Institutionalised Indifference

On the approach to the M32, the A4174 ring road cycle path has an option to turn left and head to UWE via Old Filton Road. That's "the pleasant option".

There's a sign saying "cyclists, please give way to pedestrians"

It's as if the key fear of the council is that someone walking may get hit by a bicycle.

It isn't. The key danger for anyone walking or cycling is getting hit by a car. Yet down by the MoD roundabout, anyone on foot or pedal is left to fend for themselves on many of the crossings. No "motorists, please give way to cyclists and pedestrians" signs.

Some have a bit of green: meaningless. If you get run over using one of those, it'll be dismissed as "they chose to die"

Within the MoD premises, even the green lines go away, and you expected to run or cycle over two-lane wide roads to get to the narrow little traffic islands in the middle.

When the Bristol Rovers grounds opens, there will be two lanes of cars sprinting up this hill to get to the match; somehow we suspect cycle parking and safe cycling nearby will be "forgotten about", or pushed to one side the way each supermarket always has six bicycle stands looking forlorn in a far corner of the car park.

The presence of cycle-city funded roadsigns show that this a recommended route.  Not recommended by UWE, who are most pleased that the new football stadium will add an extra 1200+ parking spaces during the daytime. Who the fuck for? Students? Not the vice chancellor, he has his own space for his shiny jaguar. Staff? We have no idea, we just know that this seems to be what they wanted. Not better buildings. Not the building of a public transport hub with secure bike parking (compared with today's "where do you want your bike to get stolen from" facilities). No, 1200 parking spaces. A university that cares.

This isn't what you'd get the Netherlands. The only reason the crossing is survivable today is that stadium isn't open and the people who cycle over the crossing it are today's cyclists: adult men, going to work or university. It's not a "kids cycling to school with their parents" path -and at this rate it will never be.

If the number of people cycling increases, so will the risk of collisions. You can say what you want about drivers "expecting more cyclists" when there are more of them; S Gloucs council gives drivers the right of way at these roundabout junctions, and you can be 100% sure they will take it

Putting in zebra/cycle crossings now will keep expectations of people driving down, rather than having to wait for some deaths. Maybe, just maybe it could be made a requirement of the UWE/Rovers deal, but somehow we suspect that it's not something Cllr Bwian Allinson will be pushing for.

The Bollards of Death Path

Here is the famous "bollards of death" path at 17:30 on a weekday. MoD staff, other commuters. This is what it really looks like, compared to the sunny quiet-day video.

The bollards are visible, you can see where we taped some of them up, but they do blend in with the white line. It makes you realise why many road-side posts are in alternating white and black -visible in more conditions.




0:08 -swerve into oncoming lane. No protocol here so there's a risk you both swerve. It happens. That's why when there is a lower pedestrian count the path switches to normal left-side-of-road rules.

0:18 anyone walking over the zebra crossing is lined up to get hit here. Also note the barriers. Rationale unclear. Not bicycles, so it must be stop pedestrians crossing the road except at the zebra crossing. So why not allow that?

0:55 mediocre visibility on an uphill route; hope nobody is descending.

1:12 MoD pedestrian access point. Again, having the bike path on the RHS would reduce risk here, but look at what comes up

1:19 foot access to the train station, key part of the pedestrian route. Oh, and a pillar in the middle.

1:24 even two people walking side by side are something you have to worry about

1:39 notice the vast space for parking. This site fills up its parking, a lot of staff were reallocated from elsewhere. Now people who live within three miles aren't allowed to park. But what is the alternative. We're on it.

1:56 its quieter here as its either residents of Northville or Lockleaze on foot, or bicycles. At the end of the path there's a blind corner, but we are avoiding it as we are taking the Northville exit.

2:10 This is a bike path, marked up on the maps, oddly not in the better by bike video. When we say "you need an MTB to cycle round here" we forgot to mention the max handlebar width and travel. The more travel your bike has, the higher your bars go, the harder it is to get through here. Good thing there's nobody in the way, and that we arent carrying children on the front bars -or in a trailer or tagalong.

2:17 narrow bridge. Clearly this is a path for pedestrians that's had some anti-motorbike barrier for a while and with a blue circle is now a pedestrian/bicycle shared route.

2:28 into the garage zone. It's interesting how much space is allocated to parking here. Even though you are a few minutes cycle/walk from the supermarket, the whole Bristol suburb culture is about driving. The busses are less frequent, the corner shops bleaker and further away. You are expected to drive.

2:46 and we are in the cars-on-the-pavement suburbs.

Now, is this path a failure?

Experience: Fail. In that it doesn't go out of its way to make you feel welcome and valued yes. Neither pedestrians or cyclists will enjoy this walk. Indeed, one of the things about walking round this area, or up to parkway station, is how mindnumbingly dull it is. Even the graffiti isn't that interesting. All you see are car parks, dual carriageways and cars, until you get to crossings that make you wait for 30-60s before you react. It's implicitly designed to make you wish you'd rather be in a car.

Maybe this is why its so rare to see anyone walking around. In the inner city, people out and about. Here, people walking to their cars, some teenagers loitering, and people waiting for busses looking miserable.

Use: Unknown. We have no before/after data, the MoD exclusion zone will encourage more walking and cycling so the statistics won't be reliable. It's busy with pedestrians and some bicycles. Some morning and school time data would be useful, probably between 8 and 9 am is the peak hours.

Scalability: Fail. The path may only have a few bicycles, but its already saturated. The segregation fails because the path isn't wide enough for two directions of walking and two directions of cycling. If the number of people cycling down here were to double or triple at peak times, it still wouldn't make much of a dent in the car traffic statistics, but it would overload the cycling infrastructure. And what then? A new lane?

What have the Romans ever done for us?

To us, the People's Cycling Front of South Gloucestershire, our enemy is the roadbuilders who stick up the new roads, widen the old ones, and add walking and cycling features as an afterthought -one that neglects our needs and is constrained by the inability of the roadbuilders to imagine the needs, care about them, or execute on their own plans.

We call them The Romans. For what have the Romans ever done for us, apart from the roads?


This is the A4174 ring road path, by the UWE entrance. 20 years ago you weren't allowed to cycle here, and as a consequence there was none of this traffic calming stuff up. It was easier to cycle down, and way safer than the ring road.

Since then, the ring road has got busier and wider. This week they opened a new priority lane for buses, one that avoids taking any space from cars.

That worked, didn't it?

Looking the other way, you can see that some of the pedestrians are wearing camouflage and not hi-viz.

This shows a conflict of goals. The motorists and the councils would like all pedestrians to wear hi-viz, obvously. But many of the MoD staff are wearing work clothes designed to keep you alive in war zones, and bright reflective clothing fails then. It went out of fashion when officers stopped wearing red jackets.

The combination of traffic calming and pedestrians whose lives depend on not wearing hi-viz makes for a higher risk environment.

Descending to the roundabout, you can see that it is too narrow to have separation from pedestrians, so we are grateful for the current lack of bollards. Admittedly, the various road signs don't help, and a wider path would actually eliminate the conflict entirely. This would good as the people cycling up the hill are all in uniforms.

Note the different roundabout crossings

1. MOD entrance: light controlled, safe.

2. MOD back entrance and shops -no lights, cars may coming off the main roundabout at speed. There is a traffic island designed for at most one bicycle to wait, limiting the cycle traffic flow to one bicycle every 30s maximum. Everyone cycling across has to look at the traffic, then keep looking in front to see its clear to get off the crossing.

3. Shopping centre entrance. There is a green strip here, and the driver coming off the roundabout did give way. This is unexpected and welcome, as a green line on the ground has no legal force. If you get run over, the car had the right of way.

What did the SGC get wrong here?

The key issue is a focus on motor traffic rather than pedestrian and bicycles, and not making it safe to cross the roundabouts. Pelican lights that would block both the entrance and exit of crossing #2 would make it safe to cross and eliminate the traffic island bottleneck in the middle. That or a zebra crossing would be good. But perhaps they fear the tailbacks created by stopping for pedestrians and cyclists.

3. Again, no formal cycles-have-right-of-way setup at the junction. This time someone was being generous, but you can't rely on it.

The biggest hazard is the main MoD roundabout

• The main road has 50 mph speed limit, people are still in motorway-mode -and not expecting pedestrians or cyclists.
• No pedestrian/cycle crossing lights or scheduled period in the main light sequence.
• The traffic island has room for one bicycle at a time and is already saturated.
• Pedestrians and bicycles are sprinting over, attention split between traffic coming off the roundabout and what they will run or cycle into.

The metric we ask is "would you trust an 11 year old child to use this bicycle path safely". Not with these crossings and paths we don't.