The van BK58CNV chose a bad day to park on the double yellow lines on the ASL on Bath Buildings, hence the ticket on the windscreen.
The road was closed while a 30T load got delivered by HGV, and PCSOs were manning the junctions to make sure nobody tried to turn into the road. With the police by the van for a number of hours, eventually one of them was bound to notice it and ticket it.
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.
We are against this, because (a) everyone should be fined for riding a bicycle, regardless of where it is, and (b) we don't want anything to encourage more cyclists on the road. That's why we drive the way we do, cut them up closely, drive right behind them to intimidate them. Anything else would encourage more of them out there.
We are also worried that if the police/PCSOs start hanging round junctions, like the Cheltenham Road/Bath Buildings junction, they might look at other issues, such as this tax SF51LDU driving into the ASL on a red light.
We do not to be penalised for doing things like that, and if the police start waiting to spot troublemakers, we might be the victims.
Neither we, nor city taxi 623, want that.
Now, some people may just dismiss this as an idle threat, but we've read the real press release, rather than just the EP coverage, which has the bad news
If the scheme is deemed to be successful it will also be rolled out to include motorists who drive or stop in cycle zones (eg parking in cycle lanes or purposely stopping into advanced cycle lanes). Life Cycle UK will be designing a cycle awareness course for motorists. Again they will have the chance to attend rather than pay the fine.
Scary. Punishing innocent taxi drivers like SF51LDU by making them sit through some presentation about why cyclists matter, or pay the fine. We'd go for the fine, ourselves.
With summer, the women in their summer dresses come out, in the bike paths, bike lanes and the Advanced Stop Lanes, which you are only meant to enter on a red light if you are a bicycle.
Trouble is, here on Bath Buildings, that bike-only ASL is exactly the size for a vehicle. So of course you drive in, the better to see what is going on on Cheltenham Road. And so the people on Cheltenham Road can see you.
Here on this weekday evening, the driver and passenger of H163TEP have not only driven into the ASL on the red light to enjoy the summer, they've driven past it, to participate in the Cheltenham Road "scene" even better. It also helps discourage cyclists from trying to get past, who will only hold you up when the lights turn.
