This is lovely, a coming together of our favourite subjects
The Medina Dairies delivery van, YA55VDY, parked over the stokes croft "cycle lane", just up from the post office van and another white van. Keeping the croft free of tax-dodgers, and bringing Yoghurt-related produce to paying customers
After last week's shocking photographs of militant cyclists trying to reclaim their cycle paths, it was reassuring to see some of the city's van drivers striking back
Who is up on the bike paths of Abbeywood Today, making it clear what the North Fringe cycle paths are for? The white van FY04UYB
On the back, Adien, whose web site states their sustainability goals:
We will ensure that procedures and attitudes are in place to deliver an incident free working environment for our employees and those who come into contact with our operations.
We will endeavour to minimise the impact we have on the environment by use of sustainable material and processes.
Well, parking this far in ensures no driver-side wing mirrors will get clipped, so they pull that off, though the risk that a cyclist or push chair may try to get past on the other side -5 or 10 cm further in would have sorted that out.
As mentioned before, we are conducting an experiment to make sure that this area remains van friendly. "Trust, but verify", as they say.
South Gloucester Council have denied responsibility for enforcing the double yellow lines on this, so we checked to make sure that Filton police are on message, that they know the war on motorists has been lost. I think we can conclude from the fact that the Filton police hotline has an answering machine at the end of it that yes, some government changes have made their way to that part of the system.
We have won the war! Nobody will stand in our way!
We've been watching the Egypt uprising in fear. Pedestrians, taking over the flyovers, pushing vans and arguing with tanks. They do not know their place.
We've also been reading Cities and Insurrections, which covers the problem of how to design cities to prevent popular uprisings in them from working. You want distribution and better routes for police/army control than for the troublemakers. That's why we recognise that the goal for Northern Ireland's ongoing work to force cyclists to wear helmets isn't for safety, it's to stop the subversives being so mobile. NI has always been the cutting edge of UK policing, so progress here cheers up.
It's also why we understand the strategic goal of the North Fringe: a place so anti-walking and anti-cycling that no ukcuts projectors will be out hassling the shops here, or protesting anything. But to make sure, we have to discourage those people who do walk and cycle round here -for the safety of the state.
Which is why we were horrified when some anonymous person emailed us these shocking photographs of militant cyclists adding their own reflective and hi-viz markings to the new bollards at the MOD abbeywood site, the ones that achieved national fame after someone cycled into them in the snow.
Now on a flash photo, you can see that it (and the newly added blue bicycle marking) is visible. One query: why doesn't that sign properly say bicycles keep left?
Looking the other way, you can see at least a bicycle going up and down has been painted on one side of the pavement, and it is segregated.
And turning 180 degrees we can see how much less visible the old bollards were.
What to say? Just because you don't think the bollards are safe, doesn't mean people should take actions in to your own hands like this.
Since the crash and the negative publicity, S Gloucs council have put the blue signs on. Now if anyone crashes in to it it's their own fault for being in the wrong part of the path, going to fast, or not paying attention.
Yet as these photographs show, some people, even up in the North Fringe -our part of the city, as you get a hint of from the vast MoD car park to the side of the photos- there are troublemakers out there trying to make cycle city facilities somewhere where cyclists actually welcome.
Yesterday we mentioned that one problem with parking on the abbeywood cycle paths was not just the new bollards, it was harassment from cyclists. Here, sadly, we have an example.
This is V134DYC, a lorry minding its own business, parked on one of the Abbeywood cycle/pedestrian paths. By getting almost entirely on the path it is not interfering with any passing traffic.
Yet our cyclist reporter felt that there was some need to criticise the driver, to take a photograph of them, "for the database".
Fortunately, our lorry driver sees their gambit and raises it by pointing out that they too have a camera in their lorry, and the cyclist looked pretty silly -which, coming from a professional hi-viz person, are pretty harsh words.
We aren't convinced that the driver saying that Hitler used to disappear troublemakers like our cyclist report actually wins the argument.
Godwin's Law implies that whoever reverts to analogies with Germany's National Socialist government of 1934-1945 automatically loses the argument.
It's not clear that that government did persecute cyclists except when their religious or political beliefs were not aligned with that of the government.
It's not clear how this possibly incorrect bit of history deals with the problem that now there is nothing to stop cyclists taking videos and photographs of vehicles in their way and sticking it up online.
Having looked at the bollards, we are not sure whether we support them. Not because they can injure cyclists, but because they prevent motor vehicle access to the bike paths. We paid for them, we should get to use them!
Here, for example, is a South Gloucester Council lorry S764THY making use of one of the Abbeywood bike paths to park their lorry somewhere while they do some work on a roundabout.
If you look at this area, the double yellow lines mean that the shared pedestrian/bike path is the only place anyone can park. Yet bollards and harassment by cyclists -more on this another day- mean that the council and tax-dodgers are, together, removing our parking options.
Experiment #2011-1: we are using this path as an experiment to see if the war on the motorist really is over in S Gloucs, by reporting vehicles here to the authorities ( parklegally@southglos.gov.uk ) and making sure that nothing happens. If anyone gets told off or ticketed: the war on motorists is not over.
So far, we are pleased to see that S Gloucs parking services are happy not to care about this path, with this reply twelve days after we reported the issue:
Thank you for highlighting this problem to our department, however our Civil Enforcement Officers are not able to deal with (UNNECESSARY OBSTRUCTIONS) under the current Legislation Traffic Management Act 2004 (TMA04), this offence still comes under Police Officers or Police Community Support Officers who only have the powers of Enforcement for this Offence.
I have also passed your complaint onto our street care department who are in charge of highways maintenance and asked them to investigate this issue and to please remove this vehicle from its obstructive position.
Hope you find this information helpful and should you notice any other vehicles parked illegally with in South Gloucestershire please don’t hesitate to contact our department.
We are now continuing our experiment on new vehicles to see if S Gloucs police are on our side or not. The fact that Filton police station appears to be manned only by an answering machine bodes well.
We've sent the team to the North Fringe for a few days, to see what the fuss is about regarding Abbeywood and Bollards. In order to cover this accurately, we have had to recruit someone on a bicycle, for which we apologise. If it makes the audience feel better, they think they are being paid to be a courier for paperwork. Normally we just pay them to carry old phone books around, as it slows them down, and about once a week they have to deliver high-strength home-grown Montpelier herbs, an action which would get them put away for 20-25 years if they were caught with them, a thought which always cheers us up when we send them out.
Returning to Abbeywood, some people may recall the fuss made last year when someone cycled into a bollard that S Gloucester council stuck in. These are white bollards with a white stripe, no hi-viz markings, and on a path that is only intermittently illuminated. Well, yes, a crash was inevitable. Yet we agree with some the comments made in the Evening Post and Daily Mail -while we sympathetic to the lecturer's injuries, they have only themselves to blame for being on a bicycle.
We actually saw some of the bollards going in, but didn't think it was interesting enough to cover. Now that we see it is, we can go through the back records and find the video.
Now that the bollards are here on the eastern side of the MoD land, we are disappointed to see that it does so little to discourage cycling. Instead our courier can travel down the bike path at speed, slow down for the road, where apparently off camera someone driving a car actually gives way to the bicycle, hinting this green paint is giving some mistaken impression about rights of way to MoD staff.
Last year, this path had a proper anti-bicycle gate, which the subversives used to ignore by going through the vegetation, forcing the MoD deployment of an anti-vegetation-cycling feature, before they went and removed it, eventually adding this new bollard.
The bollard does not stop people cycling to the North Fringe. The only way to prevent that would be to improve A4174 traffic by widening it and banning bicycles from the ring road, while downgrading any adjacent bike paths. We may have some good news there, in a week or two.
For now, this side of Abbey Wood does little to discourage cycling. We shall visit the other side, which was where the crash took place to see if it is any better.
Our next video of the tour of the RPZ shows the Stokes Croft end of Dighton Street - Jamaica Street. Again, it's Walthamization is ongoing. This road marks the border between Kingsdown and the part of the city where work takes place -and that means vans and vehicles: important people.
First they nip past The Bell pub, then head down Jamaica Street towards Dighton Street. One of the park cars tries to do the pull-out-no-signal trick but the cyclist is pootling along so slowly they avoid getting hit, no need for the driver to try the sorry-didn't-see-you gambit. The cyclist, so stressed by this decides to head back for the Bell Pub on the off-road bike path. This feature has been here for about 20 years, the widening of the pavement to allow this is probably treasured in Bristol cycling history.
After a short distance it drops down to the road where the cyclist would encounter the van parked at the end. However, today they can't get there because there is a roadwork sign in the middle of the bike path.
What does our cyclist do? Instead of getting off the bicycle and walking, the way they should, they do something worse. They pick up the sign and throw it to one side! Then the brick that was there to hold the sign in place!
Someone driving a car could be in a collision with the roadworks. Whoever put this sign up was clearly thinking about the safety of motorists, yet by moving the sign to one side they could create a collision. This is selfish and dangerous!
Shocking footage of an entire family's collection of bicycles, up in the North Fringe, at a secret (as in "official secret protected by the official secrets act") location.
What's surprising is that they managed to get there, despite the efforts of S Gloucs council, who strategically positioned a lorry over the bike path to stop anyone who wasn't bold enough to cycle along a dual carriageway from getting to the bike racks.
Hartcliffe Way, the southern bit of the A4174 ring road. Now, with the cycle city program, with a bike path along it.
How will the people use it? Well, we don't care about pedestrians or cyclists, because, well, they aren't real people.
What we are pleased to see is Tiley Motors of Hartcliffe Way recognising that anyone walking or cycling is deficient, but there is an obvious solution: get a car.
Tiley's have parked their budget vehicles on the bike/foot path, so attracting the attention of the underpeople, while clearly making the point that for just £795 the poor unfortunates could get themselves a motor and join the grown-ups.
Now, when the cycle city money turned out to only be 4X that spent on a single slip road to the Cribbs Causeway shopping mall, yet these new paths offer shopping opportunities, then even we cannot denounce this cycling city initiative any more. Tiley of Bristol! We salute you!
Another issue we had with the Russel Square area is that this marked a clear attempt to bring cycle-friendly infrastructure into the inner city, rather than, as in Bristol, leave it places where we hope it doesn't get in the way of anyone important.
First, signs, encouraging cyclists to find their way round
Full green bike paths, with raised kerbs to make it slightly harder to accidentally park in them.
Junctions for the bicycles themselves, with no cyclists dismount signs
And here, worst of all, an "except cycles" get-out clause on a one way street. Not "except cycles, taxis and van drivers", but cycles only.
What is really depressing here is that the Camden council staff behind such schemese visited the proposed GBBN Whiteladies Road development, the one that will help motorists driving in to town by removing the zebra crossings in our way and making cycling more dangerous. We know this as we infiltrated the event, keeping track of what people were saying, and whether complaints were being dismissed -as expected- or actually listened to, and tried to slip our own ideas in to distract them.
On the topic of that camden council cycle team visit, can we extend our apologies to the woman driving the green nissan micra down WL road who was held up for fifteen seconds by the funny bicycle people. Yes, you were right to beep your horn at us for not being in the bike lane, even though cyclists don't have to cycle in them, they can cycle two abreast legally, and the traffic jam ahead meant you weren't losing any time. Yes, you were right to complain that eight people on bicycles at 08:50 on a weekday were causing utter chaos, which is why the local council had arranged the cyclist visit to during the quiet period mid-morning. Sadly, some of the cycle troublemakers had spotted the flaw there and pressured for a rush hour visit, which is why you were held up by three people cycling two-abreast down whiteladies road.
Because we were trying to blend in with these subversives we did have to come up and argue with you while you were stopped at the traffic lights, as anything else would have aroused the suspicions of the rest of the group.
Sorry!
We didn't really mean to call you a selfish idiot who would clearly benefit from getting out of their car and trying to do some exercise! It's your right to get fat and stay unfit by driving to work and back, stopping only in the supermarket to buy ready-to-fry fast foods.
We didn't really want to dispute the niceties of the highway code and the fact that nowhere in it does it say "bicycles should be banned from our roads" -because like you, we think it ought to! It was just something we had to do to blend in!
One of our cities unicyclists was complaining last month about some barriers up on the approach to the Muller road bicycle buildout
What about the blockage at the lower end? The side of the lane is marked out with concrete blocks, and there's a bloody great "bear right" sign across the entrance. It's hard to tell whether this is just to prevent cars from parking/driving in the cycle lane, or if the whole thing is supposed to be closed. However, the effect is to make it quite dangerous to enter the lane at that end, even at the relatively low speed and high manoeuvrability of a unicycle. I can't imagine trying to use the lane on two wheels.
Well, we are pleased to note that the works are removed, there is a keep right arrow for cars and an arrow on the ground for bicycles
This provides them with a safe approach once they get past the car transporter parked in the bus stop
Something that appears to be a semi-permanent fixture of the road.
We loves Abbey Wood, S. Gloucs. Our part of the city. The council provides those off-street bike lanes which the cycle campaigners demand, missing the point that their purpose is to provide parking
Here it provides it for the car RV10LZF apparently associated with Western Power Distribution -whose vans are parked off-camera to the right of the photo below. Everyone is apparently working on some electricity substation issues behind the MoD site.
Parking over a bike/pedestrian path like this is not just about getting your car off the road, or away from the double yellows, it's about making a statement. It says I am important, you are not. Which is why we are very worried about some worrying emails we are are being forwarded from the MOD-land. Very worried indeed. More another day. Today though, we, the motorist, are in charge. First we give them their bike lanes, their pavements, to get them out the way, then we use them too. Lovely.
The very street names "Horsefair" and "Haymarket" remind us how at one time our ancestors, the city's gentry, went about their business on horseback, generously helping the city's economy by providing jobs for your ancestors, the city's poor, grooming the horses and cleaning the streets after them.
It's still the case today, as we motorists create useful employment in a range of workplaces from car-washes to hospitals. But the respect has gone. Even the city council will only allow tax-dodging cyclists and pedestrians the freedom to turn from Haymarket into the Horsefair.
Therefore we admire the driver of S988RVM who has asserted his ancient right to stop where he wishes in the centre, while forcing any cyclists to dismount as a demonstration of respect.
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!
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.
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.
The Coronation Road bike path is a source of excellent photographs. It is also an item of regular contention in the comments section of evening post articles, the key comment being "why aren't you tax dodging cyclists using it instead of holding us up", apart from when the comment is "why are you cycle terrorists trying to run us pedestrians over all the time"
Well, we sent someone on a bicycle (it's OK, it was a Sunday) to ride the route. At the Bedminster End, we can see some tourist signs clearly marking the split between the pedestrian area (on the right), and the cyclist route -the faded markings to the left.
The approaching cyclist is on the wrong side, though the presence of the Bristol Traffic van (we were unloading the bicycle) may have been a factor. Note, however, the new signs up on the walkers side showing them the route to the Malago stream/footpath/bike path. We aren't entirely sure why anyone walking or cycling would cross just there, rather than at the pelican crossing right behind the camera, and we aren't convinced that signage was something this path was short of.
Anyway, on to the path. As you can see, the presence of large trees down the centre of the path does complicate things, as do the lamp posts, the road signs and other pavement features. Fortunately, for both us drivers and those cyclists, there no 20 mph signs. This road is deliberately kept at 30 mph, because the council recognises it is a key traffic route in and out the city, especially for somerset commuters coming in on the A370, A369 or even A4/Avonmouth Road. Since the council stole the Queen's Road dual carriageway, this is a faster route to drive to the Templemeads area from the nice places out of town.
Because of its critical nature as a key traffic route, it is essential that cyclists stay out the way, yet many of them don't. This video of the cycle route shows that anyone complaining about it is a whining troublemaker who should be grateful for what they get doled out for free. It also shows that they have forgotten the time when the path stopped at every tree and diverted them roadward, not pavementward. This not only annoyed the cyclists, but could inconvenience us drivers too, so we are slightly more pleased that now it is the pedestrians who are held up.
The big problem is the trees, not only do they force cyclists to swerve into the pedestrians lane at speed, they hide the signs in the middle of the path behind them, and could increase risk at night, especially from unlit cyclists. Fortunately, the many street lights positioned in the middle of the lane reduce the risk of a cyclist not seeing any of the many pieces of street furniture. Furthermore, there are now banners up round the city encouraging cyclists not to cycle without lights to reduce the risk of them hitting any of the trees here.
Looking back, we see no alternative option for this road. As we have seen from the Muller Road build-out which attempts to provide a safe cycle route on a main thoroughfare, that just creates congestion on a key access route for the city.
A better option would be to remove this route, and ban bicycles from Coronation Road. Even if they do cycle up the path, we know later on they will be in our way, in town. Saying "No bicycles welcome here", sets everyone expectations up clearly, but this this path only does it halfheartedly.
