The "improved" Southwell Street Shared Space

There have -apparently- been complaints about this shared space. We don't know who, we don't see anything wrong with it except sometimes people get in the way of where we want to drive or park.

Whoever is complaining clearly must be walking or cycling, so not contributing to the national economy,

Yet they want things "improved". What improvements will help us? None.

Southwell street represents all that is inner Bristol. A road on a hill, old houses, the pavements turned into parking and barrier in the way to discourage people from walking and cycling. To attempt to change this is not just an attack on the hospital, it is attack on modern British society!

Censorship

There's an article up on the independent about the war on motorists.

Our fellow travellers, the Association of British Drivers added a comment:

Whilst we are pleased that the penny is beginning to drop with regard to taxation, it is sad that the author refers to driving as a "bad habit", when it is in fact merely a means of going about one's business.

We agree! Accordingly, we replied stating this fact:

We in the bristol traffic project agree. Some people view us driving our van around a narrow city, while texting one hand and sounding the horn at pedestrians and cyclists in our way as "antisocial", our activities, as the ABD says, "a bad habit". Yet as they say, this is the only way to get on with your business. When you are held up by pedestrians on a zebra crossing, of course you have to sound your horn. When you are held up behind a cyclist, of course you have to text ahead to your destination to warn them you'll be late. Yet still this anti-motorist country, with its zebra crossings, its traffic lights and its double yellow lines persecutes us.

And what's happened? Our comment has been "flagged for review" and it is no longer on the site. It has been censored by an online press that cannot accept the truth!

update: we posted asking why praising the ABD for being the voice of van driver is being suppressed and the ABD replied

the Independent is just trying to ensure comments are reasonable and well balanced. Whilst comments like those you made may have been acceptable during the last decade, the country has moved on to more reasoned debate.

That's good. We thought somebody had felt we were taking the piss. That happens all the time.

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.