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!

Welcome to Southville Roads

I'm not sure if I started it all back on May 18th, but some of my earliest sidebar posts were pictures of badly parked cars, followed by my first blog on parking on 1st June. The excellent Bristol Traffic promptly took up the theme and has since turned it into an art form with creative sarcasm. Now my Google searches have picked up another blog on the same theme - Southville Roads - started at the beginning of September. I've added a link to my sidebar.



I like his style (assuming it's a he - it usually is since women generally have better things to do with their time than vent their frustrations via a blog), not quite as wryly detached as Bristol Traffic but still witty and with the anger more evident. That's my baby.

So that's Southville covered and Cotham/Clifton tends to feature in Bristol Traffic, leaving 30 odd wards still crying out for their own version of Bristol Traffic. Blogspot blogs are very simple to set up and cost nothing in money (although plenty of time, once you get addicted), so how about it before the market gets saturated?