A brand new Urban Village

We are keeping an eye one some newly proclaimed subversives, the People's Cycling Front of South Gloucestershire, whose goal is for S Gloucs to have cycle paths that the Dutch won't laugh at.

They have denounced the new cycle paths of the Tailspin housing estate between Lockleaze and the MoD as something the Dutch will laugh at, which apparently they did.

Well, let's drive out and see, as we were worried that this estate may be encouraging alternative transport instead of the joys of the A4174 ring road of a weekday evening.

Next to the sign advertising a new way of live in a Brand new Urban Village, we see a photo of a family all cycling without helmets on the path beside the estate. There are no houses in the photo as it was taken "before". There is some text in the advert about how wonderful it will be, but the ageing VW Polo hides it.

Nearby, it has that Urban Village flavour -maybe even a taste of Montpelier- as a VW Golf parks up on the pavement, some student cycles by, and the 20 mph roadsign has been twisted to one side by a passing truck.

Round the corner, as the subversives noted, yes, there is a new cycling path which is about 40 cm higher than the old one.

What has changed since last week's denunciation is the give way signs for traffic crossing this cycle path have been removed.

Nothing to fear here then. Business as usual. No happy families will be using these paths to get to the city, or even as far as crashing into the bollards by the MoD.

We hear the Cycling Front are planning a kind of competition one lunch time next week to see who can ride the path, mountain bikes with or without suspension recommended. Keep an eye on their @cyclingfront twitter feed for news.

South Gloucestershire bollards: who are the subversives?

Yesterday, we showed photographs of militant cyclists taping reflective strips to camouflaged bollards by the MOD Abbeywood site. Today we see some more photographs, showing hi-viz tape going up too!

Like we said, we don't suspect anyone associated with the Bristol Cycling Campaign to have done this, as S Gloucs council has a process for dealing with those people:

1. There is a monthly cycling forum, to which the activist cycle and the area's cycling advocate drives.
2. The cycling campaigners complain while the council staff nod and draw doodles on their notepads.
3. The campaigners' complaints get ignored.
4. The council staff drive home to their nice houses, laughing.
5. The cyclists pedal home in the rain, wondering what went wrong.

No, this was done by criminals out there, acting without control, without checks and balances, without morals. 

Who could it be?

According to the anonymous supplier of the photographs it was the People's Cycling Front of South Gloucestershire

They are not to be confused with the South Gloucester Popular Cycling Front, who was shopping at the Sainsbury's superstore nearby at the time.

We are disappointed that such clearly dangerous people could get close to an MoD site without being arrested.

Have any other subversives been taking to the street in our fair city, harassing motorists, taxi and lorry drivers on their important missions, parents trying to get their children to school by car safely, street designers trying to improve the streets for all these people? Reporting of such outrages to the Bristol Traffic site are welcome, so we can document the fall of our city into lawlessness.

Criminal Attacks on the Abbeywood Bollards!

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.

We suspect the Cycle Embassy of Great Britain, or one of their minions.

Who else would threaten the safety of South Gloucester and Filton Town councils, and hence the whole country?