There are lots of theories about who torched the new Stokes Croft Tesco
Some squatters made petrol bombs and tried to torch the mini-mart in a protest against supermarkets.
Lots of drunk people reacting to the police blocking their road home.
A group of hardend "black hat" anarchists secretly infiltrated the city, created a riot and then retreated to a nearby pub, returning two weeks later to the Anarchist Bookfair to buy the Banksy memorial posters and then resell them on eBay.
An active service unit of Stokes Croft street food vendors torched it as any supermarket outlet selling chicken only five days past its best-before date would raise expectations excessively amongst their existing customer base.
We have a new one: Firstbus did it. Watch this video, taken before 18:00 on a weekday, to see why.
See how the vehicles coming from Bath Buildings only have time for the front two to pull out on red before the cars coming down from Arley Hill get out and block the junction. Then Cheltenham Road gets the green light, and all vehicles heading into the city get held up -including two FirstBus buses. What is happening?
The answer is, out of camera, a parked car is blocking the bus lane. This stops buses from getting through, and it stops any car coming off Arley Hill and heading left towards Ashley Road and the M32 nipping in to it and heading off to the motorway without being blocked in the tailback stemming from the bearpit.
This holds up cars, but for the buses it is worse: it holds up the entire schedule, on which they can pay financial penalties.
This then, is who has the most to lose from a Tesco on Cheltenham Road: FirstBus management, whose company will pay fines caused by short-stay shoppers parking in their bus lane, and whose bonuses and stock options will be threatened. These people had far more to lose than Slix or Ritas, far more to gain than the anarchists could make from reselling Banksy prints. This is why we believe that the police should study their CCTV camera footage for the signs of any FirstBus bus going down this road after 11pm. Normally all FirstBus buses would be in bed by then, so any bus going down the road is clearly full of FirstBus operatives, planning to create a riot, destroy a supermarket, and so avoid penalties for late bus schedules.
Field Operative "TH" emails this photo of trouble on Bond Street South, outside the new Future Inns Hotel/Phoenix Court BCC Offices heading towards the Underpass in Temple Way at 5:00pm 10th May.
Delivery driver in the Mercedes Van ends up with a Peugot 207 cutting across him. The 207 lost his passenger mirror in the process.
Just to add to the situation, the Bus Driver thinks he can follow other cars by mounting the Central Reservation kerb to pass...
Not enough room - One sandwiched 207!
We express our sympathies to WN60ZXD, and welcome them to now owning a Montpelier-style vehicle. We must remind FirstBus drivers, especially that of WX05RVK that their vehicles are wider than cars, and when they go up on raised pavements and reservations, the vehicle tilts a bit too.
To stop this problem in future, we propose an awareness course for car drivers, teaching them that vans have a tendency to pull out without warning, and that buses not only have blind spots, they may not be fully aware of the width of their vehicle. Just as London has a "don't undertake lorries that come up behind you at ASLs" campaign for cyclists, we propose a "don't get stuck where a FirstBus bus tries to drive over a central reservation to get past your collision with a van". We believe that such an awareness program would be more cost-effective and beneficial than a "how wide your bus is" course to FirstBus drivers.
The zebra crossing wars on whiteladies road are hotting up. The bus companies had put together a proposal to make it harder to walk over the road -replacing some zebra crossings with pelican crossings, and here, by Oakfield Road, moving the crossing away from "the line of desire" and zig-zagging it so as to stop anyone with bicycle from using them. By discouraging walking and cycling, those people who don't have cars now have no reason not to use FirstBus, so will be a revenue stream.
Sadly, the troublemakers -and we know who they are- pushed back, and this crossing will remain as is. What can we do? Well, FirstBus knows what to do, it's pretend the crossing isn't there. The more people realise that buses will go straight through it, the less tempted they will be to use the routes.
Congratulations, then to WX06OMO, for showing strength of will and not even bothering to slow down for the person standing by their bicycle waiting to cross this junction.
We don't like Buses here at Bristol Traffic. They drive slowly. They stop us driving in bus lanes. They are full of students and people who have some kind of misguided notion that taking public transport saves the environment, though since none of them have proper jobs First's pricing policy ensures that very few of them can afford to get on the buses nowadays.
We do, however, like bus stops, which are a great place to park. There used to be one here, at the conjunction of White Hart Steps, World's End Lane and Bellevue Crescent in Cliftonwood, but as you can see from the photo below, this is no more.
However, the eagle-eyed amongst you will notice that something is pinned to the lamp-post, which upon closer inspection turns out to be an application to reinstate the bus-stop. We urge you to write to the council and support this.
Someone sent us some photos of horses -and you know our feelings about them- blocking Park Street while some pedestrians argue with them. We aren't going to put them up as the process of anonymising the pictures is too tricky to do reliably, however it is depressing to see people on foot and horse slowing our van journeys round the city. Apparently over in London they even got in the way of some important people, which we feel is unfair reporting by the BBC. For us, the white van drivers of the city, every journey is critical to keeping this vast city alive, whereas some jolly to the theatre by some royal family members is just that: entertainment. Furthermore, we aren't sure that the royal family pay road tax, and you know our thoughts there: no road tax, no road rights.
It's interesting to hear the audience, especially the "off with their heads" chants. Presumably those are history students who do understand the traditional rituals of regicide in Europe, as practiced in Britain and more recently across the waters in France and elsewhere.
We don't do bias -we report the real issues of the city. Here we see a row of students waiting by a bus stop, all with their orange supermarket shopping bags. We don't care that they are government funded, because looking at the long term return on investment/tax revenue opportunties, they have more chance of paying their way than, say, old people with free bus passes and prescriptions. However, the students walk, they take buses, they get in our way.
We are grateful for the new governments plans to reduce the free cash future students will have, so reducing the likelihood of them shopping in supermarkets, or getting buses home afterwards.
If there is one thing we have complaints about, however, it is the policing, especially the horses and the helicopter. That helicopter is noisy! We understand now why over in Co. Armargh they used to shoot at them. It was to get some sleep.
Why is that unusual? Well, FirstBus are stopping buses coming past here from 18:30 onwards as it is too dangerous -the drivers keep being robbed. They may go through the area, but they won't stop. On the back of this bus is a mural encouraging people to walk. Sensitive that.
One more video from our tax dodging cyclist, who we sent on a mission to get crushed by a bus on Whiteladies Road. For some reason they survived.
Anyway, here is the video. Whiteladies Road from Lower Redland Road down to the triangle, Park Row and then towards Jamaica Street and Stokes Croft.
This just reinforces our previous conclusion: that during peak hours the causes of delays on our route are not pedestrians, they are in fact the big traffic jam around the Triangle. This time, continuing past the Triangle, we can see that the traffic sources there are in fact vehicles heading up Park Street or those coming in down Park Row. Which we believe is our inalienable right to do, and even with this bus network, we will continue to do.
Why then, do they want to mess around with the pedestrian crossings, the left turn by the downs into Redland Hill, or the right turn out of Cotham Hill -one that actually works well in peak hours because the pedestrians are triggering the crossings? That doesn't mean they shouldn't need a license, pay road tax and be insured, but that sometimes they have a place in our world. We just think there should be slightly less of them, and we should be exempt from stopping for them at zebra crossings.
Our last trip down Whiteladies road shows that on a weekend, yes, pedestrian shoppers did hold up through traffic. This implied that yes, the FirstBus/Showcase bus route plans to reduce pedestrian crossing options may benefit their schedules, but we were worried about the impact on us cars getting out from side roads.
This video is different as it's a visit by our expendable cyclist on a weekday morning, down the bus lane from Oakfield Road, and through the Triangle as far as University Road, where they head off. Commentary first, analysis later.
At 0:24 FH56CVV switches lanes early, but as everyone else in the RH lane who isn't turning right also goes left, they are forced to give way to the vehicles in front of them anyway.
From 0:29 to 0:40, a bike lane that even waltham forest would be proud of. Its worn-out nature hints that it's popular with larger vehicles, while the trees keep it bumpy.
At 04:40 A9VNG is in the ASL, but we suspect that it was in there when the lights change. Why the suspicion? One car in the pedestrian area and one in front in the yellow hatched "only enter when clear to exit" area stopping cross traffic from St Pauls Road and Tyndall's Park Road getting across. Incidentally, Tyndall's Park road (on the left) here is no left turn, St Paul's (on the right, into Clifton) is no right turn, so all congestion coming up from the Triangle is Whiteladies Road traffic. Note also this junction provides no time for pedestrians to cross when the traffic isn't actually allowed to drive -if only all major junctions in the city were like this, congestion would be much improved. The BBC offices are on the left, incidentally.
Following the cyclist who is commuting without helmet, body-armour or hi-viz clothing, we eventually discover what is holding up WL-road traffic, it's the "triangle" gyratory system, which our tax-dodger hits at 1:43. The underlying problem is that Whiteladies Road traffic is forced to give way to traffic coming from the right, which initially means traffic from Clifton. Further on, at 2:17 we get held up by traffic all coming into the city from the A4 or the Hotwells's Bridges and then up Jacob's Wells road.
There are four lanes here, one for parking, one turning right at the next junction, and two straight on, but that leftmost one is lost even to vans ignoring bus-lane signs, not just by the police car at 2:41 but by the taxi-rank at 2:53.
WN59UDP is held up by these taxis forcing them to wait with all the in-town traffic, so as soon as they can they cut left in front of the bicycle, through the pedestrians and up University Road -only to find that the Biffa refuse collection lorry is in the way and ignoring the important traffic being held up. Finally passing that, they can sprint up to Woodland Road, where as you recall the Evening Post was campaigning against two paid parking spaces going away, which we felt was overreacting as nobody parks their except arts students, and their tuition fee increases will eliminate that luxury.
However, today we can see that the paid parking area is also popular for parental dropoff outside Bristol Grammar School -and it actually makes for a nice, low-chaos dropoff area. Admittedly, there isn't enough of this short-stay parking right in front of the school, forcing some parents to stop in the double yellow lined areas, but the alternative would be parking on the other side of this (one-way) street, forcing the children to cross the road. Would you want your children to cross a busy road like this? Exactly. Parking on the double yellow lines outside the school entrance is the only safe place to drop your kids off and be sure they get to school alive.
Now, returning to the Whiteladies Road issue, what does the bus plan proposal change on this stretch? The Oakfield Road crossing will be moved further away from the road, so making it less useful to pedestrians trying to walk from Cotham to Clifton or bag. Plus one point. But, this makes it harder for cars to get out or over from these roads, so minus one point.
Heading in to town, the right hand turn to Clifton will be removed for all but buses. This will turn Oakfield road into the primary rat-run option, but as we've seen, the moving of the zebra crossing makes it trickier. What they aren't doing is extending the bus lane any further south, and they are leaving that toy bike lane in there. We say toy as its so half hearted that no rational cyclist will think they are welcome -what with the faded paint and tree roots, but its very presence implies that some people in the city do welcome cyclists. No, better to remove it and put a cyclists dismount sign up.
Entering the triangle is more informative. Congestion is caused here by traffic joining the road from other places (Clifton, Jacob's Wells Road), and whatever is slowing them down on their final journey. There are no pedestrian-only lights or zebra crossings to play with, so there's little that can be done to make pedestrians feel less welcome, no tricks to make the schedule more accurate.
And that's the key problem. The goals of the showcase route are faster bus journey times and a more predictable schedule. Removing and moving zebra crossings will only help with this out of hours, on weekends and midday, because on a weekday morning the problem is more fundamental: Erlang's Laws. Congestion is a result of the ingress rate of a queue being higher than the egress rate. The reason vehicles can't leave whiteladies road isn't that there are vast numbers of people struggling to turn up Cotham Hill (more on that another day), or any of the side roads, it is because the merging of multiple queues at the triangle creates a bottleneck which having one lane dedicated to bus stops and a taxi rank doesn't do much to help.
And do we care about mid-day firstbus schedules? No -and neither should anyone else. People using the bus at weekend and mid-day weekdays are either people who can't afford a car, people with bus passes, or people who have made some ideological decision to take a bus: passengers FirstBus can take for granted. If they want to make money, they need to get the commuter traffic, and quite frankly, changes to pedestrian crossings aren't going to do it. They may help us car commuters by reducing the number of pedestrians and cyclists, but given our dataset implies that the Whiteladies Road congestion is due to problems in the city centre, those crossing changes aren't going to help buses or our cars on whiteladies road at peak hours, which is when it matters to us as well as FirstBus.
Sorry FirstBus, but whatever datasets you have on congestion problems on Whiteladies Road, they were clearly collected by FirstBus or Council staff during their working hours, rather than during am or pm rush hours. This is the only explanation why your proposals don't just do nothing for us drivers while making pedestrians and cyclists suffer, they don't appear to help buses either.
That's the irony there. This proposal has already got the cycling campaign saying "oppose this it's anti-pedestrian and anti-cyclist", it's also anti-car, but we think it manages to be bus-neutral at the same time. That takes skill, that does.
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.
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.
There's been lots of coverage of Whiteladies Road on this site recently. Why? Bristol Traffic is not a news outlet: it is a documentary, and we were collecting defensible "before" data. The "before" being "Before the Whiteladies Road Greater Bristol Bus Network proposals go through". There is a consultation in progress, they even have a shop for it, here, the one marked "To let" with the shutters up. What is proposed?
Bus lanes on the inbound direction in the mornings, (the far side in the photo below), and on the outbound direction of an evening.
Restricted parking.
Changes to the pelican and zebra crossings at Whiteladies Gate
Removal of the Right turn from Whiteladies Road to St Pauls Road -except for buses.
Lots of other changes up by the downs.
Currently the parking areas provide excellent commuter parking, but they force shoppers to park on double yellow-lined traffic island areas, as that is the only area left for important people to park like the sports car T4LLO. The traffic islands make it safer to cross the road once you've just parked your car V259MOV alongside one of them. All will change. More details to follow.
We are not yet ready to denounce this as another war-on-motorist development, as our research hints to us that pedestrians will suffer the most and cyclists will find what is given with the bus lane is taken with changes to crossings. For some reason the council hasn't come out and spelt all this out, though as it is something that would get us motorists behind the plan, they are missing an opportunity there.
Incidentally, these pictures were taken out of peak hours, hence the lack of vehicles. One point we would like to emphasise is that if you are going to make decisions on how to improve bus schedules and rush hour traffic, then you should collect data at that time of day, go to the site between 08:00-09:00 or 17:00-18:00, otherwise you will be lulled into a naive state of optimism where you think that shoppers and motorists all happily dance around the city waving flowers and being nice to each other.
This is why we are delighted to see that the cycle campaigners are being invited to visit the site between 11:00 and 16:00 on a weekday, when, apart from the school/student traffic after 15:30, there is limited conflict. It gives us hope that the war on motorists really is over, and the council is on our side by giving the cycle campaigners an unrealistic world view.
-----Original Message----- From: Francis Mann Sent: 19 October 2010 15:28 Subject: Greater Bristol Bus Network: Whiteladies Rd (Have your say in the cycle infrastructure review)
Dear All,
Bristol City Council would like to invite you to take part in the 'cycleinfrastructure review' of the above proposals. As you may be aware BristolCity Council's Public Transport team have recently started the informalconsultation process for the proposed Greater Bristol Bus Network onWhiteladies Road.
The Cycling City team have recently appointed an independent consultant tofacilitate the cycle infrastructure review of the route and we're pleased towelcome Camden Consultancy on board for the process. Camden Consultancystarted off the first cycle infrastructure reviews in the country and have since then conducted hundreds of these reviews for cycle stakeholders and local authorities both in London and elsewhere.
This is a great opportunity to have you say and obtain improvements for cyclists along the corridor, as well as having unrestricted access to the project team for these proposals. We are proposing a site meeting with stakeholders at the start of November likely dates are Thursday 4th or 11th November to coincide with the informal public consultation process. Our preference is for 11th as all officers can currently make this date, we would look to have the inception meeting from 11am onwards, followed by a site visit after lunch, before finishing at 4pm when it starts to get dark.
Please could we have expressions of interest and availability by nextTuesday 26th November. As the GBBN project team unfortunately missed thelast Bike Forum, everyone who attends the forum is welcome to come along andview detailed plans of the proposals before the inception meeting and sitevisit, we will let you know the final date for this as soon as we haveconfirmed it.
Continuing our Whiteladies Road coverage, here is Oakfield Road, the zebra crossing by it, then the bus/bike lane leading up to the double parking area by the BBC. Note that when the Kingsdown RPZ is rolled out, the council will steal the double parking opportunities here, which will reduce the parking capacity of the street by about a third.
We've covered this crossing before, and yes, cars do often drive through without stopping. But today, its an inbound bike that goes through the crossing ignoring that outdated bit of the highway code that says you should stop for pedestrians. We don't agree with that law ourselves, so aren't going to criticise a bicycle for doing what we'd do, if only the van parked in the bus lane wasn't stopping us getting into that lane and doing the same trick.
Well, we can't see any of the cyclists mourning less firstbus buses driving into ASLs on red lights, such as here on Stokes Croft, even if the bus S721AFB here is a 'green' chip-fat bus. Presumably it pulls in at Slix or Rita's to fill up.
What about the pedestrians, will they suffer?
Judging by the way this FirstBus bus WX59BZF drove over the ASL and into the pedestrian crossing area on a red light -and not a recent one, as traffic from Ashley Road had the green light- they'll be safer too.
Assuming the cut-back buses are the low-profit bits of the schedule, we don't imagine FirstGroup will be in a rush to replace the drivers -they like their margins.
