Laura Local: our favourite new tier-3 provincial journalist

We feel really sorry for the Bristol Evening Post. Most of the real journalists have moved on, leaving only a few people who are actually valued for their knowledge of the area and their willingness to type what senior management want them to write (Ian Onion), and, to replace the others, some unpaid interns trying to learn how to write HTML content to put local journalism as an item on their resume.

In the latter category, then, can we welcome Laura Local, who is now our favourite third-tier reporter for the Redland People subsidiary web site of the Evening Post. We think "redland people" is a bit overambitious, as it implies all the residents check it every morning saying "what's happened in our part of the city?", but that doesn't happen. Nothing much happens there except when some drunk students put some traffic cones on some cars, or the helicopter over stokes croft keeps people awake. Even then, reading about in the Redland People site isn't the way most people discuss some items. In fact, given their readership count, we believe the site would be called "Redland Eight People"; the eight being friends and family of the authors.

Laura, we are pleased to see, is trying hard to get the audience into double digits by printing an anti-cyclist rant. We do that ourselves, which is why our daily audience is in the high double digits, and we can see why a commercial site that tries to make money through advertising revenue would aspire to be as successful. Hence this lovely article, Redland cyclists among the worst in the Bristol? Here's the opening paragraph

I was turning right out of North Road by the Arches when a cyclist, who wasn't wearing a helmet I hasten to add, whizzed by in the middle of the road heading the direction I wanted to go - towards Gloucester Road. I pulled out behind him, as I would have done had he been a car and he stopped in front of me all of a sudden and started mouthing off before jumping the red light.

Maybe I was a little too close to him when I pulled out but I felt any criticism was rich coming from a guy who was bombing down the centre of the road without a helmet and straight through a red light!

We aren't going to defend the tax-dodger, but we will provide some constructive feedback to the author

1. It's not actually a legal requirement to wear a helmet. The only time you should criticise them for not wearing a helmet is when someone gets run over by an HGV driver on the phone, then you can say in the daily mail comments section "were they wearing a helmet" and so absolve the whole of society for their death. We do.
2. It's not illegal to cycle down the middle of a lane. Yes, it annoys us as it stops us driving above 25 mph, but for the troublemakers, it gives them more options avoiding being hit by redland residents who are too lazy to drive to the gloucester road shops, and who open their doors without looking or pull out without indicating.
3. If you were the first vehicle to pull out, and you were parked in the ASL under the arch itself, the cyclist may have crossed the traffic light while it was still green, then if you pulled out aggressively he may have had some reason to express concern.
4. Don't ever admit in print something like "Maybe I was a little too close to him when I pulled out." It removes your ability to take the moral high ground. We never discuss our own driving actions for this reason, or make videos from our van -the police might want them.
5. Gloucester Road isn't Redland. It's Bishopston, on one side, St Andrews on the other. When when it becomes Cheltenham Road it's called "the arches" until you end up on the disputed Cotham/Montpelier/Stokes Croft region where the new Tesco is. Not Redland. If you have to drive outside your own reporting area just to get content to rant about, well, that may show some weaknesses in the "Redland cyclists amongst the worst in Bristol" story. We recommend spending some time in Cotham Hill, which, while again not quite Redland, is full of pedestrians, cyclists, school-run parents and us vans, so creating a lovely mix for new articles, such as "Redland Van drivers amongst the worst in Bristol?", "Redland students amongst the worst pedestrians in Bristol", and of course "Redland school-run parents amongst the worst in Bristol". Together this will keep your article quota fulfilled for a month with only one morning's worth of research. Or you could walk along Chandos Road and have a geographically correct region for the "Redland parkers amongst the worst in Bristol" article.
6. Do try and back up your articles with photos other than faded bike path signs that may convince everyone, motorist and cyclists alike, that Bristol's cycling facilities are dire.
7. If you do want to get a video of someone cycling through the red lights on that stretch of Gloucester Road, stand there with a camera on a weekday evening and wait for one lights cycle: it's not hard.

Anyway, Laura -welcome to the tier-3 anti cycling rant pages of Bristol. Those of us already in the business welcome new competitors, as it keeps us on our toes. Just try a bit harder and we might even feel slightly threatened.

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A hint of red

Lovely video of W987MNT with a schoolkids poster in the back drifting through the red light on Stokes Croft a good three seconds after the light goes red.

If you notice, all the locals expect it and nobody begins to cross the lights until all the vehicles have actually stopped moving.

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Taking the moral high ground

The BBC has finally covered this alarming trend of cyclists to video their commutes then complain about them. Unlike most BBC new articles, where Adam Rayner gets paid to laugh at the cyclists, this article seems come out in favour of the cyclists, rather than say they deserved to get beaten up for being in the way and not paying road tax.

Fortunately, the commenters noticed this, and corrected the bias. Hopefully they will be writing in to the BBC to complain about a lack of balance too. We'll quote a select few

177. anjuna

We have cycle lanes all over Rutland, which are regularly ignored by cyclists. Instead the choose to ride 2 abreast on the road, causing hold ups and hazards. I think cameras in cars to capture bad cyclists would be a good thing. How about "identifiers" on cycles, so the police can prosecute bad cyclists?

Problem: it's not currently illegal for bicycles to cycle in our roads and hold up traffic behind. We understand why it makes you want to kill them, but then you not only lose the moral high ground, you have to stop the email you are composing on your phone.

208. Flaunder

When are cyclists going to have to pay to use the road? why shouldn't they have a registration plate on the back, or a speed metre when they are going at super speeds down a pedestrian footpath! Some cyclists don't even wear a high vis vest or have lights! Why shouldn't they be fined on the spot! Most cyclists have no regard for cars on the road! maybe we should film them!

Problem: we just checked the highway code and nowhere does it say "cyclists MUST wear hi-viz clothing". This makes it hard for police or PCSOs to fine them on the spot for non compliance. Now, you could push for it to be a law, but really that doesn't address the true problem, which is they shouldn't be there in the first place.


226. Barton71

Obviously the van driver in this story was out of order and his reaction was way over the top, but as a van driver myself, I understand the frustration cyclists can cause. There is nothing worse than having to slow down to 10mph every few hundred yards, because a group of cyclists have all bunched up or because there is no room to pass a single cyclist who is struggling to get up a hill.

This identifies one of the real issues. It's not just that these unpaid criminals are on our roads -they are in our way on the roads. They slow us down, then whine when we sound our horn, or criticise them in the local or national press.

One thing we do have to fault some of these community reporters for is making unsubstantiated claims. We like defensible data, yet people were saying "all cyclists run red lights", which isn't true. You only see the ones running the red lights, so end up self selecting. It's disappointing to see such use of inadequate datasets, and with defensible photographic data being key aim for our site, it's time to look at the issue in more detail.

First, Whiteladies Gate/Whiteladies Road pedestrian crossings. Our unsuspecting cyclist reporter dismounts with their small child and walks over a zebra crossing and then the whiteladies pedestrian crossings.

Note how the white van waiting to turn gives way to the pedestrians.
At the pelican crossing, the family waits for their turn to get across. The lights change frequently here, giving them 15s to sprint across.

Except what happens today? Someone on a bicycle just rides up through the crossing. Yes, he does have hi-viz and a helmet on, so commenter Flander will be happy -no need to fine him- but he does cycle straight through the red light that is being used by pedestrians including parents with children.

There we have it then, 100% of cars, following the law, 100% of cyclists: criminals.

Now, the cycling campaigners will say "But what about cars that...", but that is only a subset of cars. We know this, again from our defensible datasets -such as  on Marlborough Hill last week:

See? Four cars drive up the hill, before one car, BP52XAR, drives down past the no-entry signs and the big paintwork saying no-entry.

Five cars, only one completely ignoring the signs. That means the number of cars choosing to break the law this weekday morning is 20%, compared to 100% of cycles in our previous survey.

There you have it then. All cyclists are criminals who should be fined on the spot, while only some drivers are a bit naughty. And when drivers do something to get round this anti-car city, they get videoed and their actions appear on web sites like Fight bad driving -with their registration numbers. Whereas when the cyclists appear, all that can happen is people who know them will say "hey, you made Bristol Traffic!" and they can snicker amongst themselves.

Because of this clear evidence, we, the drivers, can retain the moral high ground.

Incidentally, this whole thing has made BikeSnobNYC. Funny.

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Bicycles on the A38, vans in Monty

We are secretly recording cyclists through the city, then buying them beers and finding out how their day was -as a result, we are starting to understand their (invalid) reasoning better.

Here is Stokes Croft of a morning, the cyclist is waiting to turn right, and watching the two incoming lanes.



Note how two cars get their lane choice wrong and decide to go straight on in defiance of left-turn signs for that lane. Yet still some tax-dodger decides to RLJ their left turn onto Stokes Croft.

At 1:00, the cyclist gets their turn in, skids left onto picton street, passing a van on the pavement to their left. Some people think parking blocking the pavement is wrong, but in this part of the city it is that or block the road entirely. At 1:14 you see someone doing that, and you see the bicycle proceeding to the left of the van, despite the fact that in our post-mortem we can see the door opening, and the passenger forced to retreat by the passing bicycle.

We understand why you wouldn't wait for the van; in monty that could be a few hours waiting. But why not go up on the pavement, the way most tax-dodgers would do.

The answer to that becomes clear on a later video. You can be sure that a van isn't going to veer into the parked cars, but you can't be sure that they aren't going to swerve up onto the pavement and drive along for a bit. We see this hear on the "Richmond Road shared space", an area to the side of roads that would elsewhere be called by its old name, "the pavement"



The van graciously waits for the parent and pushchair blocking this pavement, and once gone gets up on it and carries on, before eventually parking. The cyclist then passes them, continues down to Bath Buildings and Cheltenham Road, where we can watch the chaos with bemusement. The first cyclist, the BMX-er dodging a turning car probably just ran orange, or was past on red but, well, slow. The second one, the one that nearly takes our our tax-dodger as they ride across the road, he has had 10 seconds of red before he goes. That's three cyclists and three vans in our camera. All three vans are trying to find somewhere safe to park, which anti-car montpelier makes excessively hard. Of the three cyclists in the video, two of them seem blatantly oblivious to red.

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A touch of rouge

We're gathering data on Whiteladies Road, especially the various pedestrian and zebra crossings. Obviously, we don't walk or cycle ourselves, but we are paying a student to be a cycle courier for us. They think they are carrying blood plasma which has to be rushed across the city -in reality it's just water which we fill up their panniers before sending them to sprint up the hills. We are buying their suffering, while they film for us.

This morning, here is the Whiteladies Gate pelican crossing, on a weekday.

Notice how at 08:15 the pedestrian traffic includes schoolkids getting off the buses (or the train which arrives in a few minutes) who then walk up the infamous Cotham Hill to school. Note also the bicycle which slows down a bit and then rides straight through the pedestrian crossing.

Clearly this cyclist is exceedingly fit, as he does not even need to stop for a rest when presented with an opportunity.

Note also, before the lights change, the vehicles heading down the hill. Less than 25% of the inbound vehicles are turning left into Cotham Hill, and bicycles can travel down the wide road alongside the cars.

We hear of some plans to redesign this junction, along with others, which is why we are collecting our own data on how this junction gets used.

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