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Showing posts with label cliftonwood. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cliftonwood. Show all posts

Breaking news: parking restrictions encourage higher vehicle speeds

Posted by Kimberly on Monday, March 28, 2011

The new "neighbourhood funding" schemes are great for us, the drivers, as we can use our money to get what we want: parking, without any city-wide initiative like public transport, sustainability or cycling getting in the way. This is why we are delighted to cover the "DEVOLVED TRANSPORT SCHEMES FOR 2011/12" for Clifton and Cliftonwood, which will be up for discussion on Tuesday at 19:00 above Jack's Brasserie behind the waterfront TSB building.

The important people in Clifton have been successful in adding one-way streets by Clifton-college, so making easier to do Range-Rover and Volvo XC60 dropoff, and held up the provisioning of bicycle parking on the grounds that it degrades the listed buildings. However there still aren't enough places to park our important cars. How to add more parking, without appearing blatantly selfish? The answer is obvious: push for it on road safety grounds.

This is the tactic planned for tomorrow, with the following proposals in the set.
  • Lay-by at the bottom of Hope Chapel Hill: Existing parking restrictions encourage higher vehicle speeds
  • Pembroke Road (St.Pauls Road end). More on-street parking would reduce vehicle speeds.
These claims are far better than the ones for Clifton Park and Princess Victoria Street, both of which just say "existing parking restrictions are too extensive", by which they mean "the bit by the side of the road where people cycle could be used by important people".

We hope all our local supporters turn up for this, and support the proposals and so make sure that we outnumber any cycling/living street troublemakers who sneak in and start calling us selfish gits who are more concerned about having somewhere to park our third car outside our houses than doing something to fundamentally improve Bristol's liveability. Those people don't realise that having somewhere to park our third Landrover -it's more than just a car- does improve Bristol's Liveability. Certainly it makes it easier to walk from the Landrover to our house, and by saving us driving around, reduces pollution and the CO2 emissions from our 3L V8 engines.

Futhermore, once that parking is in, it will be that much harder to put in bike lanes, so any ideas for adding some segregated route up Pembroke Road -our secret high speed alternative to Whiteladies Road- would be killed forever. It's important to do this now, before alternate transport plans progress.

Yes, those troublemakers will say "if we want parking we should have voted for the RPZ", but they miss the point: that would have restricted the number of vehicles we could own. Furthermore, by reducing the number of vehicles parked on the roads on a weekday, vehicle speeds have increased and Clifton is now a more dangerous place to walk. We have a spreadsheet we've just made up to prove it!

Note also that a large number of the other schemes (Ambrose Road, Cliftonwood Road, Alfred Hill, Westbourne Place and Redcliffe hill) are complaints by people about how parking is interfering with pedestrians. It is important to attend to stop this, otherwise the troublemakers will pick up on the complete hypocrisy of pushing for extra parking to calm roads in some parts of the area, while having to introduce bollards and dropped kerbs in other parts. We want parking everywhere, and no RPZ in our way.

Walthamize the planet, and have a nice day.
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Keeping clear

Posted by Kimberly on Tuesday, March 8, 2011


Here again are the benefits of Cliftonwood life: considerate neighbours. See how well P731EBD and WN56XCJ are staying off the bit of Goldney Road marked 'KEEP CLEAR'.
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White Hart Steps Bus Stop

Posted by Kimberly on Friday, February 11, 2011

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.

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Considerate parking

Posted by Kimberly on Monday, February 7, 2011


Are Cliftonwood's drivers the most considerate in the city? See how X868MDS has pulled right up onto the pavement so that other cars can get along Ambra Vale East, inconveniencing nobody but himself - he's so close to the wall he can barely get his door open!

Some may think that leaving threatening notes for other drivers who don't park so well is just a little militant, but here at Bristol Traffic we are appalled by parking as bad as the example shown by Y453TNV. Look how far from the wall the front of the car is. We have standards to uphold.

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Not driving: parked

Posted by Kimberly on Saturday, November 27, 2010

While a darkness falls over kingsdown as new yellow lines and pay-to-park machines pop up, Cliftonwood is holding out against the resident parking plans.

As they must! Were resident parking zones to pop up with their neat little white boxes showing where people can and cannot park, the middle of Ambra Vale would certainly not become a "designated" parking area, so vehicles like J6SRY would not be able to keep their car safe in the road, away from pedestrians who could damage it.
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Fake police warning notes?

Posted by Kimberly on Monday, November 22, 2010

We know it's illegal to pretend to be police, but is it illegal to put out fake police warning signs?

Look at this sign here in Cliftonwood, telling off a car for parking on the pavement.
Now look at the car. One wheel up. Over in Monty the fact this car was sticking so far out would merit attention -that it was stopping through traffic, not supposedly interfering with pedestrians. It has to be fake.

We aren't naming names, but we do note that John Grimshaw of Sustrans lives nearby...
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The blind bends of Clifton Vale

Posted by Kimberly on Thursday, November 18, 2010

We love taking visitors from the US through Montpelier at speed, watching them in teror stamping the ground where the brake pedal should be, as we drive our van through at 40 mph with millimetres between us and the parked cars on either side while texting ahead to our destination. But sometimes we like variety, and other fun place is Cornwallis Crescent and Clifton Vale. That blind Z-bend/T-junction when you are coming up the hill is fantastic. No visibility, you have to get the line exactly right or you get stuck.

This week we are making it more entertaining by making our US visitor cycle round, so watching someone from "cycle-friendly Oregon" encountering urban UK roads, so we took the opportunity to take them down this and see if they'd survive.



The first issue here is that one of the cars in front gets its line completely wrong. For reference, here are the tactics

  1. Descending from Goldney Ave: hold back until you see a gap, then commit, but swing out before turning in, Alpine style. This early swing out ensures that you finish the turn on your side of the road, which is better for bad visibility situations, and here, ensures you can get round.
  2. Coming from Cornwallis Crescent: head through, don't show weakness.
  3. Coming up from Clifton Vale: head up, keep left ready to swerve right into Goldney Ave.
After the entertainment of a car having to back up twice, our U.S. tourist gets the give way markings wrong and almost loses out to the car on Corwallis Crescent. More importantly, by waiting where he is, he's lost visibility of what's happening on Clifton Vale, which can be tactically unwise. This time, he survives as the cars in front have stopped motor traffic heading up, but next time may not be so safe.
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Secret Cliftonwood Parking

Posted by Kimberly on Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Everybody knows that there are no parking problems in Cliftonwood, and that is why its citizens recently rejected the imposition of a CPZ. However, what fewer people know is where the "secret" parking slots are - the ones that are normally free and you actually have to seek out. Here we see two cars demonstrating two of these slots - DY52OLC at the end of Randall Road, and NY54EWP at the bottom of Ambrose Road.

What these camera angles don't show is that both of these cars have bits of paper stuck under their windscreen wipers. They were probably from admiring local residents congratulating the drivers on locating these hidden parking spots, but we'll never know - sadly, the rain has rendered them illegible!

Concerned of Cliftonwood

PS: In the case of DY52OLC it could be to apologise for the fresh dent in the back right hand corner. Whilst admiring the honesty of the perpetrator, we say: next time, use indelible ink! Unfortunately, the wronged car owner will never know who you are.
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