Tuesday 21 October 2008

Parking Round Up

Results from the Residents Parking Scheme survey carried out this summer may emerge this Thursday when the Sustainable Development and Transport Scrutiny Commission receive a verbal report which may tell us which areas have shown support for the proposed RPS. If so this will catapult the issue back into the headlines so it seems timely to revisit the parking issue.



Bristol Traffic and Southville Roads continue to do excellent work highlighting just how hopeless the situation has become with almost universal contempt shown for parking regulations which simply aren't enforced. Southville Roads has raised its game by printing business cards which can be left on windscreens to congratulate motorists on their inclusion in the blog.



Thanks to those blogs there's now quite a substantial database of offenders building up which opens up the possibilities for Parking Snap! For example Bristol Traffic identified this monstrosity contributing to congestion around Clifton -




- while I've just recorded it in its regular 'home' in the middle of a pedestrian refuge near the Cumberland Basin. So Googling WR56UUH will soon produce a growing collection of entries for this one.



We can also have a little competition to see which area of Bristol exhibits the worst parking behaviour. I'm specialising in Clifton, Hotwells and Harbourside but my more occasional forays into other areas produce some interesting results, particularly around Ashton Gate on match days. Here's V960JBH showing how to put Bristol City Council's investment in safe and convenient pedestrian crossings to good use, just outside the City ground.



Back on my regular patch Ambra Vale provides rich pickings, with the inevitable Range Rover T525AJB obliging by almost completely obstructing the pavement -



- while Fiat OV58EYK sets a new paradigm for avoiding parking on double-yellows. Just park in the middle of the road, why don't you. Actually I shouldn't complain about this since it provides cyclists with a convenient, protected traffic-free lane to negotiate the steep climb.



Finally we have a rare thing, what appears to be an official sign forbidding pavement parking, this one down on Broad Weir near Carboot Circus.



However the affect is somewhat spoiled by the police car WX07VDG parked on the pavement just 50 metres away!

4 comments:

SteveL said...

Heh, we already had an entry on the polis car WX07VDG. The goverment arent the only people who can set up a number plate driven vehicle sighting database.

Chris Hutt said...

So we're one all in the Parking Snap game! But I think police cars must count double, so maybe you're one ahead.

SteveL said...

Terry M says that they can park where they like while on call. Its not clear they count at all.

Anonymous said...

I found a huge police van parked on the pavement outside the Cathedral recently and asked the policemen there whether it was a good idea when we had such an oppressive problem with pavement parking all over the city. The junior officer was as unhappy about it as I was, but the senior one was utterly brazen and unrepentant, despite their being lots of free roadspace visible, and very close by.

These abuses by the authorities urgently need to be tackled at the top - whether in the police or in the council, whose workforce is particularly prone to thinking they don't count; and, incidentally, in the BBC, an arrogant and over-privileged public body which brazenly drives and parks where it shouldn't whenever it is filming. Naturally, lorry drivers and van drivers in a hurry, as well as everyone else in the private sector, including mothers picking up from school, follow these irresponsible examples - or is it the other way around?