Institutionalised Motorism near UWE

We have another "I" today, to go with the council's thinking: Indifference, Incomptence and Ignorance; it is Institutionalised Motorism

This means: to think about cars first, everything else as an afterthought.

You can see it here, in this two way walking and cycling path on Coldharbour Lane, heading north from the UWE entrance to either Old Filton Road or to the crossings to get to Bristol Parkway station, or, if you turn left, to the MoD roundabout. It is wide, no risk of conflict between pedestrians and bicycles. But what's that in the distance

Yes, it's a bus stop. The foot/bike way is cut in half width, just where people will be queueing for, getting on and getting off a bus.

There's no shelter either. While that may stop people cycling into the shelter -which would otherwise block the entire pavement- it means that people waiting for buses will get wet as well as potentially hit by people cycling along. Anyone waiting here on a dark and went winter evening will end up resenting anyone cycling past.

But why does the road narrow here? It's because the alternative would be to allow the bus to hold up motor traffic.

Given a choice of two options

1. providing something safe and pleasant for public transport users, pedestrians and cyclists
2. something that kept motor vehicle traffic flow at its highest,

the council went for the traffic flow option, rather than having a wide pavement, a wide bike lane and a covered shelter with seating.

This is why there's continuous conflict between people walking and cycling in S Gloucs and the city to the south: the cyclists, pedestrians and public transport users are left scrabbling for the leftovers while the majority of the road "investment" in the region goes into road widening.

That is Institutionalised Motorism all the way to the top of the council. There's no real pretence of supporting cycling in this city, other than the Boris Johnson "poor people can if they must" kind of viewpoint.

The worst part is this: the council planners are probably proud of such bollocks. They will drive home in their SUVs to their Bradley Stoke semi-detached suburbs with one car per adult and say "I did something really good for people who walk and cycle in the area. I helped provide a bus lay-by to encourage public transport use, and we painted a bicycle path on a widened pavement". Because to say "I fobbed off everyone who doesn't drive with some shit infrastructure" would be an admission of incompetence.

We wonder how long it will be before they want bollards or "cyclists look out for pedestrians" signs?

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.

The Bollards of Death Path

Here is the famous "bollards of death" path at 17:30 on a weekday. MoD staff, other commuters. This is what it really looks like, compared to the sunny quiet-day video.

The bollards are visible, you can see where we taped some of them up, but they do blend in with the white line. It makes you realise why many road-side posts are in alternating white and black -visible in more conditions.




0:08 -swerve into oncoming lane. No protocol here so there's a risk you both swerve. It happens. That's why when there is a lower pedestrian count the path switches to normal left-side-of-road rules.

0:18 anyone walking over the zebra crossing is lined up to get hit here. Also note the barriers. Rationale unclear. Not bicycles, so it must be stop pedestrians crossing the road except at the zebra crossing. So why not allow that?

0:55 mediocre visibility on an uphill route; hope nobody is descending.

1:12 MoD pedestrian access point. Again, having the bike path on the RHS would reduce risk here, but look at what comes up

1:19 foot access to the train station, key part of the pedestrian route. Oh, and a pillar in the middle.

1:24 even two people walking side by side are something you have to worry about

1:39 notice the vast space for parking. This site fills up its parking, a lot of staff were reallocated from elsewhere. Now people who live within three miles aren't allowed to park. But what is the alternative. We're on it.

1:56 its quieter here as its either residents of Northville or Lockleaze on foot, or bicycles. At the end of the path there's a blind corner, but we are avoiding it as we are taking the Northville exit.

2:10 This is a bike path, marked up on the maps, oddly not in the better by bike video. When we say "you need an MTB to cycle round here" we forgot to mention the max handlebar width and travel. The more travel your bike has, the higher your bars go, the harder it is to get through here. Good thing there's nobody in the way, and that we arent carrying children on the front bars -or in a trailer or tagalong.

2:17 narrow bridge. Clearly this is a path for pedestrians that's had some anti-motorbike barrier for a while and with a blue circle is now a pedestrian/bicycle shared route.

2:28 into the garage zone. It's interesting how much space is allocated to parking here. Even though you are a few minutes cycle/walk from the supermarket, the whole Bristol suburb culture is about driving. The busses are less frequent, the corner shops bleaker and further away. You are expected to drive.

2:46 and we are in the cars-on-the-pavement suburbs.

Now, is this path a failure?

Experience: Fail. In that it doesn't go out of its way to make you feel welcome and valued yes. Neither pedestrians or cyclists will enjoy this walk. Indeed, one of the things about walking round this area, or up to parkway station, is how mindnumbingly dull it is. Even the graffiti isn't that interesting. All you see are car parks, dual carriageways and cars, until you get to crossings that make you wait for 30-60s before you react. It's implicitly designed to make you wish you'd rather be in a car.

Maybe this is why its so rare to see anyone walking around. In the inner city, people out and about. Here, people walking to their cars, some teenagers loitering, and people waiting for busses looking miserable.

Use: Unknown. We have no before/after data, the MoD exclusion zone will encourage more walking and cycling so the statistics won't be reliable. It's busy with pedestrians and some bicycles. Some morning and school time data would be useful, probably between 8 and 9 am is the peak hours.

Scalability: Fail. The path may only have a few bicycles, but its already saturated. The segregation fails because the path isn't wide enough for two directions of walking and two directions of cycling. If the number of people cycling down here were to double or triple at peak times, it still wouldn't make much of a dent in the car traffic statistics, but it would overload the cycling infrastructure. And what then? A new lane?

What have the Romans ever done for us?

To us, the People's Cycling Front of South Gloucestershire, our enemy is the roadbuilders who stick up the new roads, widen the old ones, and add walking and cycling features as an afterthought -one that neglects our needs and is constrained by the inability of the roadbuilders to imagine the needs, care about them, or execute on their own plans.

We call them The Romans. For what have the Romans ever done for us, apart from the roads?


This is the A4174 ring road path, by the UWE entrance. 20 years ago you weren't allowed to cycle here, and as a consequence there was none of this traffic calming stuff up. It was easier to cycle down, and way safer than the ring road.

Since then, the ring road has got busier and wider. This week they opened a new priority lane for buses, one that avoids taking any space from cars.

That worked, didn't it?

Looking the other way, you can see that some of the pedestrians are wearing camouflage and not hi-viz.

This shows a conflict of goals. The motorists and the councils would like all pedestrians to wear hi-viz, obvously. But many of the MoD staff are wearing work clothes designed to keep you alive in war zones, and bright reflective clothing fails then. It went out of fashion when officers stopped wearing red jackets.

The combination of traffic calming and pedestrians whose lives depend on not wearing hi-viz makes for a higher risk environment.

Descending to the roundabout, you can see that it is too narrow to have separation from pedestrians, so we are grateful for the current lack of bollards. Admittedly, the various road signs don't help, and a wider path would actually eliminate the conflict entirely. This would good as the people cycling up the hill are all in uniforms.

Note the different roundabout crossings

1. MOD entrance: light controlled, safe.

2. MOD back entrance and shops -no lights, cars may coming off the main roundabout at speed. There is a traffic island designed for at most one bicycle to wait, limiting the cycle traffic flow to one bicycle every 30s maximum. Everyone cycling across has to look at the traffic, then keep looking in front to see its clear to get off the crossing.

3. Shopping centre entrance. There is a green strip here, and the driver coming off the roundabout did give way. This is unexpected and welcome, as a green line on the ground has no legal force. If you get run over, the car had the right of way.

What did the SGC get wrong here?

The key issue is a focus on motor traffic rather than pedestrian and bicycles, and not making it safe to cross the roundabouts. Pelican lights that would block both the entrance and exit of crossing #2 would make it safe to cross and eliminate the traffic island bottleneck in the middle. That or a zebra crossing would be good. But perhaps they fear the tailbacks created by stopping for pedestrians and cyclists.

3. Again, no formal cycles-have-right-of-way setup at the junction. This time someone was being generous, but you can't rely on it.

The biggest hazard is the main MoD roundabout

• The main road has 50 mph speed limit, people are still in motorway-mode -and not expecting pedestrians or cyclists.
• No pedestrian/cycle crossing lights or scheduled period in the main light sequence.
• The traffic island has room for one bicycle at a time and is already saturated.
• Pedestrians and bicycles are sprinting over, attention split between traffic coming off the roundabout and what they will run or cycle into.

The metric we ask is "would you trust an 11 year old child to use this bicycle path safely". Not with these crossings and paths we don't. 

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)

No, we think the Dutch would still laugh

Part of the feedback from our coverage of the new "technical" bike path going up  was that we "didn't know the plan", and that to say the dropoff was going to be a disaster was slander.

Well, this week the fencing is all down, and the dropoff has been enhanced by a slope. As Frank told us last week "There is a fence across the cycleway showing it is not in use you blind git.". The absence of a fence must mean it is now open for use. Presumably the contractor will now notify S Gloucs council that whoever is putting up this path is ready for the bollards and the pillars to go in.

Another (deleted but in our archives) message said

Why should something which is not fucked up be repaired.

I pity your clients even when told your in the wrong you cannot see the solution.

Well. as we predicted, the solution coming from the road builders, -the romans- tries to resolve the 50 cm height difference in 1.5m horizontal, leading to a 33-50% gradient or thereabouts, just where it joins the cross route which is a popular walking/cycling route to the university.

This will be impossible for happy families to ride up

-and positively dangerous on the DH, on account of the cross traffic. That's even if you have -like anyone who has to cycle round this area needs- an MTB with good travel and fat tyres.

We have now attempted the descent, here is the video from the evening

As an experiment our rider did ride through the junction, having to carve right fast to avoid the vegetation, while retaining enough speed to avoid having the existing cyclist clip us. No braking until off the drop; didn't want to damage the earthwork. Look at the lights on the ground to track the placement of our rider and the other cyclist coming from the side and being forced to swing right to get past our successful attempt to descend without doing any tree-work.

Now, we were also told, "with your poor design perception and blinkered approach I am not suprised" for our criticism of the design. Well, we have been there, we have tested it. It doesn't work. If you put a layer of tarmac over the slope, it still won't work -it just makes it easier to brake as you descend. Most cycle path users will be unable to get up the slope, and as we've just shown, even commuters with 100mm of front travel and good brakes can't descend in control.

Frank, if you are in this project, and this was "your solution", we are sorry. It isn't a solution. It is, to use your own phrase "fucked up". A gentle gradient to the junction is a solution - replacing the step with a steep slope isn't. Please try cycling it and you will see.


Citizens of South Gloucestershire! Once the slope is metalled we are planning a mountain bike event here! It'll be a lunchtime friendly event with categories

• Best manual/jump off it
• 2x2 uphill challenge
• Circuits

Adult MTB, CX and BMX only, too tricky for the fixies. Unless they are brave, in which case they can play too.

Cycle paths that don't end in the middle of nowhere

One thing the Netherlands has is bike paths that go all the way to the city centre, and which start in the suburbs, so you can get all the way in to town and back again safely. In Bristol, the Railway Path fulfils this for one part of the city, even though it abandons you in the centre, and getting to it can be hazardous.

In South Gloucestershire, the A38 and the A4174 are the key non-motorway routes, and the A4174 does have a segregated path.

Is it so much to ask for this path to get to anywhere useful, rather than just have it stop when it gets complicated?

This "End" sign is so woefully bleak. It says "you are on your own from here". The idea of having anywhere to cycle other than alongside the A4174 ring-road doesn't seem to have occurred to these cycle path designers.

What can we do here? It's not obvious. Painting cycle paths on the quiet suburban roads would be a start, even better: putting in cycle paths when such suburban sprawl goes in. Though as we've seen, they are making such a mess of that in their latest project we don't believe the existing cycling team or Redrow should be permitted to do so.

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.