Tesco Stokes Croft: A consultation

We're reproducing a message sent out today, in order to prevent any misunderstandings if our email became public through other channels, just like that recent incident involving "Quercus", twitter and a naked man on a unicycle. First, we need to make clear that we do not in any way support the use of bicycles or public transport in the city. We are, however, concerned that the delivery and shopping processes of the Cheltenham Road Tesco Mini-mart are making it impossible for us to drive down the bus lane then swing left into Ashley Road, so avoiding the bearpit roundabout while heading out of town on the M32. Furthermore, the congestion caused by buses trying to swing back into the single-lane traffic is creating tailbacks as far as the Gloucester Road/Zetland Road junction, which makes nipping into Booze express harder. We couldn't come out and say this as it would make us appear shallow and self centred, so instead we pretended to have unified interests with the people that Jeremy Clarkson only this week denounced as anti-capitalist subversives.

Here is the letter

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Bristol Traffic
Date: 21 June 2011 15:17
Subject: Express Cheltenham Road, Bristol
To: expressqueries@uk.tesco.com


It appears that you are looking for feedback w.r.t the Tesco Express, Cheltenham Road, Bristol, the one that recently became nationally famous due its unfortunate history of catching fire late at night.

The Bristol Traffic Project wishes to provide some feedback about the newly re-opened mini-mart.

In case you are unaware, we are a web-based community project to build a defensible dataset on who drives, parks, cycles and walks badly round Bristol. Our stokes croft coverage dates back to 2008, and so forms one of the largest dataset on road usage in the area. As a result, the search terms "Tesco Stokes Croft" invariably lists one of our articles in the first page of responses, despite the recent national and international media coverage.

One conclusion of our three year dataset is that the number of people cycling along Cheltenham Road is increasing. This is something which the council believes is a good thing, which is why the Cycling City program deliberately set out to encourage people in Bishopston, further up the A38, to cycle to work -down Cheltenham Road. For this reason, the Greater Bristol Bus Network offers a mandatory bus lane during some parts of the day; this ends outside Tesco Cheltenham Road, where a non-mandatory cycle path begins. While historically the bus lane only ever existed on those rare days that Bristol Parking Services enforced the rule, the roll-out of in-bus camera and CCTV enforcement of lane-blocking legislation means that compliance is now higher, except amongst those entities that are prepared to view the penalty as an operational expense.

Within the last ten weekdays of the supermarket being "live", community contributions show that

• There is invariably a large HGV blocking the end of the bus lane and the beginning of the bus lane between 10:00 and 10:30
• While unloading is not permitted before 10:00, if the HGV arrives early, it merely parks in the bike/bus lanes and awaits 10:00
• Security vehicles visiting the shop have been parked there at 09:15, and contributed to an apparent collapse of the entire inbound bike lane
• Evening shoppers parking outside the mini-mart block the bus lane and create congestion on the inbound route to the city before 18:00. In comparison, our historical dataset shows that at this time of day the congestion only existed on the outbound route [1, 2].
  

Accordingly we can conclude that:

1. The official Tesco deliveries, while scheduled for 10:00-10:30, render the bike lane inoperable for a minimum of 30 minutes out of every working day. This bike lane being, as mentioned, the primary cycle route into the city from north Bristol.
2. This official blocking of the bus lane impacts bus schedules, inconveniences passengers across the city, and may even lead to financial penalties to FirstBus.
3. Other organisations with an apparent relationship with Tesco (e.g. G4S) are prepared to block the bus lane during its operational hours, and therefore presumably view parking tickets as an OPEX. This reduces the availability of the bus and bike lane even further.
4. Customers engaged in a park-and-shop process are prepared to short-stay park in the bus/bike lane through out the day, so rendering it unusable to buses, cyclists, and anyone coming down of Arley Hill who wants to nip down the bus lane before turning left on Ashley Road towards the M32.
5. Customers engaged in a park-and-shop process are prepared to short-stay park outside the shop during the evening bus-lane hour, so creating congestion that runs as far back as Zetland Road and so has a negative impact on all road journeys.

Overall, then, the combination of scheduled Tesco deliveries, possibly scheduled visits by partner organisations, and short-stay parking by customers has effectively rendered this bus and bike lane unusable to anyone in a bus, bicycle, motorcycle or taxi, or anyone simply prepared to nip up the left lane to get to St Pauls, an action to which a blind eye has historically been turned.

Given the role of the road and the fact that the loss of this lane is leading to congestion morning and evening, we consider this outcome unacceptable.

We would recommend some actions to mitigate this. Sadly very few actions spring to mind other than the closure of the mini-mart.

• Your cost model is built around an optimised supply chain that uses the same vehicles for delivering to Tesco Express outlets as other Tesco sites, so the HGVs could only be eliminated by the adoption of a new city-friendly supply chain.
• Your cost model does not include the external costs of the impact on the journey times of non-customers, or other externalies such as the increases in their fuel use and pollution.
• Passing motorists popping in to shop may have been explicitly or implicitly included in the business model of the shop. It may be possible to enforce a "do not sell to people who park in the bus/bike lane" policy by refusing them entry, however this will not help customer loyalty.
• It is hard for you to enforce policy on how your strategic partners such as G4S arrive and park outside your premises.

What is possible is for the local council to act in such a way as to mitigate such issues, independent of any of your actions:

1. Use the CCTV camera at the junction of Cheltenham Road and Arley Hill to enforce the existing bus lane parking rules. This does not require any legal process and could be rolled out almost immediately.
2. Use existing the CCTV camera to enforce the 15 minute loading/unload time limit. Again, no legislation necessary.
3. Uprate the cycle lane from "optional" to mandatory, so earning all vehicles which park there a £120 fine.
4. Enforce the then-extended cycle lane driving/parking rules using the same CCTV camera
5. Increase the physical presence of Bristol Parking Services staff, so offering more of a visual deterrent before 10:00 and after 16:30.

Being a data-gathering exercise we shall be using the FoI process to track the number of parking tickets issued in this area, so see if it correlates with the increase of delivery and customer parking which our data implies is happening. We shall also encouraging our existing community base to collect more photographs of the situation, which we shall then place online along with the vehicle registration numbers, and so help build up a better dataset of who chooses to block this invaluable facility, and when.

Please thank your staff, partners and customers for their participation in our experiment.

The Bristol Traffic Team.

---------- Forwarded message ----------

As stated, do not interpret this as some form of subversive activity. It is just that the tailbacks prevent us getting down and parking on the pavement outside Ritas or sprinting over to the M32. We are, as people should recall, a data gathering and analysis project, so we welcome documentary evidence from everyone on this issue, even people engaged in un-British activities like walking, cycling, and getting on a bus as opposed to standing there hoping that one will turn up. The threat of using FoI information to collect ticketing statistics is real, and we enjoy the irony of having the CCTV camera put in "for the mini-mart's own protection" being used to ticket people parking in the bus lane during its hours of liveness. Expect updates in future

More about → Tesco Stokes Croft: A consultation

Abbeywood week, a discussion

Yesterday we mentioned that one problem with parking on the abbeywood cycle paths was not just the new bollards, it was harassment from cyclists. Here, sadly, we have an example.

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.

Yet our cyclist reporter felt that there was some need to criticise the driver, to take a photograph of them, "for the database".

Fortunately, our lorry driver sees their gambit and raises it by pointing out that they too have a camera in their lorry, and the cyclist looked pretty silly -which, coming from a professional hi-viz person, are pretty harsh words.

We aren't convinced that the driver saying that Hitler used to disappear troublemakers like our cyclist report actually wins the argument.

1. Godwin's Law implies that whoever reverts to analogies with Germany's National Socialist government of 1934-1945 automatically loses the argument.
2. 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.
3. 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.

We look forward to better arguments in future.

More about → Abbeywood week, a discussion

Feedback and the implications for SITA S788NNK

Our coverage of one truck driver giving the pedestrians the abuse they deserve has proved very poplar. We know this as Youtube sent us an email saying "your video might be eligible for the YouTube Partnership Programme, which allows you to make money from playbacks of your video.", which implies more than eight people saw it.

We also got many comments on the video, some of which were sadly negative towards us. luckyeightball said

the only crime here is decent hard working blokes trying to earn a honest living, get pin pointed by some p**ck who walks around filming people, i bet he takes the videos home and masterbates in his garden shed to the thought of knowing he's caused someone grievance, probably lives with his mum too, gimp

Bristol Traffic is a team project, everyone in the city participates. Those of us who work in the Bristol sex industry supply chain don't need to sneak off to the garden shed as we have discounted "access" to the professionals who provide their services down in Stokes Croft. As we are regulars we even get rebates when things don't work as expected. Plus the wifi doesn't get to the shed.

Humpski2817 said

If I was this driver I would go to you tube and quote their Privacy Complaint Guidelines as I am quite sure you do not have permission to use his image and as the say in the account policies "let us know if videos or comments on the site violate your privacy or sense of safety."

We've discussed this before. You have to give up some expectations of privacy on the streets. Public Place = public. Private place = private. It's an interesting issue though, with Google Streetview being the cutting edge. To launch that service in Germany, they've had to remove the houses and gardens from the view, which means that street views have entire houses missing, so limiting their value. We are glad therefore for your awareness of these issues, though feel you have some more learning on this topic before your statements come off as well-informed. But it's a start.

The most insightful comment came from SuperJonah2010

"i personely believe as a hgv driver that bristol is a hard town to be in.and that the actions of the guy with the cammera are intimidating and the driver would of seen him as a threat!as he said he chased him down the road in his own posting!i would of thought about my load and is that guy pulling a knife or a gun out of his rucksack!it happend to be a camera!my actions would have been the same if not alot worse!what planet is the idiot who posted this video on!"

That really explains some of the issues HGV drivers have in the city. Our taxi driver acquaintances fear late night customers to the edges of the city, bus drivers are scared to stop on Crow Lane (update: plans to sell of the greenery may make it safer). What we hadn't realised up until now was that HGV drivers are scared of pedestrians.

Up until now we viewed them as a hazard. Admittedly, mostly to cyclists, but such incidents close off busy roads for hours, even to vans, - and parked cars. And, because they have better negotiating power in narrow roads, we aren't that fond of HGVs . But we hadn't realised that they were scared of pedestrians! That changes the whole view of things. They must be terrified of doing any of the "shared space" roads like Cotham Hill or Picton Street. Anyone walking down the middle of the road may suddenly get out a firearm or knife and hijack your load! This continuous fear of pedestrians must make the entire city a stressful place to do deliveries -far better to stay in Avonmouth where you don't see people walking around, and if you do, you can call the police and report them.

This fear of highway robbery must also trigger the use of classic military tactics, the key ones being: keep moving and take the high ground.

We can see an example of this at the bottom of Cotham Brow, looking towards the Arches. Our white van is stuck at the lights. We aren't worried about anyone stealing our load as we'll just report to the police that someone else has stolen a "Edmond and Cheggers Inflatable Doll Party Pack" and they'll drive up the A38 following the laughter on the pedestrians until they find the culprits. The Nisa Today lorry was facing the same direction when it swung left into Kingsley Road and got into that debate with the pedestrian about whether they should have indicated before the turn. The answer from a game theory perspective is of course: no, don't signal your intent -it makes it harder for them to plan their attack.

Today we are held up by some lights, cars coming from Cromwell Road are heading up from the Arches to Cotham Brow. This is a narrow road with parking spaces on either side of the road almost deliberately laid out to create conflict -conflict the parking review will leave in. For example, those cars on the left? Short stay parking, with only 40cm of pavement alongside there's no room to get wheels on the pavement, so it creates a choke point -a bit of traffic calming. And a place where a malicious pedestrian could attack a lorry driver and make off with their payload.

The small cars, like the council car, don't have a problem, they pootle up the road. But what of the SITA van S788NNK? The choke point here exposes them to attack -anyone could pop out from the side road hold a knife, a gun, a rolled up newspaper (we've all seen that Bourne Identity film -we know newspapers are weapons), and take their valuable payload of ready-for-recycling cardboard.

How will the SITA drivers handle it? With Military precision.


They seize the enemy territory by going straight onto the pavement. Notice how they do it. No halfhearted "protect the wheels" actions, but a full "take the high ground" operation to get along the pavement and then drop down once they get past the narrowness.

By keeping the forward momentum, the oppo team is left on the defensive, and without the pavement they can't hang back and hope to jump up into the cab as it goes past.

Together, this ensures that the SITA cardboard will reach its destination securely.

This whole notion that lorry and HGV drivers fear pedestrians is going change some of our thinking. In fact it's profound. It explains a lot of city design -like the pedestrian underpasses of the Bearpit, St Paul's and Lawrence Hill roundabouts. They must have gone in not just to keep motor traffic speeds up, but to reduce the risk of pedestrians attacking trucks. It also explains why money needs to be invested in making pedestrians and cyclists feel unwelcome in those parts of the city popular with HGVs -because the drivers don't want them there.

The implications of this discovery are still trickling through our brains, so expect more coverage of the topic in the new year. Until then, all those pedestrians whom we now suspect read this blog -remember, the HGV driver is more scared of you!

More about → Feedback and the implications for SITA S788NNK