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!
Our last trip down Whiteladies road shows that on a weekend, yes, pedestrian shoppers did hold up through traffic. This implied that yes, the FirstBus/Showcase bus route plans to reduce pedestrian crossing options may benefit their schedules, but we were worried about the impact on us cars getting out from side roads.
This video is different as it's a visit by our expendable cyclist on a weekday morning, down the bus lane from Oakfield Road, and through the Triangle as far as University Road, where they head off. Commentary first, analysis later.
At 0:24 FH56CVV switches lanes early, but as everyone else in the RH lane who isn't turning right also goes left, they are forced to give way to the vehicles in front of them anyway.
From 0:29 to 0:40, a bike lane that even waltham forest would be proud of. Its worn-out nature hints that it's popular with larger vehicles, while the trees keep it bumpy.
At 04:40 A9VNG is in the ASL, but we suspect that it was in there when the lights change. Why the suspicion? One car in the pedestrian area and one in front in the yellow hatched "only enter when clear to exit" area stopping cross traffic from St Pauls Road and Tyndall's Park Road getting across. Incidentally, Tyndall's Park road (on the left) here is no left turn, St Paul's (on the right, into Clifton) is no right turn, so all congestion coming up from the Triangle is Whiteladies Road traffic. Note also this junction provides no time for pedestrians to cross when the traffic isn't actually allowed to drive -if only all major junctions in the city were like this, congestion would be much improved. The BBC offices are on the left, incidentally.
Following the cyclist who is commuting without helmet, body-armour or hi-viz clothing, we eventually discover what is holding up WL-road traffic, it's the "triangle" gyratory system, which our tax-dodger hits at 1:43. The underlying problem is that Whiteladies Road traffic is forced to give way to traffic coming from the right, which initially means traffic from Clifton. Further on, at 2:17 we get held up by traffic all coming into the city from the A4 or the Hotwells's Bridges and then up Jacob's Wells road.
There are four lanes here, one for parking, one turning right at the next junction, and two straight on, but that leftmost one is lost even to vans ignoring bus-lane signs, not just by the police car at 2:41 but by the taxi-rank at 2:53.
WN59UDP is held up by these taxis forcing them to wait with all the in-town traffic, so as soon as they can they cut left in front of the bicycle, through the pedestrians and up University Road -only to find that the Biffa refuse collection lorry is in the way and ignoring the important traffic being held up. Finally passing that, they can sprint up to Woodland Road, where as you recall the Evening Post was campaigning against two paid parking spaces going away, which we felt was overreacting as nobody parks their except arts students, and their tuition fee increases will eliminate that luxury.
However, today we can see that the paid parking area is also popular for parental dropoff outside Bristol Grammar School -and it actually makes for a nice, low-chaos dropoff area. Admittedly, there isn't enough of this short-stay parking right in front of the school, forcing some parents to stop in the double yellow lined areas, but the alternative would be parking on the other side of this (one-way) street, forcing the children to cross the road. Would you want your children to cross a busy road like this? Exactly. Parking on the double yellow lines outside the school entrance is the only safe place to drop your kids off and be sure they get to school alive.
Now, returning to the Whiteladies Road issue, what does the bus plan proposal change on this stretch? The Oakfield Road crossing will be moved further away from the road, so making it less useful to pedestrians trying to walk from Cotham to Clifton or bag. Plus one point. But, this makes it harder for cars to get out or over from these roads, so minus one point.
Heading in to town, the right hand turn to Clifton will be removed for all but buses. This will turn Oakfield road into the primary rat-run option, but as we've seen, the moving of the zebra crossing makes it trickier. What they aren't doing is extending the bus lane any further south, and they are leaving that toy bike lane in there. We say toy as its so half hearted that no rational cyclist will think they are welcome -what with the faded paint and tree roots, but its very presence implies that some people in the city do welcome cyclists. No, better to remove it and put a cyclists dismount sign up.
Entering the triangle is more informative. Congestion is caused here by traffic joining the road from other places (Clifton, Jacob's Wells Road), and whatever is slowing them down on their final journey. There are no pedestrian-only lights or zebra crossings to play with, so there's little that can be done to make pedestrians feel less welcome, no tricks to make the schedule more accurate.
And that's the key problem. The goals of the showcase route are faster bus journey times and a more predictable schedule. Removing and moving zebra crossings will only help with this out of hours, on weekends and midday, because on a weekday morning the problem is more fundamental: Erlang's Laws. Congestion is a result of the ingress rate of a queue being higher than the egress rate. The reason vehicles can't leave whiteladies road isn't that there are vast numbers of people struggling to turn up Cotham Hill (more on that another day), or any of the side roads, it is because the merging of multiple queues at the triangle creates a bottleneck which having one lane dedicated to bus stops and a taxi rank doesn't do much to help.
And do we care about mid-day firstbus schedules? No -and neither should anyone else. People using the bus at weekend and mid-day weekdays are either people who can't afford a car, people with bus passes, or people who have made some ideological decision to take a bus: passengers FirstBus can take for granted. If they want to make money, they need to get the commuter traffic, and quite frankly, changes to pedestrian crossings aren't going to do it. They may help us car commuters by reducing the number of pedestrians and cyclists, but given our dataset implies that the Whiteladies Road congestion is due to problems in the city centre, those crossing changes aren't going to help buses or our cars on whiteladies road at peak hours, which is when it matters to us as well as FirstBus.
Sorry FirstBus, but whatever datasets you have on congestion problems on Whiteladies Road, they were clearly collected by FirstBus or Council staff during their working hours, rather than during am or pm rush hours. This is the only explanation why your proposals don't just do nothing for us drivers while making pedestrians and cyclists suffer, they don't appear to help buses either.
That's the irony there. This proposal has already got the cycling campaign saying "oppose this it's anti-pedestrian and anti-cyclist", it's also anti-car, but we think it manages to be bus-neutral at the same time. That takes skill, that does.
Bristol lost a teenager on Monday: Junaid Nazir age 16, killed on Fishponds Road -in front of his own house.A taxi driver was arrested on suspicion of causing death by dangerous driving, then released on bail. We don't know any other details.
One of our contributors went past the site on Tuesday evening -here are their comments:
This was an awful thing to happen, an awful thing to see. Junaid's friends and family were there -all of them utterly devastated. He left to go to school at Filton College, and instead of coming home after another day at school, he never came back. All his dreams are gone, all that is left are memories.
Every time his family leave the house, they are going to pass the place where this child -their son, their brother, their cousin - died.
It was really heartbreaking to be here, I tried really hard to get a photo of the flower and not all the friends and family, -as that wasn't right. They were very welcoming, but it's hard to cover this. No schoolkids should be placing flowers to mourn the needless death of one of their friends.
Afterwards, I went down Fishponds Road -never fun- then turned into Roygate Lane, then onto the railway path. Suddenly I'd gone from the friends and family mourning the death of a sixteen year old to the late summer peace and pleasantness of an almost Dutch walking and cycling route into the city. Yet what point is it in having such a lovely facility if you can't even get across a road 300 metres away alive?
The whole Bristol Traffic team extends our condolences to the family and friends -it will take a long time for everyone to come to terms with this, and -based on personal experience- nobody will ever really get over it. You can never forget.
We'd also like to hint to Evening Post that when they put up articles on tragic events such as Junaid's death, that either they disable comments or they monitor them so all four regular mad commenters don't just repeat their own prejudices -again, and again, and again. This is not the place for them.
Our normal service will be resumed in a few days. In the meantime, there is a growing monument in Fishponds to a failure of the entire "road safety" industry. Consider visiting it.
Posted by
Kimberly on Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Over the bicycle blogs, there's a lot of anti-taxi rhetoric. Well, that probably goes back centuries, since the first important people -our ancestors- rode horses and so differentiated themselves from you, the little people.
But if you spend time talking to anyone who worked as a taxi driver, you realise life is hard. One of their big fears is will the passengers do a runner, and if they do, will they just run or try and rob you in the process. Nobody likes picking up passengers to some parts of the city at night. It's the Bristol equivalent of London's "I aint goin souf of the river".
Except for one company. Yellow Cab of Bedminster aren't scared of South Bristol; they will take you wherever they want to go.
Even better they will pick you up from where you want to be picked up from. And on a Saturday, that means Bedminster. Here DN05KFD is awaiting any passengers on the corner of Boot Lane and East Street. For those people who can't cross the Boot Lane, their colleague in BD53MYX will pick you up.
Now, some people worry who is not capable of crossing the road, but Boot Lane is the home to the local RNIB branch, whose issues with Pavement Cycling have been covered by both us and the Evening Post before. Down Boot Lane itself, KR08YJK not only helps keep the pavements clear of bicycles, they ensure that those people whose eyesight problems prevent them from driving their own cars, will be able to enjoy the convenience of having their own vehicle on the pavement just where they need it.
(One of the taxi people was a bit upset about the cars being photographed, but to respect their privacy we didn't include photos of them. We would encourage others to keep an eye on this area to see that Yellow Cabs are providing taxis for shoppers and visitors to the RNIB offices on a regular basis, so they get more used to such activities).
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.
Someone took our photographs, and notified the bit of the council that licenses taxis, who then acted on the complaints. According to a letter which was forwarded to us:
Police and PCSO's monitored the road yesterday afternoon and fixed penalty notices were issued to City Council licensed drivers and to other motorists.
Further operations of this nature are envisaged, as these vehicles are in violation of the Driving Order.
The web site goes into more detail, saying that people got ticketed simply for driving down a road somewhere where they shouldn't.
This is mindless anticar persecution. Yes, if you look at the video one or two taxis appear to ignore the restriction on taxis, but as they are allowed on most other bus lanes, why not this one?
