Safety in Numbers? More like tension

One theory is that as more people cycle, the more we, the important people, will expect bicycles. That's true, but it doesn't mean we welcome them. Instead it just makes us more frustrated.

Take this video of MJ06OSJ, going up Cotham Hill. They've been held up by a line of bicycles, and when they do finally a chance to overtake, there's another bicycle coming in the other directi0n. What to do?

As the video shows, the correct action is: continue anyway. If you've been held up by one bicyclist, you may as well punish another with a near death experience. It may discourage them from trying the same trick next time.

Optimising the School Run

Interesting scene here, not one we've noticed before.



This the Cotham Hill/St Michaels Hill mini roundabout, one of the high points of the city, and wonderfully representative. This is an excellent example of how the removal of traffic lights permits an efficient traffic flow.

But today, cars aren't exiting Cotham Hill. At 0:10 you can see why. The parent on the school run has opted not to pull over into the cycle lane, or even drive to keep-clear area in front of the school. Instead they just stop at the top of the road, let the kid out, a child who can then safely walk to the traffic island, and then over one more lane before reaching a zebra crossing, then get to school. The parent can get to their destination without any detour, without even struggling to get their car out of the bike lane and into the main car lane.

This action encourages physical activity in the child, and reduces congestion near the school. It also enable the child to cross the road safely. At 0:18-0:20 you can hear one of the vehicles behind expressing their concerns over this action, by sounding the horn. But if they were on the school run, why not let their kid out at the same time?

co-existence

Some of the cyclists think that if there are enough of them on our roads the rest of society will suddenly welcome them, it will suddenly become safer, and that everyone will happily dance around singing Dutch songs. Well, we have some bad news there

The increase in the number of people cycling, combined with the rises in petrol's costs, merely makes us angrier and more resentful

It's not enough they aren't paying to use the roads, they hold us up. The more bicycles, the more we get held up. We can experiment with this by secretly instrumenting cyclists and then collecting the videos, and seeing if conflict increases or decreases over time.

Here we see white van YB06BDO being held up by a bicycle as it turns into Cotham Hill from Aberdeen Road. It stops. What does the rider have to complain about? At least this driver wasn't on the phone.


He stopped, polite discussion followed. None of this road-rage stuff. A friendly city. Why do they complain so?

A local driving school discusses the highway code

Our coverage of the anti-car streets of Horfield generated some comments from 2nd2none driving school, who seemed to misinterpret our photos of one of their instructors cars parked on the pavement as some form of criticism. Nothing could be further from the truth! We are merely jealous that the instructor who lives in the area has some empty pavement outside their house that they can call their own. In the inner city we can spend twenty minutes driving round looking for some space on a buildout or zebra crossing, yet in the suburbs, there is a bit of pavement every household can call their own. The only time we've ever said anything mildly critical of this driving school was when we caught them parking legally in Montpelier, because that's failing to teach people the local skills. Robbies driving school never gets caught doing that.

First, they say:

by this comment you dont actually drive and are simply a busy body with nothing better to do than ride around complaining about trivial things like this.

Bristol Traffic is a community project that exists to document, not take sides. You appear to have taken our coverage as some form of criticism, for which we must apologise.

Anyway, the driving school made some valid points, the first one being:

we teach our pupils to park correctly but anyone can clearly see that these roads are far to small to do that.
...
at times parking on the pavement is unavoidable as to keep the road clear for other users.

Exactly. There is the theory "don't park on places you aren't allowed to", and practice "park where you need to" -and its the difference between the two which we find fascinating, and why driving school and L-plated cars get extra coverage that normal cars don't usually merit. We aren't criticising, merely observing and documenting.

Now, -and this is where it gets interesting- some people replies to the driving school's comments, not agreeing with them, but instead pointing out the bit of the highway code that discusses parking on pavements! This is shocking! Even more so when at more than one of the people replying claimed to be a contributor to the site! We shall have to pay more attention to who we let submit photographs and videos, as some of them clearly hold different opinions from our own -and the rest of the tax paying motorists in the city who subsidise their pedestrian lifestyle. See that? Pedestrian. It's come to mean "slow". There's a hint there.

Fortunately, the driving school replied and made a key point that wins the argument:

as for the highway code, this is a rule book that was written in 1931 with approximately 2 million cars on the road and the motor car being a non essential commodity, not the 27 million cars that now exist on this small island. There simply isnt enough road space for driving or parking and Bristol has one of the worst managed road systems of any city's.

This is precisely what we think, which is why we exist to document how utterly out of touch the highway code is, such as its complete lack of exemptions for anyone like us doing deliveries in town.

Look at this white van, WP57WGW, parked over a zebra crossing at the bottom of Cotham Hill December 8 2010! Zebra crossings and belisha beacons are a 1930s idea -time to move on!

Look at N&C deliveries truck N6MOV, who know that unloading pallets takes priority over solid white "do not cross lines" and double yellow lines alongside them on the Cotham Hill on December 8. Yellow lines? Obsolete! Time to move on!

Again -what a coincidence- here on Cotham Brow, December 8, Falafel King's delivery van WR58GWG is parked up on the pavement on double yellow lines. Yes, the old highway code says you must not do this, but if you need to get falafels into van, what else can you do? Double yellow lines? Pavements wide enough for pedestrians? Obsolete! Time to move on!

We close, however, with this video of the streets in Horfield round where the 2nd2none car was spotted, giving viewers from outside the city a harsh introduction to this area's problems. The roads aren't wide enough for cars to park two abreast, and the alternative -park on one side walking a bit- would involve walking a bit. As for double parking -forget it! These aren't the wide streets of Clifton.

The 2nd2none driving school must feel so proud as they drive round these streets, seeing what may be many former happy customers, not only having got past the test, but parking in the streets the way people in our city really need to do -even in the parts of town where there are still spaces on the other side of the road.

And of course, if you want to get new customers for your motor vehicles, there is the tilleys tactic, namely co-opting the bike path, footpath or pavement to sell your wares. Every pedestrian whose route is obstructed by a driving school vehicle will realise that driving not only gets them round town better, it lets them park conveniently afterwards, and so will be more tempted to spend the money to learn to drive.

Roundabout work #2: 08:17

Once the mercedes that blocked vehicles getting off the roundabout had cleared it, vehicles wanting to get onto St Michael's Hill could pull out, and here see the correct tactic: stop cars getting onto the roundabout. It's the only way to reduce demand, and so ensure the junction clears.

Which vehicle do we see here? Yes, its YA55VDY, the cult van of Bristol Traffic

Notice how the vehicle following this car is also in the mini-roundabout, but it hangs back to actually allow pedestrians to cross at the traffic island. Of course, this will prevent vehicles turning right to pull out, which is a bit selfish, but it does allow the roundabout to clear by reducing vehicle ingress rates to match that of egress rates.

The key point here is that it shows that those fellow-motorist-activist groups who advocate removing traffic lights are either missing the point or hiding the truth. On a junction without lights -like this one- the only way to get through is to be aggressive: drive the big vehicles, the 4x4, or even better, the battered big-vehicle, such as the white van. Now we, as  white-van drivers, are happy with this, but we think the harsh truth should be discussed in the open, not discovered once they remove lights from the city centre: whoever values their vehicle least wins.

Roundabout work #1: 08:15

08:15 to 08:16 on the top of St Michael's Hill.

First a car with a Montpelier-MOT wingmirror duct-taped into place. Someone just horned it as to get to this part of the junction (see on the dashed lines) it had to sprint up the oncoming traffic lane.

But by doing so it gets to pull out where the mercedes stuck in the middle of the mini roundabout has left a gap, follow the van through to the right and hope that there isn't anyone crossing the zebra crossing, which would block up the roundabout some more.

It does clear, the gap allows a car coming up Cotham Hill to pull out and turn right into St Michael's Hill.

Or it would, if the Mercedes hadn't stayed where it was.

Do you see what's wrong here? By staying back on the mini roundabout, by allowing cars out of Cotham Road, the school-run-driver is, sadly, making things worse. All the vehicles who are held up on Cotham Hill will see this and drive more considerately.

Pavement blocking: does it help us motorists

October's bike park movement on Cotham Hill was apparently to help the local cafe -the one that is being repainted as "manga manga" have some outdoor seating. Well, we don't know or care about that, but one thing that does interest us is whether the newly positioned bike parks do enough to discourage walking?

The combination of some seemingly accidentally badly placed bike racks with some shopping signs put out for passing cars does make it very hard indeed to walk across this road, and so should discourage students from doing so. FirstBus and we motorists will benefit from this, obviously.

But does it work? We can still see people trying to squeeze past all the furniture.

The bike racks make cyclists feel welcome, even if the one we see is heading towards a junction which we hope the GBBN proposals will make impossible for them to cross.

Furthermore the other side of the road is still open to pedestrians, and if they can't skateboard down the pavement, they just switch to the road instead.

It may make walking less pleasant, but it isn't enough to stop the locals and students from getting in our way.

YA55VDY pulls out

People have been mailing us, where is the Yoghurt Van YA55VDY? Has some disaster struck Bristol's supply of dairy goods. The answer is no, the clocks changing just altered its schedule.

It doesn't pull off without indicating from the buildout by Whiteladies Gate until 08:10 now, helping to remind the driver of the honda SUV why buying a vehicle that may survive a collision with a white van was a good decision that makes school runs safer.


Note how the driver actually waves our (sadly cycling) reporter. The proposed GBBN changes may make it harder for this van, as the buildout may not be so large. While we can't see from the design whether or not bollards are planned, we fear the worst.

Cotham Hill Summit Problems

The final question about the showcase bus route proposals is will the removal of a zebra crossing at the bottom of Cotham Hill and a dedicated turning lane help school run parents turning off at Cotham Hill?

Not if this video of a weekday morning is consistent. There's a jam all the way up the hill from Oakfield Road.

Sometimes there is less of a jam, and then parents can safely pull over onto the bike lane without their fear of their children being hit by a cyclist as they drop them off at one of the local schools (St Peter and Paul's RC is the closest), then carry on to the parent's final destination without any detour.

This is safe, provided the cyclists don't interfere. Today you can see that our secretly-instrumented tax-dodger swerved out of the bike lane, into the tax-payer's lane, forcing the car W153KDA to pull out aggressively to avoid being stuck behind them.

Whiteladies Road : offpeak issues

We sent our expendable cyclist on downhill run of Whiteladies Road on a Saturday afternoon. Note people with the orange bags. That means small-revenue-sainsburys shoppers, either locals or students. The supermarket relies on a high turnover of these poor pedestrian people to compensate for a lack of parking. However, these people then get in way of us who are driving to or from proper supermarkets.

Put differently: the pedestrians who walk and shop locally not only take up space in the supermarkets they go to, they slow down shoppers who shop elsewhere.

What this video does shows is that at off peak weekend times the congestion is caused by people walking around. Therefore, the GBBN proposal to remove the zebra crossing seen at 1:32 (and implicitly, crank back the crossing time allocated on the lights at 1:28, because now there will be a full sequence scheduling right and left turns as well as straight on) may benefit at this time of the week: the off peak times.

But rewind a bit. Note how all the cars pulling out from any side road rely on the goodwill of cars on Whiteladies Road to get out. Because you may as well while you are waiting -you would hope someone else was as generous back- and because it costs you nothing. If the pedestrian crossing options were cranked back, then not only does it make it harder for pedestrians and cyclists to cross the road -which clearly we are happy with- then it will also be harder for cars to cross the road, unless someone added more traffic lights at these side roads. And we don't want that, do we?

This makes us think that part of the FirstBus GBBN schedule is not just to improve scheduling by removing pedestrian/cyclists holding up cars and buses, its secretly trying to stop cars getting across the road too, because we take advantage of the stopped traffic. There's a price see. And, because the parked cars will be removed, it's harder for you to edge out when making a turn. Instead of being safely protected from bicycles by the first row of parked cars, now you either need to hang back in the side road (as if) or pull out in front of the bus/bike lane and have people whine at you for being in their way.

Returning to the video, note at 1:40 the car double parked on Cotham Hill forcing the other cars past it. Sometimes you need to do that, park next to your destination, nothing wrong there. But if the proposal to remove the zebra crossing goes away, vehicles turning into Cotham Hill from Whiteladies Road, especially those coming down the hill, would pull in faster. The zebra crossing is a form of traffic calming. Without it, it would become more dangerous to double park your car in a popular shopping street, or to overtake such double parked cars.

Again, this is why we are in a moral dilemma regarding the Proposed Bus Route. The key benefit for us would be if it reduced the number of pedestrians in our way, but even we recognise that a limited number of pedestrians actually helps cross traffic. 

The cult of YA55VDY and the impact of the Whiteladies Showcase Bus Route

Mid life crises. What do do? Sports cars? Mamils? Fixies. No: stalking. It's under-respected, and what the Internet, from Google to Facebook was made for.

We in the B.T. Project have taken up stalking one vehicle, and are pursuing it round the city. YA55VDY: the van that we are proud to have never ever seen parked even vaguely legally.

It's more than just a protest against anti-car, anti-van features, this takes dedication. Here, for example, you could park parallel to the double yellow lines, unload safely and pull out without having to back up blind into Picton Street first. But no, the driver has chosen to park 1m away from the kerb, echelon style, to make a statement. Deliveries matter.

We also have some footage from one of our secretly-instrumented cyclists going down Cotham Hill -you can see the distinctive shape of the van enables our tax-dodger to recognise the vehicle from a distance. This van is now famous!

Now, what's inside the van? We couldn't be bothered to drive over and look, but one of the cycle activists we were haranging here in Monty did -Captain Bikebeard says "yoghurt". Now we know.

In fact, this van is now so famous it deserves its own Facebook fan page. One van, one driver, prepared to stand up against an oppressive state by refusing to park where they make him, instead always -even if it means going out of his way- parking "illegally", as if the state gets to decide where is and isn't legal to park your van.

A few days later, we see it now on the double yellows on Whiteladies Road. 

The showcase bus route proposes changes here, so where the van is parked to unload will become a dedicated left turn into Cotham Hill, with its own light sequence. The Cotham Hill zebra crossing will go away, be replaced by some lights which will allow us to drive through while pedestrians wait to cross (as if we didn't do that already), while the addition of a new lane and pedestrian refuge will make walking across the road harder -and well-nigh impossible for any parent with bike plus child trailer or tagalong, which our secretly instrumented report appears to be doing.

This is why we have mixed feelings about the showcase bus route proposal.

Against:

• Removes commuter parking from Whiteladies Road.
• Encourages bicyclists to cycle up and down the road

Pro

• Increases short stay parking on Whiteladies Road.
• Removes a zebra crossing used during the rush hour by slow-moving children and students.
• Adds a dedicated feed-in lane to Cotham Hill.
• The feed in lane will suddenly abandon the cyclists from the safety of a dedicated lane to a situation where they have to merge right into the Whiteladies Road lane just at the same time that all the Redland Mum traffic turning left is trying to swerve left to get into this lane, so putting off the cyclists from every trying to commute by bicycle ever again.

One of our concerns here is that, in the age of austerity, we don't see why any money needs to be spent so that cars can cut in from Whiteladies Road to Cotham Hill. We force our way through the zebra crossing anyway, so all it does is actually increase the likelihood that we get held up by a red light; removes the option of turning right from Cotham Hill to Whiteladies Road, and makes it harder to get a lorry through the corner.

Whiteladies Showcase bus route: the implications

Up the top of the hill, we will lose all day parking, so the commuters suffer.

But in exchange, short-stay parking, so it's a trade off.

Where there may be a clear benefit for us drivers is at Whiteladies Gate, where we have common interest with FirstBus: not being held up pedestrians. Today, inbound traffic gets held up not just by cyclists and traffic, but by one or two cars turning left into Cotham Hill having their turn blocked by pedestrians on the zebra crossing.

Even on a quiet sunday afternoon, hordes of people just walking are stopping drivers getting to important places. Similarly, cars trying to head into town are held back from making progress to the next traffic jam by the pelican crossing, which schedules lots of time for schoolkids and other low-priority pedestrians to cross Whiteladies Road at a crossing we have covered previously.

This is unacceptable -so we are glad to see that the traffic planning department has recognised that the war on the motorist means putting the pedestrian in their place.

More subtly, given that our vehicles too have been known to hold up bus traffic, we are smugly pleased that these proposals seem more focused on pushing the tax-dodgers out of the way of buses than doing anything to make driving into the city by car hard. A lot of important people live up this hill, and they have to get in somehow.

Proof that parking restrictions create traffic problems

We recently nipped over to Cotham Hill was to see if another rumour -parking restrictions removed- was true.

And yes, you can see, while they are resurfacing this road there are no limited waiting markings on the right-hand side of the photo, no double yellows on the other, even the zebra-crossing zig zags are gone.

And look! No vans forced to park on either pavement, leaving the approaching pedestrian to walk down the pavement without getting in our way on the road (merely the pavement, of course), no congestion caused by delivery vans forced to park half on the road, half on the pavement, no meandering cyclists in our way.

This provides clear proof that the cause of congestion is not traffic lights, the way our fellow travellers, the Drivers Alliance, or bus lanes, the way our-man-in-whitehall so believes. No, it is the restrictions on drivers parking where they need to that causes traffic problems in British cities!

Cotham Hill bike parking update

Last month we were pleased to see some bike parking points being removed from this area, so we nipped down to make sure there was somewhere for our van. Sadly, no.

Two new bike stands have appeared across the junction, which, along with the three street signs make it impossible to park on this build-out.

Looking at the original site of the bike racks -two bike stands have gone away, but two were replaced, and a van-unfriendly bollard inserted. All the bollards are now in use as sign-mounts

We also found out why the bike stands were moved. The cafe needed some space for tables. That's the green shop all whitewashed windows, which hasn't re-opened since its extended summer break.

Insensitive Parking on Cotham Hill

It's not often that we criticise vehicles for parking badly on the pavement, especially white vans, but today we must mention the PN58PPO Nationwide Van Hire van whose rear-end is poking out the back of the former-petrol-station-now-car-park on Cotham Hill, our very own "front-line" in the war on motorists.


It has forced KU59DLJ to swerve into the road while driving up the pavement to its parking space.


The fact that KU59DLJ's indicators do not appear to be working made this a dangerous manoeuvre.

Cotham Hill update: Fredwood Forestry takes our side

We went back to Cotham Hill to see if the bike racks had been taken away, or whether we, the citizens of the city, were forced to discourage walking or cycling ourselves.

A van with the Del Monte man hat was out this morning, but the camera was playing up, so no photo.

What we do have is Monday's van, AG07DVK. Together with VF55GYX and another van with the Del-Monte hat in it, it ensures the uphill bike lane is unusable every weekday morning, and even pedestrians have a hard time getting down here.

What you can't appreciate from these photos is the van is parked just up on the rise of the east-facing hill, so all cars coming up the hill will be forced to swerve into the oncoming bicycle lane precisely when the sun is directly in their eyes. This ensures that when they run over a cyclist they can say "The sun was in my eyes", so downgrading the event to an accident. We like it.

Subtle.

Congratulations, then, to Fredwood Forestry, for their contribution to our city.

Cotham Hill: the front line

Cotham Hill is one of the front line roads in the war on motorists. An important route on the weekday school run for parents, it also tries to make bicyclists and pedestrians feel welcome. Hence the conflict.

Some people are trying to stop this, and here we must praise VF55GYX, who has parked on the uphill bike lane/dotted yellow lines three days in the past week between 08:00 and 08:30.

That shows dedication to discouraging cyclists not just cycling up the hill -where it is much harder to get round them, but also heading downhill, as now they need to worry about important motor vehicles swerving into their lane.

Together, this may make these people realise they are are not welcome here.

But will it be enough?

This why were are pleased to see these signs warning that the bike parking at the bottom of Cotham Hill is being removed. Here you can see the signs on the bike stands which are forcing the white van WP55NNM to park on double yellow lines, rather than this lovely buildout.

Looking the other way, you can see how this popular shopping street with 1h parking suffers from a lack of parking opportunities, but note that we will have to have the bollards removed to in order for shoppers cars to use the buildout, rather than the double yellow lines, which WN07WWE is forced to do.

Question is, if the bollards and the bike stands get removed, where do the signs trying to attract passing motorist traffic go?

Bristol Traffic and your privacy rights

A while back, we documented how selfish pedestrians trying to squeeze past Hampton House hospital staff cars parked on the pavement forced the BRI hospital van WR58UMS to drive down a bicycle only contraflow and then park half on the pavement, half on the yellow lines, and keep the door open to reduce the risk of any bicycle damaging their paintwork.

Our reporter also says that the driver warned "if a photo of them appeared on the web site, they would be prosecuted".

This raised an interesting question, one we raised with the Information Commissioners Office,  namely what are the data protection rules surrounding photographs of vehicles in public places.

We now have a response

From:  casework at ico.gsi.gov.uk

Date: Thu, Aug 19, 2010 at 11:22 AM
Subject: Data Protection Query[Ref. ENQ0341761]
To: bristol.traffic at gmail.com

19th August 2010

Case Reference Number ENQ0341761

Dear Sir/Madam

Thank you for your email.

In order to fall under the provisions of the Data Protection Act 1998 the data concerned must be personal data; that is data from which a living individual can be identified.  Vehicles and their registration numbers in isolation from any other information are not considered to be personal data.

As such its seems unlikely that the Data Protection Act 1998 will apply to the situation you outline.  You may need to ensure that you do not include images of the drivers when these pictures are taken as this could lead you into the area of data protection.

Obviously there may be other legal issues you will need to consider but these are not matters that this office could give you advice on.

I hope this clarifies the matter for you

Yours sincerely

Louise MacDonald

Lead Case Officer

 ____________________________________________________________________


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So there you have it. Cars with registration numbers yes, people on their own, OK, but photographs of the drivers with the reg nos, maybe. Interesting. We shall have to consider this. Good email signature.

Secret Cotham Hill Parking

We like Cotham Hill. Some interesting shops, you can go up it fast out of term time, and there usually somewhere to park. But not always. Sometimes you need to think outside the box. Or a least, think of a differently shaped box. A red one, with four wheels on the front, perhaps, like the Vectra KD03LRV.

Subtly positioned on the corner, there is still enough room for pedestrians to get past.

Looking at the other side, you can see that the council thoughtfully provided a drop down kerb on the buildout to assist with this parking option.

The real problem is the parking on the road is all short stay: one hour. It ensures that there is turnover, but if you want to spend some more time -say a quick session at the Cotham Hill pub- you can't use them. The pavement, well, you can park there as long as you want.