A38 high streets part 3: Gloucester Road shows "car parking" is a cargo cult solution

Parts 1 and 2 of the A38 tour, must have depressed everyone looking at the sights.

Filton Road: a shopping area reduced to a mini roundabout, some pig-pen barriers to keep pedestrians from crossing the road, and a row of run down shops -despite the free parking outside and in the car park.

Bedminster: a pedestrian precinct with nothing but a closed down booze express, check cashers, a low grade bakery and a motaman car parts shop.

Bleak. Yet what else does the A38 have to offer?

The best high street in Bristol. 

 
One the BBC Today program visited when they wanted to see what a thriving high street still looked like in the UK

A street with trees, cafes outdoors, bike parking that has bikes in, rather than two bent racks that look unwelcome by the shop forced to to put them in. The breadstore, below, always has a queue of people waiting to buy bread on a saturday
 
A street with five star reviews on Yelp.  A street recommended as a place to visit in Bristol tourist guides.

See that? Not "a place to drive through on your way to an out of town supermarket". Not "somewhere to take out a payday loan" (there is one of those shops, and a booze express, but they are discreet, not shops that are struggling to survive themselves)

Look at the difference with the other two. Independent shops. That's key. Less of the same chainstores you get that make every street in Britain the same. They are there: a sainsbury's lite, a boots, but they are only one or two of many.

What you do see is people walking around. Again, this looks like a Sunday, but some of the shops are open -and people are walking, or pushing a bicycle from shop to shop.
 
The road here is no parking at any time on one side, showcase bus and bike route on weekdays.
 
Between 8 am and 9:30 am, and from 4:30 PM to 5pm, any parking in the bus lane gets a ticket issued by way of the CCTV cameras mounted on lampposts.

No doubt those are exactly the tickets that Pickles was ranting about, the ones destroying the high street,the ones Mary Portas was implying are killing high street.

 


Well, here's some evidence neither of them know what they are talking about.

THE SOLE HIGH STREET OF BRISTOL'S A38 THAT IS CLEARLY THRIVING IS THE ONE WITH THE MOST PARKING RESTRICTIONS
   
Instead of vans outside shops, you see people sitting outside having coffee. Next to them a traditional greengrocers. Go there on a Saturday and the butchers will be selling hamburgers, or whatever else they are cooking on the street, the fishmongers the same with fresh fish.

The independent retailers have made this a destination, the people come.


It's not about car parking. Saying "we need car car parking" is a mistake. It is looking at out of town malls, saying "they have car parking and are successful -if we add car parking, we will be successful".

OUT OF TOWN SHOPPING MALLS ARE NOT WHAT HIGH STREETS NEED TO MODEL THEMSELVES ON.

They need to copy the high streets that are doing well. In Bristol, that is

• Gloucester Road
• St Mark's Road, Easton
• Southville (adjacent to Bedminster)

 What are their secrets? At a glance

• Interesting shops, making walking along the streets something to do for pleasure, to make the extra time doing that versus pushing a trolley round a supermarket a pleasant time. 
• Cafes if you want to have some food or coffee. Not just chain coffee shops, but a variety of options.
• Useful shops: greengrocers, ironmongers, butchers, fishmongers. A post-office.
• Small supermarkets, not an ASDA "street-killer" class facility
• A pavement that is pleasant to walk on, not somewhere for cars to park.

If you look at what Bedminster are trying to do, they realise this. They are trying to join up with Southville, trying to make it better. But with all that car parking, its a walking wasteland.

The very features that encourage driving: wide roads, roundabouts and parking lots, make walking so uninspiring and cycling so dangerous, that people don't walk there. They don't walk around. All you get are fat lazy bastards like Pickles himself, nipping in for a packet of cigarettes and some cheap beer.
If you hear anyone saying "parking is needed", or "10 minute parking outside shops should be encouraged", point them at Filton Road, Gloucester Road and Bedminster North street (they are all on Street view) and say "which of these streets would you like to shop at". Then say "which of these streets has the least parking facilities. Then ask them whether they realise they don't have a fucking clue and should shut up until they have something fucking sensible to say.

A38 High Streets part 2, Bedminster

Part 1 of this series looked at Filton Road. Now lets take the streetview camera across Bristol to another part of the same road, the A38. This time, Bedminster.

You can't actually get into North Street unless you are a delivery van or bus -here are some of the outside views.

From this side street, a building to let. In the distance, a check cash and loan shop.




From the western end, budget booze appears to be suffering, it has some polish shop signs above it, and another "to let" sign
  
 Getting into the through traffic bit, it's not any more welcoming. There's a pawnbrokers to the right. Further up the road is the S. Bristol branch of Motaman -the other one being on Filton road (RHS of the final photo in part 1)
 

Bedminster has been chosen for this part of the A38 overview for a key reason: it's a Mary Portas Pilot Town! Its run-downness -1 in 5 shops- is clearly obvious, the fact that the open shops -cash converters, pawn shops, check cashers show that the people who do come there have little or no money to spend, and aren't the people going to revitalise it.

Bedminster is trying to improve itself. Even Mary Portas herself, insightful expert in rebuilding high streets, has visited it.


Did she say "legalise illegal parking" here? Even she wasn't that stupid.


Directly behind North Street: 1 hour free parking
 
Behind that, a vast space of extra parking
 
And at the North end of North street (carrying on forwards past Motaman), there's the giant asda supermarket -with an even bigger car park.
 

The one thing Bedminster doesn't suffer from is a lack of parking.

It suffers from

• A supermarket that over 20 years killed off day to day shopping.
• Replacement shops like Booze express and Motaman failing to attract other customers. Even these two shops have now shut down.
• Lack of money in the remaining visitors. You don't have two short-term loan companies and a pawnbrokers in a thriving area.
• the fact that the asda supermarket blocks pedestrian and bicycle access from southville doesn't help.

Mary has her work cut out here, and we wish her well. Yet Bedminster proves something important

You can add hundreds of parking spaces to a run down high street and it will make no difference whatsoever.

Whatever they are going to do for the town, it won't be extra parking. At least it shouldn't be. Its inevitable that someone will be blaming the pedestrian only area for loss of trade, demanding it is reopened to ten-minute shoppers, but let's be ruthless here: it has done nothing for those bits of the street that are open to two-way motor traffic.

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.

South Gloucestershire Council: this is how it is done

For the S Gloucs team -you don't need to fly to Amsterdam to get a hint of what could be done. just head down "the concorde way" to the city to see a new bridge done by the Bristol Team.

It has lights. Clearly overkill, but it makes it feel less threatening to pedestrians, and reduces the risk of pedestrian/bike conflict as they can see each other. [That said, in-path solar lights would have kept things wilder, retained some visibility and not pissed off the locals so much]

It has one, count it one bollard at either end of the bridge, to keep motor traffic off. And there is a reflector on it.

there are

• No signs in the middle of the path.
• No dropoffs.
• No zig-zag routes that aren't actually rideable.

If there were bollards all down the bridge and the path was actually popular then it would be dangerous. Hence the cycle city team -who want their paths to be used- left them out, except to control car access. They could still do with a bit of daylight highlighting, but otherwise it's a lovely bit of infrastructure. But what does it connect up to? That's right, the S Gloucs council works.

Come on S gloucs cycling team, head south and see what can be done!

(note this doesn't mean we think much of the route from Abbey Wood to this bridge, more on that another day)