We are sent an email by "Mike" showing the proper way to get the kids to school, here with a stretch limo outside Colstons Primary School on, what, Cotham Grove The submitter of this photograph seems a bit, well, unhappy about the incident, and we can see why: a vehicle like this can take up the entire school keep clear area, so stopping other parents doing their dropoffs.
However, people need to recognise the hard truth: taking the kids to school in the family 4x4 is, well, common. Twenty-five years ago, yes, most kids walked to school and those that got driven were taken there in the mini metro, but times have moved on. From the metro, to the VW polo, then the VW Golf becomes car #2, now it's one of the little Audi or BMWs, while family car #1 has grown up from an estate to something with more status. Nothing has more status than a stretch limo -which CN55PZS clearly is.
Jealousy, that's what the other parents are suffering from.
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?
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.
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.
The same time we were getting a video of one driver, X108YDY, prepared to fight the anti-car city and use the secret rat-runs of Kingsdown, we were also getting some shocking footage of parents walking their kids to school.
Some were clearly going on to cycle to work, so instead of driving their children to school in comfort and safety, they were being forced to walk alongside a bicycle -while the parents push them without even a helmet on!
Others were actually encouraging their children to cycle to school.
Such actions not only endanger the children, they threaten the bodywork of those of us who drive the wrong way down one-way streets as an alternative to traffic lights. Can't these parents see that we are in a hurry!
By way of the Legacy Printed Press, we see this video of a car being forced to push a Ford Ka out onto the road by the school entrance to Cabot Primary School.
The comments on the E.P. Article are pretty polarised.
On the one hand, this is someone exerting their right to get their car out of the garage despite the selfish actions by lazy parents who themselves park on the keep clear zones just to drop the kids off faster. On the other, this is someone potentially endangering children who if not walking to school, are being dropped off by their parents outside it and expected to walk across a road. It's hard to say who is most wronged here.
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.
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.
Footage reaches us of what it is like at 08:30 on a weekday in Stapleton. There is a nice dropoff area on the left hand side, "pavement" as it was originally called in the days when even wealthy people walked.
Only a couple of vehicles are making use of this otherwise wasted space, BG02OHO, and the little mercedes behind it.Why so few, in a low-stress dropoff area.
We suspect the coach parked opposite has something to do with it, it's bringing kids in and dropping them off. This actually makes it harder for proper volvo-driving parents to get between the coach and the traffic island safely, so endangering their children.
