Half-arsed, but better than TfL's work.

In a break from the whining, here's an Xmas gift, the route to St Werburgh's. This is good quality, though missing a few features that would prevent it being used as much as you'd think. Little things like lighting and signage.

This is a video of the descent from UWE to St Werburghs, following the official path with a few mountain bike options exercised. After all, the quality and intermittentness of the S Gloucs paths do effectively mandate mountain bikes with good travel on the front forks and -ideally- disk brakes. If you have the transport needed to negotiate bike paths whose entry and exits go over undropped kerbs, paths with 50cm dropoffs where the paths meet, etc, then you may as well make the most of it and have some fun.

Anyone who depends on TfL for their cycle safety will stare at this video and say "we wish we could have something this good", but the dutch will look at it and say "Could our children get to school on this?".




This video was taken in October, just as the sun was starting to set during the evening peak commute times. Once the clock changed, this went all dark and even on foot you'd worry about the underpass beneath the M32. You'd also stop using the fishponds roundabout underpasses and use the road crossings. Which, in their favour, are there at all: those over the M32 entry/exit points are recent. Until a year ago there was a sign saying "three pedestrians have died crossing here -use the underpass". Now there is an overground option that is survivable, even if you have to wait a minute or two.

Speaking of underpasses, the stairs are optional. You can go down the slope, though it's a bit skittery when the autumn leaves are there. A direct descent of the (shorter) steps avoids the corner and the traction on a 45 degree flight of steps is consistently bad in all weather.

Once you cross the roundabout you get into the 20 mph zone, with speed bumps to enforce deceleration. Heading out, the pavement is a shared use route, heading in you can grab the lane and head down it before scooting right. Then comes the final stretch to the St Werburgh's bridge, up over that and it's in to St Werburghs. UWE to the city, in under 14 minutes, with minimal risks, at least during daylight hours.

Most of this route is under the control of the Bristol Council cycle team. The good features: the 20mph zone, the give-way crossings, the new bike/pedestrian crossings at the roundabout, the frome valley path are all their work. Presumably the stretch through stoke park is theirs too.

In what is clearly the S Gloucs stretch at the beginning, you can see their official bike path features. Crossings and barriers. No signage saying "city centre 15 minutes".

And all the way along: no lighting. You would be fairly bold to do this on foot or bike on your own.

The biggest irritant is that stretch of road. It's a wide road with minimal parking pressure. Why didn't they put a segregated bike path along here, with some formal crossing at the roundabout? Do that with some lights and you do have a safe path that the kids could use.

The other issue is that the M32 bridge can't sustain heavy bicycle traffic. Two bicycles cannot pass on the corners, and visibility as you approach those bends, especially uphill, is pretty bad. If the volume of cycling traffic increases, this bridge could become a choke point. This would be an opportunity to put in access routes that are wider, and add some lighting at the same time.

All quiet on the Eastern Front

On the other side of the MoD from the Bollards of Death route lies "the eastern front". It's quite nice in daytime. Here we see two people with orange rucksacks doing the route into town.

The rucksacks say RAF on them, and as you can see, the cyclists are riding in formation. Years of experience paying off.

Is this a bike lane the dutch would laugh at? Well, let's look at some other bits.

Heading to the A4174 on a weekday morning.

The bike path isn't wide enough for two bicycles to pass, but at least there aren't any bollards here.

What is an issue is that anyone walking to work on the MoD site has to cross the bicycle side of the path to get to pedestrian side, increasing risk especially at the bus stops. Why not make the path wide enough for different lanes of bicycles and people walking? And put the footpath on the side by the bus stops, on the basis that that is the obvious destination?

One interesting feature is the green lanes on the road here. Some cars do actually give way to bicycles on these bits, even though it's not a legal requirement. You can't trust it, so perhaps both sides slow down just to make sure. It's a shared space kind of thing.

Now, the final view: heading south on a weekday evening. It's getting dim, and you can see that about one light in four on the MoD site is lit up. If all were lit up, you'd have better visibility on this stretch, which would really benefit pedestrians, who aren't encouraged to walk down here. Oddly enough, all the lights in the car park work.



The bike path is on the right (remember how it is on the left on the bollard path). With two bike paths joining, and the one at the end actually connecting with the bollards route, you have to swing into the pedestrian lane as you approach it, or to pass other bicycles.

Then you hit the rugby grounds. Pleasant at day, at night you have to deal with the narrow fence to get through -this was a change that got worse a couple of years back, before anyone with an MTB -as you need on these paths- could just clear the berm on the left. Now, if you have a road bike you have to slow down and zig zag through, on an MTB you can go on the grass and swerve through faster, hitting potholes as you go. There are more potholes at 1:18, stuff no bike can avoid, potholes that form massive puddle in the rain. At night you don't get any warning of this.

What could be done?

1. Widen the path between the bus stops and the nursery/car park, giving a proper pedestrian lane on the side of the bus stops. Eliminate crossing risk, better for everyone. It's not as if there isn't the space.
2. Move the bike path to the other side on the rest of the route, reduce risk of collision from the right. Or just recognise that there is no lanes. 
3. Fix the lights on the MoD site.
4. Change the entry point to the rugby grounds so you don't need to come completely to a halt. Instead widen it enough to get a trailer through, and line it up better. 
5. Fix the potholes.
6. Add some st-werburgh's path style solar LED lights through the rugby grounds. They show the route to everyone, and do benefit pedestrians.

The annoying thing none of these need much imagination to come up with, the problems are immediately visible. Yet nobody fixes them, nobody cares. Incompetence or Indifference: you choose.

Update: Fixed the link to the final video.

Bristol Parkway to UWE. Could try harder.

Before watching the video, know that 20 years ago, you could walk or run through fields all the way from the railway bridge to the UWE entrance. Since then various office facilities have appeared, along with lots of parking, and, unsurprisingly, big traffic jams on the A4174 ring road, along which everyone will have to cross, unless they are heading north to Bradley Stoke.

That means that in the past 20 years, many of the side roads went in, giving an opportunity to have a wide bicycles-first route alongside the roads. It didn't happen, and what has gone in recently can best be described as damage limitation, or more precisely "damage limitation designed not to upset anyone driving"

This is the official video on the better by bike site. This is the best video they could do to sell the project. Imagine how much less compelling it would be if it was done on a day when rain screwed up visibility and stopping distances, bikes coming in the opposite direction, and more pedestrians.



For a citizen of S Gloucs who is not affiliated with the People's Cycling Front, here are some issues the video highlights

• 0.14 - The chance to mix it with bus queues and their trolley suitcases  -
• 0.42 - 1.50 The convoluted detour to do 2 left turns.
• 1.19 - The chance to cycle on a narrow pavement under the bridge -
• 2.15 - The chance to scare the living daylights out of pedestrians on yet another
  pavement. 

We add:

• 0:00 No coverage of the car parking here. Yes, that increases train traffic, and there is also some secure bike parking, but it still implies that the primary expected transport option here is by car, not walking or cycling. Compare with the NL. 
• 0:31 the usual pavement/path problems. Two people walking side by side and bicycle traffic are not expected or supported in S Gloucs. #FAIL
• 0:44  A  zebra crossing with a designated bicycle option. This is is good, and should be replicated elsewhere, on this route and on all other routes where pedestrians and cyclists are expected to yield to motor traffic. Well done!
• 1:05 How can crossing be cycle friendly when the cars don't stop and the island is not wide enough for any bicycle with trailer or tagalong. Better to pull the island (removing a pinch point for the vehicular cyclists) and put in another bike+foot zebra crossing. Why wasn't this done? #FAIL
• 1:10 the signpost is not in the path. Well done!
• 1:19 this is a choke point you can't avoid. Yet someone was scared of, say, narrowing the road to one lane (alternating) and putting in a dedicated two way bicycle route. You know, something that says bicycles matter. #FAIL
• 1:25 a single bollard, with the blue markings but not that reflective. Just one bollard though. 
• 1:55 note the traffic speed. There's an expectation in cars that there aren't bicycles and you can drive at 60 on the roads. Lower speed limits would help, but the ever present dual carriageways reinforce the "cars only" feel. Yet these bike lanes are the alternative.
• 2:08 The loopback to the bridge is now complete. If a segregated bicycle lane had gone in under the bridge, the bike journey would have saved all the time since 0:44. This is a bike path designed to encourage you to cycle on the road as it is faster. #FAIL
• 2:10+ This is just a fucking pavement. Why not come out and call it that instead of a designated bike route. Oh, and it's no fun to walk either. The fields were prettier. 
• 2:20 Now the pavement gets narrower. The bollard to the right is there to stop you cycling into something that would hurt, like a fence. #FAIL.
• 2:43 Bicycles give way to staff car park. #FAIL.
• 3:05 another crossing with no ped/bike support other than "hope for the best". #FAIL.
• 3:20 a quiet back road with no parked cars would be the ideal place to retain a real segregated bike path;  instead you are expected to embrace the road. If you wanted that, why not just start off on the road? Oh, and what is the speed limit on this road? 30 or 60?
• 3:54 video forgets to warn about buses coming up the RHS, especially in a morning, as its the bus route to UWE. #FAIL.
• 4:01 we'd recommend looking right for cars doing 70+ mph before trusting the green man. Just a thought. 
• 4:03: the roadwork sign is the A4174 road widening, way more expenditure than the cycling work. It does add a bus lane, but doesn't take away any driving space. And how long before people get fed up by an empty bus lane before they turn it into another car lane -as they did with the car sharing lane the other side of the M32 junction?
• 4:08 - video doesn't say "These are responsive lights". There's a reason for that, expect up to a minute's wait, always including time stuck half way. You could say "well the cars are going fast here", but why not downgrade the road speed then? Why not give pedestrians and bicycles priority and give a full sequence to allow people to walk or cycle across the route without that wait in the middle? #FAIL
• 4:21 - we'll look at the UWE site bike paths some other time. Someone on site believes that bicycles are a threat to cars and so need their own special traffic calming. 

There we have it then. A half-arsed bike route that tries to provide a safe route to UWE from the station but tries to do it on the cheap by not putting in enough safe road crossings, and for a lot of the way, just putting some blue circles on a pavement. We think the Dutch will be, well, disappointed.

Counter Revolutionaries!

The complaint that we have made slanderous claims about the forthcoming new cycle path that almost-but-not-quite joins up with the UWE-Lockeaze path have led to a new web site being created: The South Gloucestershire Cycling Front . That's good, though not quite in keeping with the Monty Python Theme. Please, go watch the Life of Brian again and add popular or people's to the title somewhere.

It appears that this site was put up by the person David/Frank who was upset about our coverage of the new cycle path. In the identity "Frank Spencer" - a tribute to the 1970s comedian who was not involved with the Monty Python group (again, pity: Brian would have been a funnier fake name. Or Bwian :), we are denounced by these people who do not want our vision "Bike Paths the Dutch don't laugh at" realised

 

Here are some answers to their questions

Is the South Gloucestershire Cycling Front run by a failed engineer?

-No, we are a group of users who are fed up with the mediocre routes we have. They are there, they could work, but not the way they are going. You get something without lights, bollards and pillars are being added and every that path abandons you at roundabouts. And there are so many roundabouts here.

Why does this idiot think he can do better than everyone else.

We have been abroad, we know what can be done, we recognise failures. Anywhere you have to get off and walk is a failure. Anywhere you can't have kids ride around on their own is a failure. Anywhere that poeple don't feel is safe to walk or cycle at night is a failure. Any path that can have vans belonging to S Gloucs council parked in all day with nobody capable of dealing with the complaint about the path being blocked is a failure. Therefore we find the accusation that we are failed engineers from someone who appears to be partly involved in the process very amusing.


Why will South Gloucestershire Council not employ this idiot.

We do not seek employment, the team are all in paid employment in or residents of the area. We merely demand that the council delivers on their half of the cycling city promise. A city safe and pleasant to cycle around in. Bristol is improving. Filton, Patchway, Frenchay, well, try it and see what you think.

They have let us down. This is a shame as they have the space to do wide cycle paths, they have the congestion at peak hours to justify it, and they have the city of Bristol nearby for people to commute to and from, as well as the suburbs of Bradley Stoke and Emerson's Green.

Why are they failing us? Three options spring to mind, "the three I's"

• Ignorance
• Incompetence
• Indifference

Ignorance: they don't ride bicycles themselves, they don't understand our needs. They think that large dropoffs are viable, street lights are a luxury.

Incompetence: they mean well, but something goes wrong. For example, someone could not have done a proper site survey above, included the area out the site, and nobody thought while the lovely tarmac was being laid perfectly smooth that the underlying goal was being missed. Or they think that signs will help, missing the detail that one in the middle of a path on the apex of a turn would be near-lethal. We suspect "Frank" is upset about our hints about this and is taking it personally.

Indifference: they don't really care. They assume the people on bicycles are either law-breaking criminals who don't pay road tax or stop at lights, or student underpeople from outside. Not proper revenue-earning citizens of S Gloucs. They expect us to be grateful for whatever they throw in our direction. Whereas in fact many of us work at the big technology and finance companies along here and are fed up of the treatment we receive.

Indifference is probably is the underlying root cause -except it does not (just) lie in the people doing the paths. The blame lies with the councillors. Sometimes the people on the ground are just following the orders from above, and either they aren't in a position to say "this doesn't make sense" or if they do say it, they get overruled.

We shall cover the councillor problem when we focus on Old Filton Road. We know who to blame there as they appear in the local papers, proud of what they have achieved.

It has been quite amusing reading all the comments. Now we understand why Freewheeler of Waltham Forest fame disables comments on that site -it'd be full of hate mail from every single member of the Waltham Forest council whose nominal job description involved cycle paths, transport, cycle parking, street cleaning or improving the shopping areas.

PS, Frank. The photo at the top of this page is the first one in our sequence, dated 17:06 on Feb 16. The barrier is shown as it was discovered. That was the same day that some people dug a trench in the path by the UWE entrance and then filled it in with loose gravel but didn't add tarmac. Like we say: the paths are getting worse.

Demand #1, repeated: Cycle Paths the Dutch won't laugh at

The A4174 ring road path. You can get from here to the Bristol-Bath railway path and hence into the city centre of either city without a single road or even vehicle turning over you. Lovely.

So, the Cycling Team thought "let's put a sign in at this three way junction to help people find the way". All well and good. But the plan, as Blackadder would say, had one small flaw. The team are incompetent idiots.



But why oh why did these idiots think that the middle of the path was the right place to put it. You do not get street signs in the middle of roads for an obvious reason: people would run into them and sue the council. So what was going on in anyone's head when they came up with this plan?

Presumably they expect everyone to cycle in one lane or other. but there's a flaw here.


Its on a corner. And bicycles, when they corner, tilt. So now you have a sign right on the apex of the corner where you are going to smack straight into it. if you get injured, you can be sure that in the coverage of the miserable bog roll that pretends to be the local press but is really a mouthpiece of the daily mail, the usual idiot commenters will say "did they have a helmet", missing the fact you don't need a helmet on what could be a traffic free route from S Gloucs to the two closest cities if it was not for the cycle path planners putting up fucking signposts in the middle of blind corners.

Also: notice how there's no hi viz or reflective markings at the height that bike lights will catch
 

What can we do about this?

We'd like the entire traffic planning team fired, as we've stated before, the cycle forums replaced by something where the new cycle team will actually come out on rides with the local cyclists. We'd also like whichever councillor claims to be the voice of cycling in the council to spend some time trying to get round their area by bicycle.  Which raises another point: why don't any councillors have to act as special representatives of motorists? Because everyone drives up and down the A4174 ring road, the road underneath this bridge -there's no need for a special representative, all the councillors will complain about the High Occupancy lane being under used, of the ratruns being closed off. So every councillor in the council is really a special representative of the motorists.

AReturning to the ring-road, nobody stuck in its morning or evening traffic jam is going to see this sign. They won't think "oh look a cycle path, I'd be better off there". So it's not going to encourage anyone at all to cycle. For that you'd need to stop spending millions of pounds widening the road and instead put some signs up saying "If you were on a bicycle, you'd be there by now". Cheaper, more useful.

If you wanted to show people already on the path how to get to Filton, Emerson's green or the railway path, why not just paint it on the pavement? Really? It's not hard, not expensive. If you use the right paint, not even slippery. Instead we get this piece of shite civil engineering going up in winter -you know, when it's dark during commuting hours- for what. Not the commuters, it must be the leisure cyclists. But nobody cycles alongside the ring for fun. Because it's got signs in the middle of and you could get hurt.

This is why we are not some spoof organisation, despite rumours. Someone needs to make it clear to the council that they are making a mess of things.

Some feedback

Our claim that the new cycle paths going up between Lockleaze and UWE are something that The Dutch would laugh at are disputed by "david", who says that we have made untrue accusations about an unfinished path, and that we should take our posting down.

To the author of this blog page you have made accusations and assumptions which are incorrect.

Please remove this item or forward your name and address to my email 

Well, reviewing the statements we made, the one that is probably wrong is that this is the work of the S Gloucs cycling team. Having visited the site in the week, this is still Redrow's area, and hence their problems. Please can the S Gloucs team accept our apology for this, which may reduce their reaction to next week's coverage on signs in the middle of other paths.

What cannot be untrue is

• The current height gap between the two paths. This is demonstrably true by examining the photograph below.There is 50cm of vertical with under 2 metres of horizontal space for correcting it.
• The fact that the Dutch people who viewed our posting found it funny. This is demonstrably true by reading their comments.

Now, it is still a building site, and it may be that there is a plan to connect the two paths together. But the fact they are on different levels means that whatever junction is done here is fundamentally broken. You will have people descending at speed down to the path where they are meant to give way, and people who are trying to get up from the UWE/Lockleaze path who won't be able to do it as the gradient to climb 50cm vertical in 1.5m horizontal is 1 in 3.

David, if you are involved in this project and have plans to fix this situation, please place them up online, point to them in a comment and we will link to them.

In particular, we would value an explanation of how you intend to address the 50cm height difference between the two paths in a way that results in a junction which is actually usable. We shall be testing whether or not the design is something Dutch people would laugh at by asking them, as well as organising a mountain bike only competition to see who can get up and down here once you consider it "open" to the public.

We can be contacted via twitter, @cyclingfront. All communications may be republished and must not be considered confidential or in any way private.

Cycle paths the Dutch won't laugh at

One of our requirements of what pretends to be part of the cycling is "cycle paths the Dutch won't laugh at."

Unlike inner Bristol, there is the space. We know that, because they keep putting up new dual carriageways, new buildings with lots of parking.

If there is room to add a dual carriageway and lots of parking, there is room to add a quality cycle path

If there is not, then the blame has to go on competence or a complete lack of willingness to care.

Such incompetence is unacceptable to the People's Cycling Front of South Gloucestershire, even if the Popular Cycling Front of South Gloucestershire think differently and are happy to accept the shite the council gives us.

We want, as stated before "cycle paths the Dutch won't laugh at."

That means

1. Cycle paths that require cars to give way. Interestingly, this exactly what is going up in the housing estate behind the MoD Abbey Wood site.

2. Cycle paths that connect up to create a network of traffic free routes. Again, the new development paths do this, as here they connect with the existing UWE-Lockleaze route

It also means no fucking drops the height of a wheel between the two paths, ones that do require you be sporting an MTB with 100-120mm worth of travel on the bike along with hydraulic disk brakes because otherwise you aren't going to do the dropoff and reduce speed and turn left or right fast enough not to clip one of the students.

What kind of idiot would do this? Not just design it, but notice, while they were perfectly levelling the new tarmac, that there was 50cm worth of difference between this new tarmac and the existing path? 

At some point in the future, David Hembrow is going to see this. And he'll laugh. At some point Amsterdamize will see this, and they will say "one of those English jokes". Eventually Mikhael from Copenhagenize will see it and say "That monty python humour, I almost get it"

Because whoever did this is one or more of:

• Utterly incompetent and in need of having their right to design any kind of road or path removed, banned from ever calling themselves a civil engineer again, until they spend a year's apprenticeship in Haarlem or Den Haag.
• Utterly ignorant of the needs of people trying to get round the city alive by bicycle.
• Utterly indifferent of whether or not the cycle paths they design and get built can actually be ridden by someone who isn't a mountain biker that thinks 50cm dropoffs are fun.

This is the problem S Gloucs suffers from. It is a problem that means the Cycling Embassy of GB is only going to make progress here if the entire S Gloucs traffic design team die in a bizarre accident involving a white minibus and a snow plow  -and they replace it with one person who has been to mainland Europe at least once since 1972 instead of some apprentice who learned about road design from the old team and A-Z maps of glasgow and leeds.

But before Carlton Reid and Vehicular Cyclists say "Told you so", these are the same fucking idiots who are trying to accomodate bicycles on the roads. You cannot expect the incompetent and indifferent idiots who do things like this to look at the new dual carriageway they are planning and think "how will a family of four on their own bicycles get over this alive". No, they will produce something that will end up with that family of four getting mentioned in a footnote on the evening news, "family of four died", then some fat git will appear on TV and patronise everyone and say "did they have helmets on?".

For everyone who thinks we are some kind of joke. No, the council cycling team are. Which is why anyone who tries to use these paths will be joining the campaign. Contact us via twitter, @cyclingfront. And together, the council will come to fear us or at least feel vaguely self concious about their imcompetence, and note that whenever the say "We are the South Gloucestershire cycle planning team" everyone from Europe will snicker. 

This is why we have to overthrow the council, or at least embarrass them so much they will hire a new traffic planning team.