The origin of the Great Wall of Filton

At their AGM, Joe Steinsky took the attendees from the showcase Bristol City infrastructure, to the "what not to do" infrastructure of S Gloucs -infrastructure that was, remember, funded out of the Cycling City program.

David Arditti has put up his review.

First, regarding the MoD paths, those were the ones where bollards without illuminated markings went up to narrow the cycle route down to less than 1m for two lanes -making it the nationally famous Bollards of Death path. It may be abysmal now, but consider this: the S Gloucs cycle team spent money making it worse, then more money reversing their mistakes.


Which brings us, naturally to the Great Wall of Filton, which as David Arditti observes is "foolishly obstructed by a wooden post".


Its far, far worse than that. The shared space went in a couple of years ago to make this stretch of road walking and cycling friendly. Instead it shows why shared space is a shit idea that actively punishes anyone cycling. By allowing cars to park on the edges of the space, and giving people the "option" of walking and playing in the centre, it created conflict with anyone cycling, and Great Wall of Filton is the result.

What they could have done is a proper, segregated path through the shared space. No, giving the (new) residents the right to park their cars in front of their houses is more important.

Going back a few years, here is the planning decision.

"to achieve a significant shift in travel behaviour away from the private car towards a greater use of walking, cycling and public transport;"


Well, did it fucking succeed?

Reasons for the closure

• The problems identified by the residents included the use of Eighth Avenue by through traffic to avoid congestion on Filton Avenue and vehicles travelling at inappropriate speed.
• 15 injuries on the road in the previous 3 years.
• "Traffic calming does not effectively deter either rat- running or anti-social driving"

These are all good goals. Closing the road to through traffic has helped. It's just the shared space development completely screwed things up:

The closure ties in with Bristol City Council proposals for the Horfield Estate Regeneration. This section of Wordsworth Road forms part of the proposed Home Zone and a large volume of fast moving through traffic would undermine the Home Zone.

See that? the closure came in with the shared space zone, not after it. There was an opportunity to do things better when the houses that were there before were ripped down - a segregated route that would encourage cycling, and, while it couldn't stop motorbiking, could isolate the damage. Instead the area got a shared space with some barriered road closure, and then, last year, the Great Wall of Filton.

At the original event, who was opposed?

One resident who felt that the turning point would be blocked (probably true), it would devalue their property (bollocks) and that other forms of traffic calming would be better. Some lazy git who likes driving, by the sound of things.

Who else? The S Gloucs Taxi association

The Workers Union Taxi Branch 2/106, whose address is in South Gloucestershire, are as follows:-

1. Closure would be detrimental to their trade,
2. A lesser measure should be imposed
   
3. Making one or two roads traffic free will not help cyclists
   

Point #2 isn't an argument; it's a suggestion. Point number one: "we want our rat runs". That's what it means. This road used to be a high speed alternative, especially southbound, to Filton Ave. Northbound, the right turn at end meant you relied on goodwill from drivers stuck in the Northbound jam -and goodwill is pretty fucking sparse on a weekday morning.


Point #3 is fucking hilarious. When has the S. Gloucs taxi association ever given a fuck about bicycles before or after this? Never. Did they suddenly get take over by a cycling group and decided to care? Pretty unlikely. Instead they use the "we care about bicycles" argument to say "this road should stay a rat-run for taxis."


They make a point :making one or two roads traffic free will not help cyclists, but to say that means that roads should not be closed is specious-fucking-politician-style-argument-dredging.


Unless someone in Bristol or S Gloucs is prepared to declare a dedicated road closure down a fully joined up route -and it would be wonderful, if unlikely in the city, and never going to happen if fat-arse-allinson has power- closing roads one by one is all that's left. This road has joined up with the concorde way. it could almost be a good cycling route. Yet the taxi drivers were against the initial closure on the grounds that it wasn't a good solution for cycling in the city.

At least here the council had the backbone to tell the taxi drivers to go fuck themselves:

• Eighth Avenue/Wordsworth Road are not suitable roads to be used as a through route by taxis and it will be possible for all properties on these roads to be accessed by taxis.
• Lesser measures such as traffic calming would have little impact on the volume of through traffic.
• The closure will have a beneficial effect on a 2 mile long ‘rat run’ that is currently promoted as a signposted cycle route between Bristol and the North Fringe.

Meaning :you shouldn't be rat-running here, traffic calming would miss the whole point of the proposal, and it is on a sign posted cycling route.

What has happened in the last eight years, then? The housing is done, the shared space built, and the residents -suburban car drivers that they are- don't see the point in a cycle route. All they see are motorbiking teenagers coming through their shared space, and are happy to have the route blocked.

Here's what happened, as an email forwarded to us says:

The changes were made through the Bristol Neighbourhood Partnership budget for Horfield & Lockleaze and were jointly funded by South Gloucestershire, (as it is right on the border of the two authorities). The issue was addressing a road safety concern with motorcycle speed through the stopping up, which was affecting pedestrians, cyclists and local residents using the facility. Bristol has received phone calls and correspondence from Ward Councillors, the Police, local residents and users on this particular issue. The speeding issues had been reported throughout the day as well as the night and were not easy to address through enforcement due to numerous motorbikes using this as a short cut.

As there was very little funding to address this, CCTV or completely re-engineering the stopping up was not an option, due to significantly less funding within local government currently. We believe the amendments probably do act as a very minor inconvenience for cyclists, in much the same way as a York-style staggered barrier may act. We also agree for the minority of people using a tag along or tricycle this is not perhaps a route we would advise using. Yet for the majority of cyclists it is still possible to use the route in a far safer way, without potential or actual conflict occurring at high speed with motorbikes. For tricycles or tag alongs we would suggest using The Concorde Way, (if they are heading to the MoD or other employers in the area), or the other alternative would be Filton Avenue. Although we do not envisage the amendments stopping motorcycle misuse, it will slow the current speeds and be a road safety improvement for most users and residents. Unfortunately a solution to this age old conundrum, which allows access for all, but stops issues with motorbikes has yet to be invented, although we do try trial new solutions to regularly check this.

In terms of alternative design solutions we did investigate at a number of other options including one to three bollard/s either side of the islands allowing cyclists to weave around them, but due to bollards potentially being struck by turning traffic, (particularly large lorries or refuse vehicles) and little or no budget the current arrangement was the best placement in terms of future maintenance.

As regards the footway, the staggered barriers have been implemented within our current BCC Environmental Access Standards and are as such DDA compliant, as far as we are aware. Finally, in terms of making the bollards visible at night, they do already have a retro-reflective band around the top.

There you have it. The Great Wall of Filton was the easiest and cheapest way to keep motorbikes out the shared space. And if you have an odd-shaped bicycle, Filton Avenue is your option. Which is fucking ridiculous.

A wanker driving an white e-van is still a wanker

In the Empire of the Car, pollution is one thing that threatens the car companies -as it puts them on a par with tobacco companies, and lines them up for being banned from cities. If that happens, a key feature of the motor car "you need it to get around" goes up in flames. They would lose the cities and be left with the long journeys. And as only a fraction of journeys are the long ones, there'd be a lot less cars on the road.  No school running parents, no bored commuters on the M32 -and no people buying cars and having them serviced.

This is why e-vehicles get so much hype. The car industry can't be so fucking naive to realise that it addresses all the problems of cars and how they are destroying our cities -but they can promise it, to say "we do care, things will be better -now go and buy that Urban SUV for the school run because your last car is five years old and doesn't have an ipod socket or reversing camera." They can go to the politicians and say "we can solve the cities' problems, give us: money, per-car subsidy, C-zone exemption, car-tax exemption, free parking, the right to drive down bus-lanes, free charging points, and so on. The politicans may so fucking naive that they do believe this -they certainly give out more fucking cash per e-car than you get on a bike to work scheme, and they so love to turn up at the car factories in Swindon, Oxford and Newcastle to get their fat faces in the local rags saying "we politicians care about the environment and about jobs in the area -vote for us". Bike to work schemes, custom framebuilders and the like just don't make for these press events -and they don't have the lobbying skills either. Which is why the money goes to e-cars and not fixing our cities.

Which means that the cities will carry on being shit for cycling and walking.




White van wankers are the front line in the war against the cyclist, the ones who hate bicycles and go out of their way to "show them who owns the road", "teach them a lesson" and generally vomit abuse at anyone on a bicycle.

They also park where they fucking like, whether that's a bike lane, bike path, pavement or anywhere else that is close enough to their destination that they don't need to walk.

Does anyone really think that moving to e-vans will make these fuckwits pleasant to share roadspace with? If you do, you're a naive idiot.

They will be just as aggressive, hate bicycles just as much, only now not be able to drive six inches behind your bike over-revving the diesel engine. Maybe also slower off the mark when the lights change. They will still park where they want to, still scream hate, still have passengers who lean out the side window and swear at you (you not had that? Come visit Yate). They will still think a cyclist coming down a contraflow should not be there and swerve over to clip you.

No, a wanker driving a van will become a wanker driving a e-van,

We are at war with 'Imperial Car'

We live in the empire of the car: they are in charge. And behind the car: the car industries. They must feel threatened. What headlines do they fear

• "closed to traffic" -devalues the car
• "congestion charges" -increases cost of use
• "traffic jams expected" -destroys value of car
• "EU pollution limits" -shows cost of motoring
• "Car crash kills family of five" -shows cost of motoring and doesn't reduce the blame like "cyclist dies in road accident -not wearing helmet".
• "Oil prices to rise"
• "Fuel duties to increase"

These threaten their livelihood -a livelihood that depends on people not just buying a new car every few years, but paying a premium over "car that gets you there" for "car as visible display of status". They have to show value in owning a car, and reinforce that cars are not merely something everyone needs -but something to show of one's status in modern society.

The People's Cycling front hereby declares war on Imperial Car makes a list of threats to these invaders  of our city!

• Direct cost of motoring. Congestion and Parking fees connect drivers directly with the costs; fuel less so but still tangibly. Electric motoring with quarterly bills would be even better.
• Opposition to the societal costs of motoring. Death of cyclists and pedestrians, pollution in cities, the destruction of our city centres, death of the high-street. Anything that forces cars to slow down destroys its selling point "speed", restricting access kills its key function "gets you there fast".
• Congestion. So fucking ironic: cars create their own downfall in congestion and parking problems, problems that parking fees and congestion charges are used to mitigate.
• Demographics. Cars lived off the baby boom, consumerism and the movement to the suburbs -places where every adult needs a car. Falling populations in western countries and a return to the city cores threatens this.
• Cultural shifts. Cars go out of fashion. Not status symbols, no more than a bus is. The big risk here is that the (shrinking) youth prefer to be online with their friends over phones than stuck in traffic jams.

We the People's Cycling Front of South Gloucestershire shall fight the invaders! We shall look at all these issues in turn and show how the Empire of the Car is threatened -and what are they doing to fight back.

Before then, look at how they are denying the truth. Here's Audi's "ugly ducking" video



Look at the old footage -villages you can walk around in. People. It would be nice to walk round there, to go to local shops.

Consider what Audi want to sell their customers. A countryside empty of people, animals and bicycles. The car is portrayed as driverless, as it speeds down empty roads -roads that never get seen outside car adverts. Inside the car, in the blue glow of the audi interiors (VW/Audi Group like their blue dashboards), the driver -a man, obviously- warms his oversized buttocks on the heated leather seats. He speaks to his wife on the iPhone via the speaker system, tell her and the family not to wait up as a financial crisis has occurred and he is essential to society because he has to fix it. Then he phones up his (french, naturally) mistress, says the satnav says he'll be there in six minutes, so get the champagne out the fringe and the kimono on.

That is what Audi are selling. Status -and a world that doesn't fucking exist. Yet they promise it, they say "buy our overpriced toy and you can have it". You can't, it's bollocks. Not even your own wife wants to bed you, your kids are bored with your work stories, your colleagues think you are a wanker who can't stop talking about cars, even though carbon road bikes are bling toy of the month. Even you worry about the fact that you aren't getting enough exercise -as is your doctor.

Buying a new Audi will not fix the problems in your life -it will just make you poorer. And it will make society itself poorer, which is where the rest of us have to give a fuck.

Over the next month or two, expect more coverage on these threats -and how to use them.

For now, consider this: the amount of money spent on cycling -all of it- is a fraction of the money spent on car advertising alone. One fucking US Superbowl advert costs $3.5M, enough to put in a decent segregated cycle path in a city where neither TfL or S Gloucs traffic planning department had any influence. Who was prepared to spend that much money? General Motors, in an advert showing how buying a car was the right thing for all patriotic Americans.

In all those adverts -not a single fucking bicycle. Even the pedestrians know their place and keep out of the way of cars. This is where the real motorist training budget goes -not on bluewash from the DfT, but on Imperial Car propaganda saying your life would be better if all the bicycles got out of the fucking way.

Motor Group Sob Stories

A fuel cut for the suburbanites of the South and Centre of England. That's what the tax duty reprieve is. Something for the Daily Mail readers who drive into the cities, get stuck in traffic jams and whine about it. Something for the Daily Mail to campaign for, and for the politicians who read it and care about its voters to listen to.

That shows a limitation of the Times campaign: it hasn't got near the fuckwits who read the DM and write comment rants that invariably use one of the following words or phrases: numpty, simples, AND THATS A FACT, RIGHT NOW, "57% run red lights", "law-breakers", "lycra-louts",  "read the highway code" and anti-cycle rants "I got knocked down by one and nearly died". Until those dimwits can see any value in cycling, there's a vast group of people out there that are not only danger on the roads, they have political influence which, as seen last week, can do nothing for making cities livable.

There's also the RAC foundation, which seems to vie with the Institute of Advanced Motoring for being the motoring equivalent of the Taxpayer's alliance: an organisation that has influence even though they talk bollocks. They are good at their propaganda though.

They are great at wheeling out sob story characters whenever fuel duty rises, congestion charges, workplace levies or anything else that may interfere with the right to drive into a city and park where you want.

The nurse who works shifts -implicitly female. Needs a car as public transport can't be used, parking levies and fuel costs are her problems on low wages. Ticks the sympathy "nurse"; can use shifts to justify the drive.

Not: the consultant. Paid lots, expects free parking in the hospital even though the nurses and assistants are expected to pay.

Completely ignored: the fact that the nurse doesn't get paid much, if she's under 25 her housing benefits will get removed, and the NHS cuts are making her life worse along with all the patients.

The family who has to choose between filling the car and feeding the kids. Implicitly: running an old car like a 1995 Mondeo estate into the ground, can't afford something small and frugal. They "need to drive to work" - work whose distance from the house is never actually covered but the implicit message is the sole job they found is tens of miles away.

Not: the family who has discovered that their BMW M3 urban SUV is now so expensive to run that they have actually looked at selling it and getting something more fuel efficient.

Ignored: that impoverished family will also be fucked over by massively rising house fuel bills, and whenever they do use public transport, its costs will be going up above the RPI, let alone up above wages which, for everyone who isn't a banker, have effectively been stagnant for the last decade. Also ignored: why do they need to drive to work? Decades of under-investment in public transport, the destruction of the railway system and the failure of cities to offer safe cycling infrastructure.

The Elderly disabled driver. Needs a car, is dependent on it for hospital visits. Ticks the sympathy card, their disablement is a justification for having to drive.

Ignored: those disabled people who can't drive for their condition and whose public transport option is getting more expensive and less reliable. Or those people whose Asthma is made worse by the pollution, ended up in a wheelchair from a driving-related crash.

Ignored: whether it is safe for elderly disabled people to be driving -and given that at some point within a few years they will have to stop driving, why our cities are designed so that they have no other transport options. The buses are gone, the suburbs don't have corner shops as everyone now drives to the hypermarket with the free parking -all the while whining about fuel costs.

These are the sob stories, again and again.

Yet who really benefits from fuel cuts? People who drive big-engined cars long distances.

That's:

• corporate employees cruising along the motorways on their work phones. 
• North Fringe employees who commute in from Chepstow and Swindon, and the rural sprawl of S Gloucs. 
• The affluent middle classes in their urban SUVs on the school run
• Companies who depends on national distribution centres: the supermarkets that fuck the farmers over and ship local food to places like avonmouth and back again -the same wanker supermarket companies whose HGV drivers think it is acceptable to park their trucks wherever they fucking want whether its a bike lane or not. Which, to be fair, is because they have no fucking choice. Tesco's delivery schedule doesn't give a fuck about bus lane hours, zebra crossings or safe parking. All it knows is what supermarkets need milk, the distance between them, and how much money is saved having an HGV deliver it round the city.
• People who live in the suburbs, drive into the cities and sit in traffic jams texting complaints about bicycles to twitter and facebook.
• Taxi drivers who leave their engine running while waiting at stations because they want to save money on starter motors and then whine about how much diesel costs them. 

These win from the fuel duty cuts, because the more fuel you use, the more this actually matters.

The poor? The underpaid? The elderly? The NHS staff? They're fucked by everything else this government is doing, yet the AA  and RAC foundation pretend not to notice that, while the Daily Mail actually praises all of Cameron's actions on that front -no sob stories there.

The cycling campaigners need their own sob stories:

• The Nurse who can't cycle to work as outside rush hours the bus lane, the only lane that offered a hint of safety, is a parking lane for commuters.
• The Family who can't take their kids to school by bike as the suburban SUV families on their school runs make it too dangerous.
• The person without a driver's license who can't cycle across the city to get their exercise on the way to the hospital, as you need to "keep your wits about you" to cycle in traffic -and there's fuck all bike parking in the hospital anyway.

These stories need to be found locally, for local papers as well as national ones. They need to look "normal" in the photos, not hi-viz wierdos that the DM readers can't relate to. No helmets, except maybe on kids (to avoid the vitriol that would come from the DM readers who "care" about kids except when they cut them up on the school run).

For example, for the family example, you'd want them saying "we'd love to use the ring road path, but a child couldn't cross the M32 on-ramp alive.", filmed in front of the crossing.  Puts a need of all cyclists on the path into a perspective where the bike-haters can't be so dismissive.

For the nurse, someone whose is moving from Frenchay to Southmead as part of the big merger, but isn't confident that she can cycle along the A38.

The person without a driving license -same story. Far enough away from some shops or the hospital that they really do need transport, no public transport (i.e. : anywhere in S Gloucs), and no option to cycle as where they are paths they dump you at every junction to sprint over.

Fight the motoring propaganda groups with sob stories that show they not only don't represent society, they don't care about the people who really suffer in today's cities.

Bluewash from Boris

The statistics on road safety are out, and the RAC foundation are off the mark blaming pedestrians for being on the phone and the ipod. Never mind there's no data to back that up. Never mind that you could make similar allegations about drivers on the phone, texting, not paying attention. The allegations would be no more valid, but that's the whole point -the RAC Foundation is showing their opinions, not their knowledge.

Where they do make a point is the reduction in road safety campaigns -a direct side effect of cost cutting measures. Yet the one road safety campaign whose costs were covered by the fines they raised were the speed cameras -the ones everyone said should go? They've gone. Has it helped? Has it freed up lots of police to enforce "Bad driving". Bollocks. All that has happened is people can stop complaining about being ticketed.

Why do so many drivers hate speed cameras? Because they catch you, 100% of the time. Not because they focus on speed over "bad driving", but because everyone who sprinted past one got a ticket. Before -you just made sure you went below the speed of the fastest cars out there and let them take the blame. Now -everyone. That complaint about "cash cow" really meant "I get caught".

Why not bring them back and change the rules? Less fine, even a lower penalty -but leave them on, and the people who get caught will soon run out of points. Back that up with actual enforcement of the twelve-points-out rule. Then worry about the dangerous driving issue -which as the helmet cameras show is common out there and yet, when confronted with the videos, the Metropolitan "roadsafe" unit turn out to be the "fuckall" unit. As for London's Taxi Licensing Authority -Gaz45 would be better off complaining that he was overcharged by the taxi drivers than they cut him up and hurled abuse at him when he complained. Because the TLA don't give a fuck about bicycles either.

Returning to the stats, the tragic increase in cyclist Killed and Seriously Injured shows that TfL's actions over the past few years have made things worse, not better. All that money on Cycle Superhigways? Cycle Death Roads would be more accurate.

Cyclists in the city make the key point -the focus on "traffic flow" means "cars, buses, taxis and HGVs at the expense of the city itself". They've ripped out crossings, willfully excluded cyclists from new road designs (Blackfriar's Bridge &c). There's a distinct possibility of a Corporate Manslaughter charge over the Kings Cross design, while if the campaigners can get to the bottom of "who said no to the segregated path" story there may be one there -or at least the blame can be put squarely on the door of Boris or his motorbiking transport minion.

The fact that KSI is increasing faster than the growth in cycling shows that safety-in-numbers isn't valid, safety-in-safe-infrastructure and safety-in-legal-enforcement-of-dangerous-driving is what delivers safety -the numbers follow.

Boris's personal decisions have resulted in the death of cyclists.

The other big issue is the London Shard -if the number of people killed by trucks on the shard's delivery schedule, then somehow the HSE needs to be pulled in. Just as they used to have an "acceptable" death rate building railway lines, the London Shard shows that there is a death rate for cyclists that is being implicitly allowed. Implicitly -because each death is treated as an unrelated incident, not a structural flaw of a delivery schedule that was unrealistic, along with the fact that it generated a lot more lorry traffic in the area.

What could Boris do to dig TfL out of the hole they've dug

Delay and denial

• Kick the 'go dutch' campaign into the long grass. Promise things, promise reviews -and slow the momentum.
• Somehow, dampen the Times campaign. This is going to be hard precisely because one of their staff is part of the statistics. It's hard to have dinner with the editor and say "I've give you a scoop on some of my plans if you back of" if the editor knows someone who is in a coma as a result of TfL's plans
• Get a small amount of money from central govt and say "dangerous junctions" will be fixed, blaming these dangerous junctions as if they are natural things, like "dangerous mountain gorges" or "high earthquake risk areas". 
• Ppick on some small, symbolic problem they can do something about (e.g. better enforcement  of parking in superhighways) without doing anything to address the larger issues.

The junctions in London are dangerous not just from years of indifference of TfL, but by their active effort in making things worse through "smoothing the flow"

If this is what Boris/TfL do -and let's be realistic, its the first thing they'd think of as it is the one that avoids any admission of blame, much spending, or much effort-

The cycling campaigns need to push back sooner rather than later to stop this happening.

One idea, have a consistent name for TfLs half hearted efforts: call it "bluewash". Refers to whitewash, but brings those blue lanes right to the front as the key example of what's done wrong. Keep calling all of Boris's actions Bluewash and wheel that phrase out whenever any spokesperson -which includes all the excellent bloggers out there- is asked for a quote. Repeat that phrase until it takes hold.

What else could Boris and TfL do? Change direction

• Admit that the CSH scheme failed to deliver the safety
• Redo the new TfL junction plans, not just for cycling, but for pedestrians too. 
• Pick some key streets and put in proper segregated lanes. One of the bridges is the obvious target -there's no secret back route to avoid them, and it would have a tangible difference on the people who use it
• Provide safe feeder routes to and from this showcase route. If there's a safe river crossing, people will go out their way to use it, so give them ways to do it.

Achieving that would not cost that much -not compared to the bluewash money wasted on the superhighways, not compared to how much TfL are spending "to improve traffic flow"

What it needs is something else: a fundamental change in TfLs outlook away from Traffic Flow as their pure goal. To recognise that joined up routes, segregation and safe junctions are the key. Not "keep your wits about you" junctions but "take the kids to school this way" routes.

Boris got elected. Before that election cyclists did become a political presence. Now he has been elected, he could get complacent. These awful statistics on road safety are a call to action.

For anyone asking, why should S. Gloucs care -London sets an example for the rest of the country. If you can make cycling in London safe, nobody can say "it can't be done here" for any other town or city. We could point to London and say "they managed it -why can't you?".

Selling Cycling as "green" is a mistake

Cycling is often marketed as "Green". That's by the cyclists, and by the DfT, when they announce fuck all for walking and cycling, while giving billions to what must clearly be "brown" transport.

Selling cycling as "green" is a mistake

• Daily Mail readers who think Global Warming is a myth will think that "green transport" is a NuLabour conspiracy -and will rant against the green hippies in capital letters.
• It becomes too easy to cry "hypocrite" to people who commute to the North Fringe to work on aircraft (BAe), tanks, bombs and nuclear submarines (MoD), computers (HP) or those tech companies east of UWE that do satellites. 
• Those Daily Mail people -lets call them the population of Patchway- can view the cyclists as "them", and then in their thousands sign petitions demanding that the cycle/bus only route be kept open to cars. Because cycling is for other people. 
• It makes cycling vulnerable to the electric car marketing weasels. Look at Copenhagenize for coverage of this -a german car rental advert saying "you don't have to cycle to be green"

Electric cars are going to be the next enemy of cycling. 

1. They take "Green" money away from cycling programs.
2. They demand tax free and congestion zone free concessions.
3. They take up as much fucking space on the road as any non-electric car
4. They take up as much parking space as a normal car
5. They will be driven by fuckwit drivers who are on the phone as they run you over.

Electric cars are useless for long journeys -everyone knows that. They are being sold as good because "most car journeys are six miles or less". Which is the journey you don't need a car at all -bicycles work.

The car manufacturers would rather we all drove to work in back in electric cars than cycled their on bicycles. We are one of their threats. They are our enemy. 

Electric cars can only be sold as second cars -and Patchway is their target market. Fat lazy gits who will soon be demanding that e-cars are allowed down Highwood Road because "they are as green as bicycles"

We must not fall into this trap.

What to do? 

1. Sell bicycles as low cost ways to avoid congestion and parking problems, giving you exercise for free. Because they are. 
2. Talk to the motorists in the language they understand: congestion, money, time, parking.
3. Don't go into detail about how the S Gloucs cycle team are a waste of space who fritter away cycle city funding, or how the bicycle lanes abandon you at places like the M32 crossing. 

Here are ways to justify cycling in S Gloucs that may appeal to someone who drives

Congestion:

• "I was spending half an hour every evening stuck in the ring road by the aerospace roundabout, and had better things to do"
• "I hated having to stay at work until after 6 pm just so the ring road traffic got quieter"
• I discovered there was a direct route from stapleton to MoD/UWE that meant I didn't need to be stationary on the M32 every morning

Cost

• I was paying fifty quid a week to get stuck on the ring road.
• I was paying 10 quid a day to park in the Bristol city centre.
• I save a thousand pounds a year by cycling to work.
• We sold off the second car, cutting out the fuel, insurance, breakdown, servicing and MoT costs -this lets us put 2-3 thousand pounds a year towards (holidays, schooling, a second home -whatever the driver aspires to)

Time

• It's faster to cycle to school and work than it is to drive.
• I don't get held up by the car in front -if I'm late I pedal harder.
• I don't have to waste time going to the Gym for exercise.
• By not looking for parking by the school, we could set off later.

Parking

• There's nowhere to park at work.
• There's nowhere to park at home.
• There's nowhere to park on gloucester road/Southmead Hospital, wherever else you shop other than Cribbs causeway or ASDA there.
• I hated having to get in by 8 am to get a parking space.
• I didn't want to pay 10 quid a day to park in the Bristol city centre.
• I hated spending 15 minutes driving round a bit of bristol (your choice of Cotham, Montpelier, St Pauls, Southville (for people from S of the river)
• The only places in Bristol where I could park were places you'd never be sure your car was when you came out at night.

These are the ways driving hurts -and apart from cost, electric cars can't do any better than petrol cars. The car companies know that -which is why they want tax breaks, subsidies, -and bus lane access. Here TfL said "no", but S Gloucs aren't so concerned about cycle safety -which is why they allow HGVs down the ring road bus, HOV & bike lane. 

Fight the electric cars where they can't win: congestion and time! Even on cost, electric cars cost so much you'd have to drive many tens of thousands of miles on one -but the limited battery life (measured in years, not miles) makes that hard for a toy you can only use in town.

Sell cycling with the benefits that person you are talking to cares about -not something abstract like "green" that they don't give a fuck for.

What the Fuck is an Urban SUV?

The car manufacturers love to wave their green credentials, their electric toys, then demand more money from the governments "to go electric", more concessions, more subsidies. The politicans love to get in the regional papers visiting car factories round the country: Northumberland, Liverpool, Swindon, Oxford, and make hose same promises "the car industry will bring economic recovery to the country", "electric cars are the future".

Bollocks.

Buy a newspaper. Look at the adverts. See any selling electric cars? Not likely. What you are likely to see are adverts for "Urban SUVs". Not eco-friendly electric. Not saving the planet. But what the car manufacturers want you to buy.

What the fuck is an urban SUV?

First, there were 4x4s, Landrovers, jeeps. Functional for farmers, the higher end Range Rovers for the landed gentry. Pickups for the builders. Then people started buying them for the image, and the car industry was happy to sell them. They discovered the new market didn't need four weel drive, so calling them 4x4s or 4WDs wasn't right. They invented a new term: SUV. Sport Utility Vehicle.

Then they sold them for sport, for utility. Pictures of snowboarders driving in the snow with snowboards on top. Rock climbers in the wildeness. Pickup drivers "haulin'". Image things. If you do those things, you need an SUV. And if you had an SUV, you lived an active, sporting live. Never mind the fact that snowboarding and rock climbing are lifestyles -and the people who live that lifestyle can't afford SUVs. They live in camper vans in ski resort car parks in winter; campsites in summer. If they do have a job in a town, there'll be a fiesta or astra full of climbing gear. Lifestyle snowboarders, climbers and other "extreme sport" people are just the image for SUVs, not the customer. The customer is someone with money who would rather have a life more interesting than what they have -and the SUV helps pretend that they do.

Nowadays: the SUV is a family vehicle, it's sold on safety for the kids. The marketing dept. loves a few days of snow or summer floods, so the TV can show landrovers coming to the rescue of people who "only" had hatchbacks -they'll buy ad space in the papers to say "this is what you need".

Though the price of buying an SUV - a lot-, the cost of fuel -a lot- and the servicing charges -way more than a hatchback- means that there's a limit to how many "real" SUVs they can sell.

And so we have something new: "The Urban SUV". This is not an SUV for the mountains, it is one for the town.

Think about this: a vehicle with no more luggage capacity than a normal car, worse fuel economy (aerodynamics), worse handling (higher centre of gravity), worse use in town (the width needed to compensate for that SUV means they need to be wider), is now being sold as a vehicle for use in the cities.

That's where the car manufacturers money is really going. Not into electrics, but into overweight, overpriced alternatives to "practical cars".

How do they sell them?

They scare people.

Look at all the adverts. They portray the city as an edgy place ("graffiti"), dark and anonymous, and something that you need an armoured car to get through safely;

• Toyota Urban Cruiser: Tough. Selling a car driving round a city at night "scary", nobody around "danger", but you are safe in your SUV.
• Ford Kuga This one is still sold on the outdoor bollocks, but look at the bike shot. Shit bikes, shit suspension, floating rear triangle design. No luggage rack. These are not useful bikes in a city -and they are shit offroad too. Same as the SUV itself.
• Nissan Quashqai. This is the worst example. "The ultimate urban car", the quashquai is "The king of the urban jungle". Marketing: Graffiti. The rough inner cities that you drive through on your way to the suburbs, doors locked, hoping you don't make eye contact with the locals. Tinted windows help there.

These overpriced vehicles are sold by scaring you that cities are dangerous places where you need tough SUV-like cars. That may help convince people who "still" drive round in hatchbacks, estate cars and the like that they need something tougher for use in a dangerous city.

The danger in a city is not the graffiti. It is not unexpected snowstorms coming in off the cotswolds and covering emerson's green in 18" of power snow. It is not car-jacking criminals loitering at the perennial traffic block by parkway station. What is the danger in the city?

It is selfish wankers driving urban SUVs who think they have more right to the road than people on bicycles and pedestrians. It is those drivers on the school run, bully bicycles out the way, going past them with millimetres to spare, turning back to look at their kids on the handheld games consoles and saying "look how dangerous it is out there -I am glad I am driving you to school". It is people in Urban SUVs who believe they are safe in one, start getting complacent, making phone calls, and run over someone "they came out of nowhere".

Yet nowhere in the adverts do Nissan, Toyota, Ford or anyone else come out and state the truth: the danger to the drivers of urban SUVs are other drivers of Urban SUVs.

For cyclists, Urban SUVs make things worse

• They ruin visibility for everyone. You can't see over them -and vehicles past them can't see you.
• they're wider, so are harder to squeeze past
• the raised seating makes people harder at judging their position, which means they pass you worse, or hold back and then pass you baldly at the wrong point.
• if you really think your car is "tougher", you drive more aggressively -to bicycles, pedestrians and other cars.
• in snow and ice the drivers get overconfident as they discover that their "all terrain" vehicle needs winter tyres to stop.
• they cost more than standard cars -making people think they have even more right to the road than cyclists who don't pay road tax
• They reinforce that car-as-status-symbol bollocks. If you have an "urban SUV", you are more than just another persion. 

Even without the SUVs on the streets, the whole "you need an urban SUV to survive an edgy city" marketing is an enemy. It's designed to scare people into armouring themselves and then driving through the rough parts of town at speed.

Contrast that with the cycling chic story: cities are nice places for people to cycle round.

You can only have a cycle-chic environment in a city without Urban SUVs. they are our enemy.