Sunday 14 February 2010

Stokes Croft bike lane: wardens required

There is some rumour that the council is looking for "wardens" for some of the bike paths; people who keep an eye on the area and complain if there are problems.


The obvious candidate for a warden of the bike lane in Stokes Croft is the owner of Woodstock pine furniture, as their vehicle is one that is usually parked there, so they can keep an eye on the problems. Sadly, on this morning, it appears to be in need of an AA call-out.
Further down, the police WX07OSC keep an eye on things.
It looks like there are eight vehicles in a row on this bike lane, one with double yellow markings. This is not a bike lane. It is a short stay parking area. The question is: is that wrong, and what is the correct way to sign it as such? Anywhere marked with "1 hour parking" ends up being viewed as low cost all day parking, with the users upset when BPS actually audit your movements. But is something with both bike lanes and double yellow lines the correct way to signal "important people only".

We'd argue no, not because we don't think that cars have the right to park where they want, but because vehicles parking on double yellow lines here impede traffic flow far more than if they were parked round the corner on Nine Tree Hill. The owners of these vehicles have concluded that as the punishment for parking on a double yellow line is the same regardless of whether you block a main road or park on some back road, they may as well park right outside their destination. Either 9-tree hill gets downgraded to "park here if you have to" area, which it may get as part of the resident parking plans, or this stretch should become a "very short stay parking only" area. Every van parked here belonging to a furniture shop or post office is one less customer for Stix or Ritas.

If we had some kind of scale of no-parking area, then this stretch could be used only by really, really important people, and not just shop delivery staff too lazy to park round the corner.

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