The Great Wall of Filton

Rob Bushill of Really Useful Bikes feels that we, the People's Cycling Front of South Gloucestershire, have been giving the S Gloucs cycle team a hard time. That swearing is abusive and the wrong way to get things fixed.

His section on cycling with kids is something we cannot disagree with, as he shows lots of lovely ways to carry kids on the bars, cargo bicycles -we are sure that he dreams of a region where families can safely cycle round. We agree on the goals -merely the detail. He and the other collaborators with the regime believe that constructive engagement is the answer. We believe that talking to the people is an utter waste of time -and furthermore, they don't even talk to you, the splitters, about what they are about to do to make cycling round the region even harder.

We value and respect Rob, and his goal of providing useful bikes for the area, so will not swear in this post, or make any direct accusations about the competence of the cycle team.


Instead we ask Rob to question his own beliefs -and to consider whether he should come out in support of the cause -or give up and start selling mountain bikes with 80-100mm of travel on the front forks, as these are the best way to get past The Great Wall of Filton.

Yes, the "the Great Wall of Filton", a barrier put in to stop anyone on a bicycle cycling down a road that was closed "to make it a better place to cycle" -at the bottom of Eighth Avenue and the top of Wordsworth Avenue

It's not a cycle path, it's a wall of bollards and barriers, with a van on the pavement to make even the pavement inaccessible.

It's not wide enough to get a bicycle with panniers through

It's not wide enough to get any straight-bar bicycle through without the risk of clipping a wheel on the kerb (where the black marks show it happens), or the bar on the bollard.

It is not a cycle path. It is not pining for the fjords. It is a dead cycle path.

As Rob does not want us to say anything negative about the cycle team, we leave it to him to discover for us whether this was put in without their knowledge, whether their objections to something utterly useless were overridden -or whether they thought this was a good idea.

If he raises this issue at the next cycle forum -he should also ask why The Great Wall of Filton was not discussed beforehand.

Here are our questions for Rob about the Great Wall of Filton

1. Do you any of your family cycles get through here?
2. As this route will link up with the nearby Concorde way, do you believe that this route could form part of a safe joined-up family cycling network?
3. Do you have any evidence that the plan for the Great Wall of Filton was raised with the cycle forum? 
4. Do you think that the Great Wall of Filton is something the cycle team should be proud of?
5. Do you think they were involved in the design?
6. If the cycle team where not involved in the design, does that not indicate that the council is out of control, and that the cycle team have no apparent awareness of what is going on in their shire?
7. Whose budget do you believe it came out of?

If he finds the answers unsatisfactory, we extend the black glove of the People's Cycling Front of South Gloucestershire to Rob -and invite him to recognise that the cycle forum is not the solution to any cycling problems that the area has. Together, we can be.

Glorious news, Comrades!

Comrades! Fellow cyclists against the incompetent regime that is S Gloucs council! We have some good news for a change!

Firstly, the bollards on the bollards-of-death path have been removed! Only two are left standing -apparently at MoD insistence- to keep motor vehicles off the path. Sadly, the fundamental problem: the path isn't wide enough for two lanes of bicycles and pedestrians remains. We suspect our comrades in the Netherlands will still be unimpressed. Widening the path would be the obvious solution, but instead the council insists on wasting money on road widening elsewhere instead.

Secondly, the sign-of-stupidity in the middle of the A4174 path has been moved.

We, the People's Cycling Front of South Gloucestershire take all credit for this, and denounce the collaborators in the Popular Cycling Front of South Gloucestershire for their attempts to politely point out the weaknesses in the designs. While they may claim credit, those polite complaints have been going on since August 2010, yet it is only a few weeks after we publicly denounced the cycle team at S Gloucs council of being incompetent that they acted.

We have won our first battles! However now the real war begins! All we have done is fixed two recent changes that made the existing bicycle paths worse. Yet the council still spends millions of pounds on road and roundabout widening, puts in car sharing lanes then removes them as they were under-used, and fritters away money on new routes to Cribb's Causeway that don't stop John Lewis naming and shaming that out of town shopping centre as having significantly lower revenue than their in-town stores. And who was the councillor pleased to have that new road opened? That's right, Cllr Bwian Allinson, the so-called cycling-city liaison councillor.

We cannot achieve our goal: cycle lanes the Dutch won't laugh at, while S Gloucs councillor doesn't give a fuck about bicycles except when they get a chance to get their face in the local papers pretending to care. Overthrowing the council is our only solution.

This is what we all must do!

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?

Better by bike?

The city's better by bike site has a video from the Bollards of Death route to the B&Q bridge.

We see they chose a sunny off peak period. This is it at its best. Try doing it at 17:15 after the MoD knock off, in winter conditions. the MoD lighting is for their IR cameras, the rubgy grounds completely unlit with large potholes that fill up with water. Add some pedestrians trying to get home in darkness and a couple of teenagers on trials bikes.



A quick post mortem of the video

1:14 Swerve into "the forbidden side" to pass pedestrians. This shows a fundamental problem here that bollards don't fix. People walk side by side, the bike paths are two way, the path isn't wide enough to segregate either traffic option. All the bollards do is increase the likelihood of collision, as segregation isn't possible.

2:06. This is three way junction with restricted visibility -something the video doesn't warn you about. Anyone coming from the route that joins on the left has to be in the pedestrian side to avoid colliding with people coming from the direction shown in the video.

2:21. Note the large water filled potholes. Then consider what the path is like in darkness.

2:48. Note how conflict is reduced at this point because the road is wide enough. But on winter nights when the rubgy match lights aren't on, pedestrians are invisible -nobody likes it.

3:57 (now in Bristol) observe the large oncoming bus. With vehicles half parked on the pavement on both sides of the road, oncoming traffic will swerve into your lane, and as few people give way to bicycles, the advice to keep your speed down would be correct -though of course having the cars do the same would be better. That is, after all, why people park on the pavement -to protect their own vehicle's bodywork.

Those vans on the left are a fixture by the way. We are promised some signs -let's see if that makes any difference in behaviour. Making one side of the road no parking, and making pavement parking illegal, might, because then everyone would park on the same side of the road -and less swerving.

4:27 You need some acceleration to cross here, cars are in a hurry to get in or out of Lockleaze.

4:59 locals tend to drive to these shops (no bike parking), look out for double parked vehicles, cars stopping, pulling out and U-turning without warning.

The shopping stretch is interesting. It is hazardous, because so many people drive there. Why? No reason not to other than fuel costs. There's little congestion, no parking problems (just double park), and you know there'll be somewhere to park when you get home. Unlike the inner city, the local shops are further away but easy to drive to. Downtown, the combination of congestion, one-way streets, road closures and traffic lights means you are best off walking round the corner. Here driving still works. It may cost, but as that weekly cost is decoupled from the drive to the shops, it's not immediately obvious.

Not a one-off

We looked at the signs in the middle of the bike path last week. Is that sign a one off?No, someone seems to have decided they can put them up directly after the hard zig-zag turns that were designed by someone who doesn't understand how people walk or cycle.

This path comes out of an industrial estate, only used by commuters. Regulars. So why  bother putting up a sign right in the middle of the path to remind them where their turn off to work is?

Again, painting something on the floor will work. That's why they do it on roads. But no, whoever has a bollard fetish -and is clearly a fetish- decided a triple-height bollard would do here.

This is painfully bad path design.

Is there hope. Well, the "old school" cycle campaigners have been emailing the council, here is the response they got

---------- Forwarded message ----------

Date: Thu, Feb 24, 2011 at 1:05 PM
Subject: Camouflage bollard on cyclepath near Abbey Wood

A reply to Terry Miller’s comments was sent by Keith Marsh last month, (attached), which outlines the situation regarding the ‘origins’ of the bollards near the MoD.  As for the larger direction sign posts, one or two of these have been repositioned where absolutely unavoidable.  In other cases, reflective tape has been applied to the recessed collar to make them more visible in dark conditions.

I’m sure you appreciate the number of considerations that go into determining the final position of these posts – the sign arms obviously need to be clearly visible from different directions and they should not protrude less than 450mm from a live carriageway, (for example).  Safety is also a prime consideration and the vast majority of all the recently erected sign posts and bollards create no additional hazard to cyclists or pedestrians whatsoever.

Where there are safety concerns raised regarding these features they will be investigated and rectified where appropriate.  This has already happened in some cases and as the Stage 3 Safety Audits for all the Cycling City routes take place, (the first ones will take place very soon), there may be cause to investigate one or two more specific locations.  In the meantime, construction works, including completion of often quite minor outstanding items, is still continuing on the Cycling City routes.  When this is finished and the safety audits also completed there will another opportunity to review some aspects of the route design, including the bollard / sign positions.

It would be premature to assume that all the current positions of all bollards and signs will not change.  At present the construction works are still being completed – when this is finished a further assessment of the routes will be carried out.  Any of the bollards or signs that might appear to compromise safety to an unacceptable degree may be removed or relocated.  I am sorry that this process has not already been completed – there are other works still being completed which have arguably greater potential safety implications in the short term.

I hope this is helpful.

---------- Forwarded message ----------

See that? "Premature to assume that all the current positions of all bollards and signs will not change". Why on earth were they put in the middle of the path in the first place? What person though it was a good idea, and has this person been escorted out of the council offices by site security yet? Because until they have, we have no confidence that such things won't stay there -to change them would be to acknowledge mistakes, and nobody likes to do that.

What can we do here?

We propose

1. Publicising such incompetence more widely. 
2. Putting up reflective markings, and publicising this.
3. Putting up warning signs ahead of the sign posts warning of signs in the middle of the path. 
4. Put some signposts in the middle of the car park behind the council office. 

Other ideas are welcome. Remember, proposing acts of violence against the council staff is a no-no. That doesn't solve problems, merely polarises opinions. We plan to use the white light of publicity and rely on ridicule and the fact that whenever anyone from the S Gloucs cycling team goes to any meeting with other councils, people will snicker and ask about signs in the middle of paths. Our big concern is this: they won't care.

Incidentally, this path joins Old Filton Road. That's the road that was closed to cars until a local councillor campaigned to have a rat-run reopened so he wouldn't have to spend so much time on the ring road. Presumably, that was done with cycle city funding. This is why the People's Cycling Front of South Gloucestershire is opposed to the council team getting any more funding from central government. We need a new team, or at least new councillors, before any new money can be justified.