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....

It's That Bridge Again

It looks like Bristol City Council may be getting something half-right down at Prince Street Bridge. The ugly concrete kerbs than restrict access to the cycle/pedestrian half of the bridge were removed for last week's Bristol half marathon, as they had been for the 10k run in May, when I blogged with my expectation that -

"bollards will be installed instead (of the concrete kerbs) which will allow cyclists to percolate through the closures instead of being funnelled into narrow, sub-standard gaps by the footway."

I was soon disillusioned back in May when the concrete kerbs went back in, suitably embellished by a member of the public with "cycling city - my arse". A long debate with Jon Rogers followed in the comments on that blog post in which he said

"the decision on the Prince Street Bridge trial should not be made purely on the basis of 'Hutt rants', informed though they often are, but be evidence based and follow the planned site visit".

Well it seems that a decision has been made that my 'rants' may have influenced because they're now putting in bollards instead of kerbs as I anticipated in May.



Of course I must quibble with it.

1. Why do we need any bollards at all on the north side where motor vehicles would not normally enter the right half of the bridge anyway?
2. Why are the bollards painted black so as to be difficult to see in conditions of poor visibility (when we cyclists are encouraged to wear high viz clothing and the bollards on the motorists' side are brightly painted in red and white stripes)?
3. Why is no specific provision made to help cyclists who need to switch back to the left hand side of Wapping Road?
4. Why weren't cycling interests consulted on the changes?
   
5. What was the 'evidence basis' for the decision?

But at least it is progress of a sort. Cyclists can percolate through the bollards and so have more options for making the difficult manoeuvres required when travelling south as a result of the Cycling City funded changes. However there remain concerns about the capacity of the bridge to cope with the growing volume of cyclists and pedestrians together with motor traffic. We urgently need to send some strong signals out about changing priorities and a complete closure of Prince Street Bridge to motor traffic would help that.

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.

Twenty's Plenty for Bristol

Bristol City Council have announced plans to trial a widespread 20 mph speed limit in two areas of the inner city, centred on Easton and Southville as shown in the map below bounded by the blue lines. Consultation on the general arrangements takes place this month but there will be an opportunity to object to specific Traffic Regulation Orders (TROs) when these are subsequently put forward. Implementation is planned for next spring. The plans were actually leaked back in January and the current proposals are much the same as those shown on the leaked maps.


View 20 mph in Bristol in a larger map

The idea is that 20 mph should replace 30 mph as the normal, default speed limit in residential areas of the city although without the introduction of physical traffic calming measures or police enforcement. Some people have expressed scepticism about the effectiveness in the absence of such enforcing measures but experience elsewhere suggests that average speeds will be slightly reduced as a consequence of changing the notional limit. Nevertheless the idea seems surprisingly popular with the general population so very much an idea whose time has come.

But there is, predictably, a major problem with the current proposals, leaving aside the enforcement issue. The plans exclude most main roads in the areas concerned (red lines in the map above), even when those main roads are also shopping streets, designated cycle routes and serve schools and parks. Precisely the sorts of roads that most need to have lower speed limits. The two most glaring examples are perhaps Mina Road in St Werburgh's and Dean Lane in Southville, but there are many others like North Street (Southville) and Stapleton Road (Easton), both important shopping streets that serve as focuses (or foci if you like) for their respective communities.



So what is the big problem about applying 20 mph limits to main roads? It's actually been tried and tested here in Bristol with a short stretch of the A420 Church Road in Redfield (pictured above and shown as a green line on the map). Admittedly it's not very obvious that it makes much difference, but then it is still the exception to the general 30 mph rule and unlikely to be taken much notice of. But at least it establishes that 20 mph on main roads in residential and shopping areas does not bring the world grinding to a halt. Everything carries on much the same but with speeds gradually edging downwards.



Another big problem with having so many streets excluded is the need to sign all the transitions from 30 to 20 and back, as pictured above with the existing 20 mph zone just south of Church Road. Not only do all the signs cost us money but they add to the general clutter on our streets and result in road users losing track of whether they are in a 20 mph or 30 mph street.

What we need is for 20 mph to replace 30 mph as the general speed limit on all urban streets except those roads that are clearly not residential like Easton Way, the Portway and of course the M32. The 20 mph default needs to be consistent and ubiquitous and not something confined to backwaters where speeds rarely exceed 20 mph by much anyway. The current propsals, even though claimed to benefit cyclists and pedestrians and to be funded by Cycling City money, will do little for cyclists or pedestrians where they experience the most intimidation and danger, on the main roads which are set to be excluded.

Pedestrians Cause Congestion - Official

Now and again little insights into the 'thinking' of Bristol City Council's highway engineers emerge into the public realm, despite the ever burgeoning PR operation designed to make us all think the council are wonderful. This latest gem emerges through the Cycling City project's marginally more open governance arrangements (which perhaps explains why council officers are generally opposed to more openness).



Bristol's pedestrian crossings (Pelicans and Puffins) have long been notorious for the excessive delays that they impose on pedestrians wanting to cross the road in order to minimise the inconvenience to motorists. For example the crossing of Queen's Road outside the Museum (above) gives a ridiculously short green phase and the crossing of Baldwin St where it joins the Centre (below) imposes long delays.



But now a City Council project is underway to review each pedestrian crossing in Bristol and reduce the wait times for pedestrians "without causing unacceptable congestion for traffic". Despite the lack of any definition of what constitutes 'unacceptable congestion for traffic' (and aren't pedestrians 'traffic' too?) the progress report on the pedestrian crossings 'improvement' project goes on to state -

During times of peak traffic flow, some pedestrian crossings in the city cause heavy congestion, therefore they are brought onto the traffic control system ‘Scoot’ during these times of day so that the ‘green man’ time which causes the congestion is restricted to the part of the traffic signal cycle where it will cause the least delay. This project has reviewed the way that the crossings are brought under scoot control and the times of day this control is needed. The pedestrian crossings reviewed are now brought under control by using live traffic flow data rather than fixed times, the flow level at which the crossings cause congestion has been worked out for each site, and when this trigger level is reached they are brought under Scoot control until the traffic flow level drops off again. The type of Scoot control in use has also been reviewed and where possible the cycle times for the crossings have been reduced.

As the bold text indicates I was struck by the repeated assumption that it's pedestrians who are causing congestion by daring to want to cross roads. Is it not plain to anyone with eyes to see that congestion is caused by the mass use of cars? Congestion, whilst not entirely unknown before the age of mass car ownership, is nevertheless overwhelmingly a product of it. Surely that elementary fact should be firmly embedded in the mind of anyone who presumes to call themselves a highway engineer.

Yet there we have it, they say pedestrians cause congestion. And to penalise us for our selfish behaviour in wanting to cross roads we must be made to face longer delays to allow motorists to make their blameless journeys without 'unacceptable' delays. Nothing of course about what might or might not be acceptable delays to pedestrians. We pedestrians, it seems, must put up and shut up.

Am I being uncharitable in making so much of what may be little more than sloppy writing? Probably, but I would say justifiably so since at the root of so many traffic problems is the pro-car biased thinking of highway engineers, which as we see remains very much the norm. Perhaps we have to wait for yet another generation of highway engineers to pass on before we can make real progress.