Filton Shubbery battle -have the pavement instead

Remember how the traffic creators (calling them "Traffic planners" would imply planning skills and ignore demand creation) wanted to turn part of a park into an extra roundabout lane?

Well, the Filton Town Council response is "have the pavement instead"

FILTON councillors have rejected a request from South Gloucestershire Council to hand over a piece of parkland to make way for a road widening scheme.

South Gloucestershire's Mark Shearman, principal engineer for transport services, wrote to the town council. He asked for councillors to decide whether the town council could "contribute" a small corner of Elm Park to the scheme, originally asking for 317 metres squared.

In his letter he said that the extra land would provide an opportunity to address congestion on the approach to the roundabout, upgrade the traffic signals to a more efficient system and improve facilities for cyclists.

He explained that the scheme would be funded with section 106 money from the new Southmead Hospital development.

That is this would be the NHS funding the removal of parkland to make it easier for fat people to drive to the hospital for their Diabetes checkups. Does nobody in the council or traffic creation department think about the hypocrisy there? In Bristol, S106 money goes to encouraging cycling. In S Gloucs: extra lanes at junctions.

As for the claim this would help cyclists, that's clearly bollocks. How would encouraging more cars to drive down Filton Road and make it harder to get across the BAe Roundabout help cycling.

...

Resident Brian Smith, 75, who lives in Third Avenue, attended the last council meeting.
"I don't think the scheme is necessary," he said.
"The width of the footpath could be reduced to make way for a third lane of traffic before we start giving away our green land.

The locals like their greenery, but don't give a fuck about the pavement either. Well, nobody wants to use that pavement, though it is the only way to get to the shopping centre set up for people to drive in to, and it is part of the official ring road cycle route. Not caring about it reflects the views of the residents, rather than the council. At least they want the park to stay green.

...

A South Gloucestershire Council spokesman said: "The council is currently working with Filton Town Council on plans to improve the ring road junction with the A38 at Filton roundabout. 

"These improvements are a response to the Southmead hospital redevelopment and address the expected increase in traffic flows in the area as patients, employees and visitors travel to the hospital.

"The proposals involve widening the carriageway to provide an extra lane on the westbound approach to the roundabout and will use a narrow strip of land from the adjacent Elm Park, which is owned by Filton Town Council. 

"In order to minimise the amount of land needed for the improvements, options considered include placing the shared use footway/cycleway path running alongside the road within the Elm Park boundary. 

"An area of redundant highway land near Shellard Road is also being investigated for use as a replacement for the Elm Park land."

Let's think this through. There's no free parking being added at Southmead, the area nearby is going to have its parking rules enforced. While it makes sense for out-of-shift staff to drive in and out, if the council had actual support for cycling or public transport in the area then they'd be doing something to aid that, rather than push bicycles away and do nothing for buses.

Regarding Shellard Road -its on the east side of the fields. They may find something there, but given the council's habit of turning traffic free routes into rat-runs, don't expect it to stay parkland. Five years from now, they will want to widen the route further back from the roundabout, and at that point the small print in any land swap will surface to show the council can have it back for free.

For anyone who says the council can be engaged with, politely, this shows the traffic creation department's world view. Their hierarchy of Provision is

1. HGVs (only S Gloucs has a bus/bike/HGV lane)
2. Cars
3. Parking for Cars
4. Extra rat-runs to take the pressure off the A4174
5. Extra routes to the M4
6. Extending the A4174 around the South of Bristol to create the demand for even more lanes
7. Grandiose Bus Rapid Transit schemes down the Bristol-Bath Railway Path.
8. Trains
9. Pedestrians
10. Bicycles
11. Greenery

Why put pedestrians above bicycles? Because every shared use path -the only bike paths in the area- have lots of signs up telling bicycles to slow down for pedestrians. But there is no single "shared road", open to both bicycles and cars, where there are signs up telling the cars to slow down for bicycles. If anyone on a bicycle gets hit by a car, it's their own fault for being there.

BBC, getting "road tax" wrong again

Another complaint, this time to the BBC

Complaint about the Radio 4 programme, You and Yours, broadcast at 12:30 on Monday April 9, regarding the repeated use of the phrase "Road Tax".

The you and yours programme on small cars has both the presenter and the interviewee repeatedly using the phrase "road tax" as a misnomer for Vehicle Excise Duty. Such an erroneous uce reinforces the mistaken belief that cyclists do not pay for the road and therefore have no right to use them, which increases conflict between drivers who believe bicycles should be off the roads, and those of us who are trying to use a low-pollution,  low congestion solution to our cities' transport problems.

This use of the phrase "Road Tax" is a recurrent problem with BBC reporting. While it may  be considered acceptable in a slightly-comedic series such as Top Gear, to use it in a consumer journalism series implies inadequate factual review prior to broadcast.

In the past, BBC news programmes have published corrections to such errors
http://road.cc/content/news/17863-bbc-look-east-forced-set-record-straight-road-tax-%E2%80%A6-er-ved-video

Could you consider the you-and-yours reporters to do the same -after they have been correctly briefed on the funding model of roads and motor vehicles contributions thereof?

The Ring Road Path Series: Introducing the M32 Death Trap Crossing

We’ve looked briefly at the Ring Road Path already It’s one of South Gloucestershire Council’s “Flagship” cycle routes and was tagged ‘Route 7’ under the Cycling City Project. Unsurprisingly given its name, it runs alongside the A4174 Avon Ring Road from Hicks Gate, near Keynsham in the south (which is actually in Bath and North East Somerset) through to the Bristol City Council boundary in the vicinity of Southmead Hospital (near Kenmore Drive). It's called flagship because "fucking lethal in places" doesn't look so good in brochures. I

According to the Council the stated aim of Cycling City Route 7 scheme was:

to provide a continuous off-carriageway cycle route catering for both less experienced and more confident, regular cyclists, thereby improving access to important local businesses such as Hewlett Packard, MOD Abbeywood, University of the West of England and other public amenities and facilities between Emersons Green and Southmead Hospital.

Well, you can certainly end up in Southmead A&E, whether you work there or not. Notice how they don't say "leisure route". You don't see families on it on a weekend, not just because the ring-road is unappealling, but families won't get round it safely.



In places the path is OK. Yes, it could be wider, no, it’s not well lit or very well signed, it’s not swept very often, it gets covered with broken glass, it doesn’t get gritted in the winter, and yes it’s a shared use path so it’s used by school kids, joggers and dog walkers who occasionally seem to forget that it’s also used by cyclists but, it’s better than nothing and like we’ve already said you need to cherish the left-overs

The Ring Road path does have a few serious flaws and it's time to look at these in a bit more detail, starting with one of the major flaws. In fact it’s so serious that if nothing is done about it it could quite possibly become a fatal flaw. Probably the only reason it hasn't is that s gloucs have done so little to encourage cycling that it doesn't get used much.

Remember Sustrans? The Bristol based charity that has its roots in the first project to turn a disused railway line into one of the most highly used and certainly most highly prized and loved off-road paths: The Bristol Bath Railway Path, otherwise now known as National Cycle Network Route 4 or NCN4 for short. It’s a great route and it is crossed by and links to the Ring Road Path. Those first route builders were not some council planning department, they were cyclists who knew what was needed: a safe route with safe crossings.

Sustrans developed the National Cycle Network and produced a fantastic ‘Best Practice’ Guide’ for Council’s who are building or creating cycle paths. Most Councils have a copy and use it. We wonder if anyone in South Glos has? We doubt it. If they do it'll be used as bog paper in their loo, the one with a photo of the M4/M5 interchange on the door to keep you happy until the paper is needed.

The Sustrans Guide
contains lots of useful practical advice, all of it sensible, it’s clearly been put together by people who ride bicycles, have a fucking clue and provides an authoritative. step-by-step guide for any vaguely competent highways engineer or planner. Read it and you think how could South Gloucestershire Council fuck up so badly. And yet fuck up they do. Without the need for any guide to ‘Best Practice’ they are quite happy to lead the way in developing new and innovative ways to deliver Worst Practice. You could write the "Soglocs manual for cities shit for cycling" and sell it to other councils.

Turning to chapter 5 of the guide -which the traffic planners may not have got as far as in their arse-wiping yet, is a section on how important it is for cyclists on a segregated path (even a shit narrow one) to get over roads alive

Continuity is essential to the popularity of any cycle route, therefore the proper resolution of junction features is critical for its success.. not only must junction details provide a safe solution, but they should also exhibit due regard for all types of road user. In particular, the quality of detail and the level of priority given to cyclists and pedestrians must reinforce the perception that they are welcome in the area

Which brings us back to the Ring Road Path, Cycling City Route 7. You see, there are several junction features on the Ring Road Path that do not exhibit due regard for all types of road user. Especially not cyclists and pedestrians. Not only do they not make you feel welcome they make you feel at best unwelcome, at worse whether you are going to survive the next twenty sections. Worst of all several of them actually create a significant hazard for cyclists and pedestrians who are led there believing they are following a safe and properly designed cycle route. One is quite literally a "death trap".

The Ring Road Path meets the M32 motorway. M32 Junction 1 at Hambrook.



The junction has been extensively modified (the Council would have you believe “improved”) since it was built in 1966 and it has now become a multi lane nightmare, with some separators and bridge leftovers to amplify the problem. And now they are widening it some more, they say "to help public transport", when they mean to get a bus lane in without taking any space from the fat lazy bastards who create the traffic jams and should be on the fucking bus, while showing cyclists how we don't give a fuck about them. For some reason that doesn't appear on the diagram or in the consultations. It should have.


More soon.

S. Gloucs Road planners: We want a shrubbery. Yours.

Rather than slag off the council cycle team, let's look a bigger problem: the council road planning team. These are people whose daily commute probably takes in the A38/M5/M4 exchange, the M32/M4 exchange and the A4174 ring road. While everyone else is stuck in their cars thinking "this is shite", the road planners are thinking "we love complex interchanges. If we added seventeen more flyovers we could get another 1500 cars/hour through here"

These are the real enemy. The cycle team can only fuck up cycle lanes and the bits by the roads. It is the road planners that put in the dual carriageways and the roundabouts off them -then get surprised that this creates more congestion.

Whoever these people are, they are lost in 1970s road planning, ignorant of demand creation. They think widening the ring road will solve problems -it won't. What would solve problems would be making it safe and easy for people to cycle to work, to school and home. Dirt cheap and easy.

But the ring-road planners don't want that. They want to do motorways! Flyovers! Bridges! They are civil engineers building things without any grounding in what actually benefits the area.

This week -an expansion of the A4174/BAe roundabout. Where will the space for this come from? The elm-green park area alongside the Filton Pool and community centre. This has a BMX track, a cycle speedway (there's a waste of cycle sport money), and one of the few green spaces in the area.

The road planners want this. They don't have the money for it, so they've asked Filton Council to give them to it -for free!

An evening post article covers the story..

In a letter to the council, Mark Shearman, principal engineer for transport services, says they want 317 square metres of extra land to widen the Filton A4174 ring road, as part of the Southmead 106 funding project, which it asks Filton council to donate free of charge. The move would see the amount of land taken from Elm Park playing fields, reducing the size removing trees, pathway and shrubbery in the process.


Extra space for more ring road over parkland. Nice to see the priorities. They say this will reduce congestion, but that shows how little they know of "induced demand" -more lanes for cars means more cars.

What about the people who cycle? Fuck off, is what the road planners say, discreetly:

In addition to the road changes the council say they want to improve facilities for cyclists with pathways but they have a limited budget and are under a timescale pressure

See that? "want to" but "limited budget" and "timescale pressure". That means no. It means "we don't give a fuck about bicycles and can't be arsed to do anything about it". It means "All that stuff about putting walking, cycling and public transport first? That's bollocks that we don't believe". Induced Demand? Unproven theory. Global Warming? A communist conspiracy. Peak Oil. Fictional. As for cycling? Why do that when there is a car park by our office for our BMWs?

This is the root cause of the shitness in the area for cycling. A bunch of road planners who dream of a Filton of Flyovers, who ignore the larger consequences of their decisions. Maybe they do know of Induced Demand -and like it, because it keeps them busy building flyovers and roundabouts.

Another quote
"Councillor Bill Moore said he had spoken to the planning department suggesting a cycle path could cut through Elm Park field and was told this hadn't been considered as an option"

Is that surprising? The traffic department views cyclists as a bunch of whiners who turn up to a meeting that they don't attend themselves.

If there is one good thing, the outcome of the meeting was

Filton council concluded that the request from South Gloucs council was ill thought out and they voted all but one to reject the request completely

That may give them the time to actually design in that bike lane, a proper one. They could even use the money saved from the widening to build it. But you can pretty fucking confident they won't as the road planners don't believe in bicycles.

And where is our cycling representative, Bwian Allinson in all this? Keeping his head down, by the look of things.

S. Gloucs Road planners: We want your shrubbery

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.

Cities Shit for Cycling #2

Chester Cycling have given us an updated logo.

This is far more authentic, and shall be used as the official logo for all coverage of S Gloucs council from now on.

S Gloucs: Cities Shit for Cycling

Citizens! The new Times "Cities Fit for Cycling" campaign targets councils like that of S Gloucs.

Unfortunately our council could not support any of the objectives of the campaign, especially that bit about providing useful infrastructure. As far as the council is concerned y\the only role of cycling infrastructure is to keep people on cycles out the way of cars -and if there is a conflict, the bicycles lose. 

For that reason, we, the People's Cycling Front of S Gloucestershire have some artwork to donate to the council, their own logo that they can stick on the vans that block bike paths.

Some people might think "will not the council be embarrassed by this?"

S Gloucs council doesn't give a fuck about bicycles. We know that because we have seen photographs of the new Great Wall of Filton! Until one of our campaign units has visited the site we can not confirm that it is real, but if it is, it actually makes the path with a 50cm dropout look good. At least that one could be ridden on a mountain bike. 

Until that coverage, enjoy our new logo. Before any outsiders complain that the word "shit" doesn't join up with the rest of the sentence, compare it to S Gloucs cycling farcilities before slagging of our graphics.