motorist speak there. Furthermore, as we note, the pub crawl will start in Aust, because that saves car drivers 6 quid, and us van people £10.90. 


Why then, are they really anti cyclist? Well, the obvious reason is that cyclists are strange people with funny clothes, helmets and personal hygiene who don't pay their own way. Which is something we know already. But why is Tidenham Parish Council scared to come out and say the truth, why is still living in a war-on-motorist, political correctness era where it shuffles politely and complains about parking, instead of saying what they really think, which is they don't want people on bicycles through their parish?

Feedback: the Southsea Cycle Lane

We like to track that we are on message by the mail and comments we get back: if people aren't upset by the truths, well, we aren't writing the right truths. Our Portsmouth Seafront Update upset someone, so it must have been good.

We criticised someone for cycling down the (admittedly wide) seafront, arguing that their actions were not only endangering themselves, their child and pedestrians, but the entire Southsea seafront economy.



This triggered some feedback from Byron of Southsea, who said

"There are a few cheap stalls and a run down arcade along the front...so how much do you think the economy of Southsea is really affected? Of course the real sensible solution is (like many other seaside towns in the UK) to paint a cycle lane along the promenade. It has ample width. We must try harder to get people out of their cars and (safe) walking or cycling."

Well  we looked back through our photographs, dataset, as we like to call them, and concluded that yes, the arcade is a bit run down, as is the funfair at the end of the pier.



The photographs hide the 20mph wind which made the crazy-golf a bit more problematic than usual, but you get the general flavour. Room for improvement.

Similarly, the clubs along the seafront do appear to have seen better days. All that was up and running over the bank holiday was the Southsea Folk and Roots Festival, and even there the bar on the South Pier let the side down by running out of all beers  -even Fosters- by Sunday evening.



However, note that these photographs were taken on the same day we saw the man and his child cycling down the seafront. There is no way to disprove our claim that the cause of the problems is in fact the intermittent cyclists and their families on the sea front, scaring off people from the arcade or the night clubs.

Byron! We thank you for your feedback but we refudiate it!

Portsmouth Seafront update

For the bank holiday w/end we checked out the anti-bicycle improvements in Portsmouth.

We couldn't be bothered to drive our van to where the new segregated bike path is, so we stood by the Southsea Pier to watch two cyclists who have come from it experience the joy of a FirstBus bus turning over them.

They survived to carry on the short distance before they have to swerve out past the parked cars to then get in our way.

For those people who aren't in the loop, the Portsmouth Council has pulled in plans to expend the bike path all the way west "for review" after complaints about the first stretch. This means there is nowhere safe for cyclists in this part of the town.

Well, some people may make the case for the sea front itself, but you can see on a bank holiday weekend that this is over-busy. The valuable revenue streams of the telescope and southsea pier fairground are dependent on passing traffic. These people walking down here -presumably people who drove here first- hold together the local economy. Reducing parking or making walking more hazardous would destroy it.

This parent selfishly cycling down the pavement at five miles an hour, with small child on the back, is not only endangering pedestrians

He is threatening the entire economy of the Portsmouth/Southsea seafront.

Portsmouth Update

Been 6+ months since our last B.Traffic team visit to Pompey, so we nipped down to enjoy a town whose team is slightly closer to the bottom of the football league than one of our own teams, so a bit of gloating. Of course, their town hasn't offered to pay for a world-cup class stadium, so it cuts both ways.

Now, the seafront, always a source of entertainment.

Today we see someone in one of those so called "practical" bicycles, as opposed to a mid-life crisis toy. But look -she is choosing not to cut across the road into the dedicated two-way cycle route. So much money, and these disrepectful underpeople ignore what we offer them.

Fortunately, not all do. Here, at the end of the path, we can see a father and child at the head of a family group, leaving the road and going over to the traffic island.

An island where they are followed by their entire family. Some people think "sweet", but we look at how much the back wheels of the rear two family members stick out into our lane, and wonder if they'd have the 3rd party insurance to pay for our bumper damage were we to clip them.

We know some people will be saying "it's daft to have a bike path that cuts over lanes, how are you meant to get home alive", but we say "you are ungrateful whiners". We also have to point out that the council is doing the best they can. There is nowhere else they could have put in this much space for bicycles.

Nowhere at all.

Unter den Linden: the Telegraph goes soft

Every time someone accuses us of being some kind of spoof, we point to the Daily Telegraph and Daily Mail and say "if we are a spoof, then these two papers must also be". They aren't -we view them as fellow-travellers.

That's why we are pretty shocked to see that the Daily Telegraph has published an article praising cycling.

Their points

1. It's cheaper than driving or public transport
2. It's the only way to avoid the repressive "film all the cars" state we are still in, despite the coalition taking over from NuLabour.
3. Berlin managed to transform their city to make it nice to cycle round

Obviously, we object to all of these. As, fortunately, did enough people in the article's comments, that perhaps now the Telegraph will know their place better. If we wanted to read articles praising cycling, we'd read the Guardian or other socialist rags.

1. Cycling is only cheaper as they don't pay their dues, because the cost of congestion caused by bicycles, the danger they pose to children walking from the 4x4 to the school gate isn't taken into account.

2. Yes, Cycling may avoid the repressive state we read about in the Telegraph and the Mail, but we want that corrected by having every cyclist, every pedestrian registered, number plated, third-party insured and billed. And the speed cameras removed. Because we drivers are not the criminals, the cyclists are. Look at this man: threatening pedestrians on Karl Marx Allee, Berlin.

And Berlin? Well, whoever wrote that article missed their history. The liberation of Berlin in May 1945 left vast quantities of open space due to the actions of allied forces, and even today the population of the city is way below that which it was designed for.

Then the partition of E and W, on the photographer's side of the Brandenburg Tor, took away the German's rights to drive their cars through this, the centre piece of Deutschland. When the wall came down they kept it closed to traffic, and now, with the US and UK embassies behind, it, it's going to stay that way. This is wrong.

We should be able to drive our cars through the Brandenburg Tor then park them here, on Unter den Linden, the most famous street in Berlin. This is the road where the Nazi government cut down the trees for their marches and rallys. And what did the communists put back: the trees.

The fact that central Berlin is a nice place to walk and cycle is not due to to planning or well-meaning government, it is due to WWII and the repressive, communist, socialist state that followed, and a failure of the FDR to push through the changes this city needs to be a modern European city. After the war, we rebuilt our centre, to give us Broadmead, Lewin's Mead and the Queen's Square dual carriageway. What did Berlin do? Let the pedestrians and cyclists go back to the 19th century on their pre-motor toys.

This may be Europe, but it is not Britain, and any attempt to encourage walking or cycling in our streets must be opposed by the coalition as the EU trying to control our lives.