Will parking revitalise the A38? Part 1: filton

Mary Portas supports Eric "end the war on motorists" Pickles proposal to stop drivers parking  illegally for 10 minutes "to pop into a shop" from being ticketed.

Let's consider the implementation details of that

1. How do you prove you just popped into a shop? A receipt? A witness statement? A CCTV camera? Impossible. All that leaves is the claim of the driver.
2. How long is the cutoff time? 10 minutes? 11 minutes? 9 min? Again: it'll be a point of contention. Without witnesses, opinions of the driver again.
3. Is it OK to drive from shop to shop, stopping for 10 minutes each time? You can see fat lazy bastards doing this -people who look like Eric Pickles. Is there a minimum time between parking illegally, or a minimum distance you have to drive?

No doubt Pickle's didn't think that through when he did his populist speech.

Let's turn instead to something else: the claim that this will benefit the high street.

Filton Road on the A38. This is the border between Bristol -behind the camera- and SGloucs.

There's some parking, but perhaps they can't deal with a giant influx of shoppers.

Maybe it's the lack of parking at peak times that has shut down a lot of the shops here. The lack of traffic hints the drive-by was on a sunday, but the carpet shop is open, unlike the abandoned "uniform centre"

The wide pavements are begging for people to walk on them -and if not, why not turn it into parking? Why not let people park on the zebra crossing and let them nip in to the shops here -so revitalise a high street clearly on its last legs.

Here's why not: turn round and there's a giant parking area for shoppers.

It's even highlighted as you approach, "Shoppers Car Park"

It is fucking obvious that having enough parking spaces for tens of cars, along with short-stay parking right outside the shops doesn't magically bring some mediocre high street back to life?

And why is this high street so mediocre? Because its so painfully car centric that it only welcomes people in a car -and once you get in one, you may as well drive all the way on to the ring road instead of shopping in such a run down street.

Encouraging people to park simply discourages people from walking to the shops -and once in a car, they can shop where they want.

#FAIL

After British cycling's Arab Spring: the storms

The first half of 2012 has to go down as British Cycling's Arab Spring. Consider:

• The Times making cycling safety a key issue for the paper.
• Mass protests round London about junction safety.
• The CEoGB changing the agenda from "right to die on dual carriageways" to "right to get to school alive"
• All the London Mayoral Candidates having to make a promise towards Dutch Cycling.
• A change in the thinking of the LCC towards safe infrastructure, and even the CTC considering it.
• TfL promising to review its most dangerous junctions.
• Mass protests to Addison Lee about their "just use the bus lane" policy and a U-turn on that.
• The Sky cycling team finishing the Tour de France in yellow
• The UK olympic team finishing with lots of gold.

That was the spring. Now: autumn. And its storms.

We have already seen the press pushing back, NYC-style "bikelash" articles usually referring to Wiggins or that MP and then somehow blaming every cyclist for existing, while the councils and TfL continuing to do nothing dutch-style for their regions.

Now it is getting worse. The councils are moving beyond indifference to cycling to adding features that make things worse -prioritising more motor traffic at the expense of the inconsistent, incomplete and usually shit cycling facilities we get today.

What little leftovers we had on the side of junctions is being taken away to add extra traffic lanes.

Twickenham is the most well known example right now: a council working with TfL to convert a bus lane into an all-traffic lane, omitting all consideration of cycling -and when pushed back saying "it's too early for detailed planning". Except we all know, that that phrase will suddenly change to being "it's too late" -which is already where it is in the minds of the road planners. This also shows a key flaw in all on-road bluewash paint-jobs: it only takes another layer of paint for it to go away. At least proper infrastructure takes effort to destroy -someone really has to want to do this.

Here, South Gloucestershire council has started exactly that at the BAE/Airbus Roundabout on the A4174, where the A38 Northbound crosses the ring road. On the E. and N. sides -dual carriageways. On the W. and S. sides: single lane traffic jams -better to cycle through as the stationary traffic makes it easier to negotiate.

The Road Planners wanted to widen the road by taking away the parkland, the we want your shubbery debacle.

They went back to the drawing board, listening to Filton Council's suggestion of "use the pavement".

Now they have returned, with a plan to exactly that -remove the shared pavement cycle path to make a driving lane. 

The proposals are online in a three week long consultation.

If you look at the plans, you can see a wide bit of pavement being cut away.

If you look at google streetview, you see something different. You see a cycle path on the pavement, helping people cycle over the overbridge to the shopping centre on the other side, or to the crossing lights. As only the bold use the road here, this (shite) pavement infrastructure is the closest the area has to utility cycling. It's not great, but between junctions it is survivable.

Once the council take this away, you will get dumped onto the ring road, now forced to cycle over a junction which has an extra lane of traffic trying to feed left. Or you will just give up cycling altogether.

This is beyond indifference. This is beyond ignorance. This is a wilful removal of off-road cycling infrastructure to add extra traffic lanes.

If they can do it here, they can do it anywhere in the area -and the whole ring road cycle path is at risk.

Here comes the storm.

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.

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