Home » Archives for January 2011
Abbeywood Station
Posted by Kimberly on Monday, January 31, 2011
Fun in the Forest
Posted by Kimberly on Sunday, January 30, 2011
We're slightly worried that even our papers, like the Daily Telegraph, are expressing doubts. But frankly we don't care that much about dog walking, horse riding or other daytime leisure activities.
Some people may think we would be in favour of cutting down the trees, putting in more shopping malls, new suburbs. Motorways. But remember, we are part of a big society that uses those forests for night time activities too.
Who hasn't nipped up the M4, over the old bridge and up to the Forest of Dean, pulled in one of the laybys and had an intimate encounter with a complete stranger from time to time? It doesn't matter about your sexual preferences, it's classless: MP, priest, van driver, housewife, TV presenter of football or car shows -it's all the same in the dark. Anonymous entertainment, with only the bridge tax to stop us doing more than three or four times a week.
And with our van being a roaming retail outlet for the city's sex life's accessories, those trips can a big business for us. Selling safe sex accessories in the 'dean can be a nice little earner -some of those TV presenters have been round the block a few times, and you need all the protection we can sell you.
The proposals to sell of the country's forest to the highest bidder will interfere with small businesses all round the country.
There's a national campaign against this organising a petition; everyone should sign. There's also a local group, Hands off our Forest, working for the Forest of Dean itself.
These people have been very active, and have this lovely quote from their conservative MP Mark Harper on Jan 3 2011:
there are not and never have been any plans to sell off the Forest of Dean to developers who would cut down the Forest to replace it with recreation parks.This is beautiful. If they say, sell off half the forest to developers who cut it down and replace it with recreation parks, the MP was being honest. If they say, sell of the entire forest, cut it down and replace it with suburban housing estates, the MP can say they were speaking truthfully. And if if they do sell of the entire forest and have it cut down and replaced with recreation parks, provided the documentation shows the planning didn't begin until Jan 4, then again, he was telling the truth at the time.
For some reason it reminds of Bill Clinton's "technically we did not have sex" claims, or Tony Blairs' "The legal opinion was that we didn't need a second resolution". A statement which, from a legal perspective is honest, but means something entirely different at the time. We'll have to remember something similar the next time one of the team's drivers is caught in a compromising situation with a local MP up near the Forest of Dean.
This is why we not only support the Hood campaing, we propose a new slogan for the campaign " Fuck in the forest, not with the forest"
Sleeping with the enemy
Posted by Kimberly
Which is why we were very concerned to hear about a splinter group that is being formed specifically with the aim of attacking the rights of the motorist to drive where we damn well please. Who else but the tax dodging, lycra lout, cyclists, always whinging about our hard taxed money being spent on cycling "farcilities" that they should be grateful for. It seems that they want cycling infrastructure that is as good as the Dutch model (which, incidentally, we were very disappointed to hear does not involve David Walliams's wife.)
The meeting of this splinter group was in a far away forbidding place designed to strike fear in the heart of any motorist, yet we were spurred on by the recent revelation that the police planted an informer into an environmental activist group. If they could do it then so could we and so we fuelled up the white van and headed east, braving the congestion charge and the danger that we may need to have sex with some of them (despite being confident that they were all certain to be mamils.)
Our fears were realised; not the sex part unfortunately, but the purpose and organisation of this subversive organisation. Calling themselves the Cycling Embassy of Great Britain, it was a group of diverse, passionate and probably even intelligent people that are trying to take road space away from the motorist and give it to pedestrians, cyclists and communities. We were disturbed that there were so many attendees and as far as we could tell, not one of them was actually wearing lycra (apart from us trying to blend in), in fact the ringleader was wearing a suit!
It may be humble beginnings but we really fear that this group could actually make a difference with this manifesto. Whatever you do, do not encourage this behaviour or talk about the set up of their "Embassy" or before you know it there will be 20mph zones and no pavement parking for starters.
Do you really want this to happen to Bristol's gloriously car centric streets?
Jan 30: republic day
Posted by Kimberly
There's a probably lesson there, if only we could think of it.
But for now, the next person you greet today, say "Happy Republic Day!". We can start a new tradition.
Red Bull? We thought they were on our side!
Posted by Kimberly on Saturday, January 29, 2011
This sounds quite fun, we thought we could join in with the van. We swing past the racers, cut in and park on the uphill side of the road to do a delivery gambit, helping to get our main line of business -discreet delivery of sex toys to all parts of the city- a bit of publicity. But it will not be.
Red Bull, whose side are you on? You sponsor a formula 1 team, the cars above, yet now you seem to think encouraging cycling will keep your business going. This fills us with resentment and fear
Bike Parking Rollout
Posted by Kimberly on Friday, January 28, 2011
- These are all paid parking spaces that are being taken away, and who pays to park? Only losers who don't know the secret places.
- By not building the bike racks on the pavements, they are keeping them clear for our vans.
North Fringe Route Update
Posted by Kimberly on Thursday, January 27, 2011
Steam punk concept motorcycle art by Kevin Mowrer
Posted by Kimberly
Keywords: steampunk concept motorcycle art meta-story creator consultant and lecturer emmy and gemini award winning producer writer artist illustrator designer kevin mowrer with a long history of meta-story development of big worldwide franchise stories for mass-market multi-media intellectual properties
A darkness over clifton
Posted by Kimberly
But this day: different. A police car with the engine on sits outside one of the houses.
Now the police stand outside one of the houses; a camera man stands across the road. One person is believed to have been murdered in the house just before Christmas, two other residents have (separately) been arrested and questioned -one of them charged. Whatever the outcome, Canynge Road will be tainted for a long time -like Cut-Throat Lane in St Werburgh's. It has gone from what was a quiet route for cyclists (it's faster to drive on the parallel road as this one is too narrow at the Clifton end), and somewhere for people to live, to a road with a dark history.
In Clifton and nearby, there's now a clear feeling of relief whenever someone who is potentially the murder is being detained by the police: that it is suddenly safer. Because Clifton is a safe part of town, and such things don't happen there, the way they do in Patchway, or down in Somerset, in Cheddar. Things that happen there don't merit national news coverage, despite the grief and suffering the relatives of those people will be going through.
We mourn them all.
A38 update
Posted by Kimberly on Monday, January 24, 2011
Progress in Oregon
Posted by Kimberly
- It gets them used to driving everywhere
- It stops their parents having a school-kid-dropoff-continue-to-work cycle run, so discourages the parents from cycling.
- It stops them getting into riding bicycles, or even learning how to maintain them.
- It stops their parents taking the kids on bike rides at weekends, such as this MAMIL-dad is doing over Willamette Pass, Oregon.
This is why we are pleased to announce, along with our partners in the printed and TV media channels, our new 2011 campaign, to have bicycles banned from our city streets during peak hours and school dropoff/pickup times.
It's for the sake of the children!
Concept vehicles by Matthew C. Barrett
Posted by Kimberly on Sunday, January 23, 2011
Keywords: digital concept vehicle art illustration design by matthew c barrett mc barrett cars and rockets mostly sketchbook concept art bellevue washington artist at arenanet guild wars cars automobile design
AA in stokes croft
Posted by Kimberly
The Stokes Croft Bike Lane! Sponsored by the AA!
Mercedes GTK vehicle concept by Pascal Eggert
Posted by Kimberly on Saturday, January 22, 2011
Keywords: all terrain armored desert snow all wheel drive atv military camouflage mercedes gtk concept vehicle with gun turret art design automotive render illustrations by from pascal eggert guns futuristic automated weapons
Cyclists: losers or gentry?
Posted by Kimberly on Friday, January 21, 2011
- Really important people: they drive.
- Poor, under funded students: they drive.
- Outside the inner city, people don't walk.
That's why were horrified to see this footage from Horfield.
Within a couple of seconds, our van encountered two pedestrians and a cyclist -with one of the pedestrians walking in the road as if they had the right to. This is not Montpelier! This is a nice fast road where people park up on the pavement to let passing traffic through. Yet today, somebody walking. Here!
We had to drive up the rest of the road in shock, until the sight of all the cars and vans up on the pavement reassured us that this was a temporary event.
Adventures in the scaffolding trade
Posted by Kimberly
Abbeywood week, a discussion
Posted by Kimberly on Thursday, January 20, 2011
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.
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.
Abbeywood: West Side Bollard Run
Posted by Kimberly on Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Note how the cyclist swerves out of the cycle side before the first corner. After we took them into the MoD site where we got them to confess to being an enemy of the economy, we asked them about this. Apparently going round a blind corner on the wrong side of the path is stupid. Maybe, but S Gloucs has put the signs up, so follow it.
Further on, you can see the new bollards. Some now have coloured tape on, some reflectors. But it's moot. Their existence is now known and widely publicised. Nobody else is going to run into them, even in snow -unless the council moves them or adds some more -perhaps on that first corner?
Knowing of the existence of the feature, does our test subject obey the signs? Follow the approved lanes? No they don't! Instead they treat it as some kind of opportunity to go through them as if they were some kind of obstacle course, "practising singletrack manoeuvres at near-race-speed", they said, whatever that means. Such actions were wrong before the bollards went up, now that bollards are in, it should be a crime. And to think that the S Gloucs bollards actually encourage such action -that simply appals us.
Notice how we say S Gloucs bollards. We thought initially that these were MoD features, it being Ministry of Defence land and all (which is why cycle campaigner Terry Miller got detained by their site police for behaving suspiciously and taking photographs here last week). Yet as the video shows, the signs and bollards go on out of the site, right up to the A4174 Ring Road, one of the two proposed Ring Roads we actually got part of. That means it came from the council, presumably out of their cycling budget.
This is what introduces such a moral dilemma for us. It makes cyclists feel less welcome -good, and it doesn't take away any driving options -great. But is it enough? Apart from that one person who crashed into one, how many cyclists are going to give up their commute from this feature? And it stops us driving down the bike path here.
This is an ongoing topic and we will cover it more. Our experiment to see if anyone in S Gloucs is capable of reacting to reports of vehicles parked on the bike path is going well, so far, no reaction from anyone. But more research is needed.
Welcome to Bristol, Kayla Maratty!
Posted by Kimberly
Kayla manages to completely summarise how it is bicycles on Whiteladies Road and Blackboy hill that bring the city to a halt, as we have discussed previously. She says
"Part of me would take great pleasure in mowing them down when they choose to cycle in the middle of the road or are determined to peddle all the wayup Black Boy Hill. But obviously I would never do that; I can get by just on the thought of it to restrain my road rage."
We find driving really close behind them intimidating enough. Sadly, it is actually legal for them to cycle down the middle of a single lane road, which Whiteladies is. And when they are going over the Downs, they do need to pull to the right of the left turn only lane, so sounding your horn doesn't help.
Still, we are glad to see your fight against university tuition fees continue. Obviously this isn't an issue for you, as not only will the fee rise kick in after you have finished your course, if you can afford to drive and park anywhere near the university, then you are clearly part of that set of students known as "well-funded", and we expect your parents to pay for all your living expenses. We look forward to your complaints about how the rollout of the RPZ is forcing you park and walk further. If you do not write such an article, we shall assume that the fact that Woodland Road and St Michael's Park now offer more short stay paid parking than ever before actually benefits you, as it makes it easier for you drive down to the university for a lecture and latte before heading home again, albeit held up by all the cyclists.
Can we take this opportunity to remind our readers that Bristol Traffic is not some satire or spoof. If it were, you'd have to conclude that the whole of the UK printed and online press is also some kind of spoof. The Daily Mail has been going on for over a hundred years now, so its time to own up to being a wind-up, if it really is.
Update 24-Jan: the original article has been pulled, the editor apologises and denounces the bullying by cyclists.
Abbeywood Bollards: they don't help motorists
Posted by Kimberly on Tuesday, January 18, 2011
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.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.
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.
Abbey Wood Bike/pedestrian path changes
Posted by Kimberly on Monday, January 17, 2011
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.
Clifton's Road Theft
Posted by Kimberly on Sunday, January 16, 2011
Glasgow
Posted by Kimberly
The Friday Quiz - Who are the Sleepers?
Posted by Kimberly on Thursday, January 13, 2011
This vision of Utopia never happened.
Bristol Traffic asks - was the Council infiltrated by a fifth column? We know that Cycling City took another 40 years to complete. There must have been sleepers...
Jamaica Street: more hints of Waltham Forest
Posted by Kimberly on Wednesday, January 12, 2011
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!
Dighton Street: An update
Posted by Kimberly on Tuesday, January 11, 2011
this time not only is another car parked outside Pizza Go-Go in the bike lane, showing how bike lanes benefit takeaways by providing somewhere to park, we see the minicab AE04NDG, taxi #2525, taking full advantage of those cycling facilities.
First, it's stopped part on the pavement, part on the road -but note how no wheel is actually in the bike lane. Then it pulls out -no need to indicate, it's a quiet day, and drives forward, where an ASL provides somewhere for the vehicle to wait for the light to change.
Such use of the cycling facilities of this part of the city ensures that the residents of Bristol do get some use of them. Note how our tax dodging cycle camera person (sorry!) opted to use none of them on this part of the journey. If they aren't going to use such features, well, we motorists may as well!
Spyker C8 - Le Mans 2008 - Dunlop
Posted by Kimberly
======================================================
Il y a toutes mes photos sur Facebook / All my pics on Facebook:
www.facebook.com/pages/Alexis-Goure-Photographe/105663366...
www.alexis-goure.com
=====================================================