Another Day - Another Victim

In a depressingly familiar pattern we find the aftermath of a conflict between car and bike, down where Prince Street joins Broad Quay, yesterday afternoon. Thankfully the cyclist appeared to suffer only slight injuries although his bicycle was mangled. The car involved is the white Citroen Xantia N881 WAN between the red and blue tee-shirts. Most of those standing around appear to be witnesses who were good enough to give statements to the police, who turned up promptly, shortly after the paramedic.



I didn't witness the actual incident and I'm not going to speculate about what might have happened beyond what is evidenced by these pictures. We see for example scrape marks on the road surface and some debris (where the bicycle was lying before being moved to the side), suggesting that the bicycle might have been pushed along under the front of the car, consistent with the observed bike and car damage. The police took details from witnesses and the parties involved (the cyclist in the dark tee-shirt and grey trousers; driver in red tee-shirt and blue baseball cap) and will, we must hope, take any appropriate action.



The scene was particularly poignant for me since I had been the victim of a road rage attack just two days earlier at Redland Grove when a motorist harassed me very aggressively, horn blaring just behind me and finally accelerating past at high speed, engine roaring, black smoke belching out, just inches away. I could easily have ended up as the cyclist above or much worse. My crime incidentally was getting in HIS way, the one he and his fellow motorists pay for and on which we cyclists apparently have no right to be.



Needless to say incidents like these are extremely damaging to the prospects for popularising cycling. Individual cyclists often give up cycling as a result of being the victims of such conflict and of course all those who observe such incidents will be dissuaded from considering cycling. So what is to be done? Some argue that increasing cycling numbers will change attitudes and lead to a more tolerant attitude on the part of motorists. But, catch 22, how can we expect to increase cycling in the face of such violence? Suggestions welcome below....

Banksy Costs Lives

A final valedictory to my bête noire, the Banksy queue. We are told some 300,000 people visited Banksy vs Bristol Museum over the summer, most queuing for several hours in a serpentine column stretching up University Road and along Elmdale Road. Of course the Great and the Good didn't have to queue, either getting invited to private viewings if well connected or paying £25 a head to attend a special 'charity' viewing, but assuming the average Joe queued for say 3 hrs then the total time wasted in the queue was 900,000 hours, or 37,500 days, or over 100 years.



We can equate 100 years of wasted time to human lives. Average life expectancy is say 80 years (78 for men, 82 for women), although about a third of that is spent sleeping and the quality of the last 5 years or so may be very poor so we could equate a life to say 50 years of 'quality' time. One might of course argue about the quality of our waking lives, since much of the time is devoted to routine tasks that give little satisfaction in themselves, but let's leave that for another time.

So we can equate the time wasted in the Banksy queue to two complete human lives from birth to death. However few of those queuing were new born babes so we should take account of the average age of those queuing to establish a better life equivalent. Let's say the average age of visitors was around 30 and the average 30 year old can expect another 45 years overall of quality life, less one third sleeping gives net 30 years of quality life. So the time wasted in the queue was equivalent to more than 3 of the residual lives of those queuing. In short we can say the queue cost three lives.



Two weeks ago the Police closed the northbound side of the M5 Avonmouth Bridge to traffic for more than 6 hours because a man was threatening to jump from the bridge to his death, which he eventually did. The Police argued that the delay to motorway travellers was justified by the need to attempt to save the man's life and for the safety of those involved. But what of the life equivalence of the time wasted in the resulting massive traffic jam?

According to reports the traffic queue stretched back 35 miles to Bridgewater and many roads in and around Bristol were gridlocked as drivers tried to find avoiding routes. Difficult to estimate numbers involved but 35 miles (56 kms) of three lane motorway could accommodate around 33,600 stationery vehicles (5 metres per vehicle). Let's say that as it was a Bank Holiday weekend average vehicle occupancy was around 2.5 people so that gives us over 500,000 hours wasted. We can probably double that to take account of delays on the highway network beyond.



In effect the police decided to waste over 100 years of life, the complete residual lives of several people, in an attempt to save the residual life of a man of about my age, who on average one would expect to have little more than 10 years of potential quality waking life left. So the equivalent of ten 59 year old male lives were lost in a forlorn attempt to save one. It just doesn't add up and it looks as if the Police are beginning to realise what a major error of judgement they made.

In the same way Banksy and Bristol City Council decided to waste the residual lives of at least 3 people rather than charge for entry to Banksy vs Bristol Museum, a charge which might well have generated £5 million or more resulting in correspondingly lower Council Tax bills for all of us. What's more by eliminating significant queuing by charging a market rate entrance fee the hundreds of thousands of visitors to Bristol would have been freed from the captivity of the queue and able to spend more time visiting other attractions and would therefore have spent more money on goods and services in the city.

As they say, to err is human but to really screw things up you need a self-serving bureaucracy with a chronically risk-averse and economically illiterate culture. Or Banksy.

Is this Criminal Damage?

As widely reported last week, the Police in Bristol have arrested and charged someone for writing on the pavement with chalk. Up until now we had all assumed that those errant markings that we sometimes find on our streets were mostly harmless and occasionally amusing, to be ignored or not as we chose. I doubt that it had ever occurred to any of us that such markings might constitute Criminal Damage and be worthy of the attention of the Police and Courts, but it seems we were wrong.



Let's take this recent example at Old Market. At first sight it appears innocuous, a crude attempt to signify some token priority for cyclists. Sensible people just ignore it as they go about their business, as we see from the picture below. However not everyone is sensible. Some motorists might think it safe to follow the lane markings. Some cyclists might think these markings have some authority and offer them some protection. This would be a grave error. Anyone imagining that a cycle lane offers some kind of a safe haven is seriously at risk.

To lead cyclists to the inside of a tight bend on the inside of two traffic lanes that can barely be accommodated themselves, where the unaware cyclist is very likely to get squeezed on the corner, is, let's face it, downright irresponsible. It's not good enough to assume that everyone will have the good sense to realise the markings are mere token gestures which should be ignored. It will only take one novice cyclist who naively presumes that these markings offer some talismanic protection and we will have yet another cyclist on their way to hospital.

In the instance pictured below the bus driver had the presence of mind to ignore the lane markings and straddle the two lanes to give the cyclist adequate clearance. But is it realistic to expect bus drivers working long hours in difficult circumstances to remain so alert and conscientious? Is it really too much to expect that road markings should only be installed by competent people and actually deliver a safe and practical arrangement for sharing the road?



Thanks to the recent action of the Police in pushing back the boundaries of what is considered an appropriate area for Criminal Damage prosecutions, we at last have a remedy for this sort of nonsense. We know the people responsible, we know their names, we know where they work. The evidence is there on our streets, not in chalk which might easily be washed or worn away but in permanent and hard-wearing materials that can only be removed at considerable cost to the local taxpayer.

Green Bristol Blog says enough is enough. The culprits need to be taught a lesson. Our streets are not provided as blank canvasses for them to indulge in their childish markings. Only responsible and competent people with an understanding of the delicate 'territorial' relationship between different road users should be allowed to apply such street markings. Criminal Damage? - bring it on!

Parking inspires eloquence

Yet another blogger dips into the well of Bristol's car parking idiosyncrasies for inspiration. Who'd have thought that such a mundane business as parking cars should inspire such witty and eloquent writing? I suppose it's a mark of good writing that an everyday event can be described in engaging and thought provoking terms.


Setting a fine example by blocking the footway outside a local school

We welcome Dru Marland to the band of bloggers who have been developing this new literary genre here in Bristol (could this be the new trip hop?). The seminal Bristol Traffic (from where I nicked the Dru Marland link) continues to be very inventive, while Southville Roads has been quiet recently, although he must be given credit for a more confrontational approach to the malparkers (I'm trying to do my bit by inventing some apposite vocabulary - remember you saw it here first).


Meanwhile N609 SBD deals with the other entrance to the school.....

Anyway this seems a good moment to post a few pics from my own ever expanding database. I've decided to focus on the malparking of those in authority for 2009, so let them be warned. We can hardly expect Joe Public to obey traffic rules that are routinely flouted by the Police, local authorities and other guardians of civic standards (unless Joe Public is riding a bike of course, when such blatant hypocrisy seems to be in order).


...right next to this notice. Is illiteracy an excuse?

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!