A cycle lane that local cyclists say has been rendered “pointless” by drivers knocking over the plastic wands that segregate the infrastructure from traffic in order to park their vehicles at the roadside, at one spot just 20 metres away from a multi-storey car park, is to be beefed up with “more robust” bollards, the council has said.
The cycle lane on Park Row in Bristol has been regularly featured here on road.cc, one cyclist telling us in December 2022 that the route looked like “the aftermath of a Harry Potter battle” with “broken wands everywhere” as the plastic segregation was easily knocked off the road by motorists parking in the cycle lane.
‘Excellent’ Bristol cycling infrastructure latest: pic.twitter.com/AZFtuAWTc4
— Benjamin Nathan (@foxbenbath) August 17, 2022
Last March the situation took an even more bizarre turn, photos of part of the cycling infrastructure blocked by parked vehicles appearing, the site just 20 metres away from a multi-storey car park.
Now, Bristol City Council is to launch a year-long project, Bristol Live reports, to make Park Row and three other streets “safer and more pleasant” for active travel journeys. And while the proposal photo [below] shows some unsegregated sections, the council has committed to installing “more resilient” bollards at other sections.
Other planned work includes new loading bays on Perry Road and Upper Maudlin Street, ‘no entry’ signs on Lower Church Lane, and the removal of bus stops on Park Row and Perry Road as the bus services which used them are no longer in operation.
The council will hope the works address complaints, from cyclists about the ineffectiveness of plastic floppy wands in offering adequate protection and preventing drivers parking in the infrastructure, and from business owners who have said the project — first installed during the pandemic and which has been funded by £3.1 million of investment from the Department for Transport — has not properly considered the need for loading and deliveries.
“Having carried out detailed engagement with key stakeholders, residents and people who travel along Park Row and the surrounding area, I am really pleased that work on this major project will be starting in March,” Labour councillor Don Alexander, the cabinet member for transport said.
“It will make this whole area more pleasant and safer for pedestrians and cyclists. I hope it will encourage many more people to travel actively, improving their health and wellbeing and cutting congestion on Bristol’s roads and air pollution.
“Ahead of the Park Row area construction work starting, I’d like to thank everyone for bearing with us. We will keep disruption to a minimum and aim to keep both sides of traffic open as much as possible.”
“There’s a car park 20 metres away”
Speaking to road.cc about the parking problem on Park Row’s cycle lane, Bristolian cyclist Phil Sturgeon last year said the infrastructure as it was had been rendered “completely pointless” by drivers parking in it “all day, every day”.
The Bristol Park Row bike lane is completely pointless. There are signs that say no parking, no waiting, no loading, but everyone just ignores that and leaves their engine running and their hazards on. pic.twitter.com/kbcuB8RET5
— Phil Sturgeon ??? @philsturgeon.bsky.social (@philsturgeon) March 7, 2023
Highlighting the absurdity of there being a multi-storey car park 20 metres away behind the parade of shops, Phil said the cycle lane is “intermittent and already confusing” even without drivers parking over the wands “adding to that confusion and causing conflict”.
At the time, another local rider called it an “absolute joke”, sharing photos of the lane blocked by parked vehicles, and even a pile of rubbish bags.
Sharing photos on our live blog of damaged and missing wands, one road.cc reader who regularly cycles along the route suggested the problem is the intermittent protected sections.
“There’s enough room before it’s protected for cars to go on there at each end ‘for loading’ and then they ‘accidentally’ knock down a wand so the next time someone parks a bit further, then they knock one down, so people can park a bit further, and so on,” Brooksby told us.
“And as long as they haven’t knowingly knocked one down people seem to think that they can just park there, despite the painted cycle symbols and signage.”
20 thoughts on ““More resilient” bollards planned for cycle lane made “completely pointless” by drivers parking in it”
I think someone needs to
I think someone needs to invent the bike mace. A small spiked ball on a chain used to bash cars that wilfully park in restricted cycle lanes.
All traffic wardens are told
All traffic wardens are told to prioritise these – and issued with a bag of lentils…
I’d make them from 20cm thick
I’d make them from 20cm thick Tungsten and bury them 20 ft into the ground, but that may now be cost effective.
They need to be like those
They need to be like those self-relighting candles – so could be made of normal steel but be made in sections with a weak point and with the “rising bollard” hydraulic mechanism. Bend / snap one off and park there and return to find the next section has been pushed up into your vehicle.
Even better, have mostly
Even better, have mostly plastic wands but occasional, randomly placed proper bollards that look identical.
Just fine the crap out of
Just fine the crap out of people that park in them. Its pathetic that the solution is to treat drivers like toddlers and take away their ability to do stupid things. Let them do them and let them suffer the consequences. £500 fine should do nicely.
Other option is to have them as hydraulic bollards that randomly rise and fall. I’m sure after a few people suffer £5k damage to their car they will stop doing it.
The cars should be Danny
The cars should be Danny MacAskilled.
Let them do them and let
Let them do them and let them suffer the consequences. £500 fine should do nicely
Except in the real police world we inhabit, none of these things actually happen, because they can’t be bothered, or they’re taking bribes or whatever. It’s not as if they have to get up and really do something- we do it all for them, provide the video as indisputable evidence, the driver is Guilty as Sin and still nothing happens
https://upride.cc/incident/yd62oxj_landrover_nomotclosepass/
Close pass, and no MOT/ insurance since 24.5.23. No action at all, still no MOT today 4 months later- how much easier does it have to be for them?! So the possibility of fines for parking in/ obstructing a cycle lane remain a pipe-dream- even if there was a law, the police/ council would delight in not enforcing it in order to ‘stuff the cyclists’
Yeah, what happened to
Yeah, what happened to traffic wardens?
I look forward to seeing
I look forward to seeing whether these changes make any difference at all.
I do like the idea of moving the light controlled crossing so it is in place on the desire line for hordes of students going up Lower park Row and then crossing to Lower Church Lane to go on up toward the university. I think that’s a really good idea.
My office moved, and I don’t have to go along there any more. Now I have the fun of trying to turn right while travelling down Park Street
I hope you are going to go
I hope you are going to go down there for old times sake and keep us updated with the parking !
(No subject)
They were consulting on this
They were consulting on this last summer. Or was it the summer before last? Anyway, I happened to take part in it because just by chance I was walking(!) past the BRI on the right day. It’s part of a plan that runs from the top of Park Row down to the Bearpit and along Colston Street. It includes a bit of making-it-easier-for-drivers, inevitably, with a one-way system along the top part of Colston Street and whatever that other street is called that branches off it; so one way down Colston Street to the junction by Christmas Steps, and up the other road. Obviously that part couldn’t be implemented till the Beacon was finished.
There will also be a Danish style right-turn arrangement from Marlborough St into Lower Maudlin St (probably also delayed until the work on the Old BRI building is finished). This means you can’t turn right, you have to pull into the left and use a three-legged turn waiting for lights each time. As you can’t really turn right there at the moment, not a big loss, but I think the same will be used to turn into Lower Park Row, which (along with the top of Colston St) will have a contraflow cycle lane. And there’ll be semi-floating bus stops (I can’t remember the technical term).
But I also think the repositioned pedestrian crossing is probably the biggest improvement.
Looking at the state of the
Looking at the state of the ‘parking bay’ surface, I think I’d rather be in with the cars on the road or have they improved the surface since the photos were changed.
Mr Hoopdriver wrote:
No: no, they haven’t.
The photo also doesn’t do justice to the broken glass from the first floor nightclub whose entrance is along there, either.
The lane on the other side of the road is just as bad – they put up the wands to mark out the lanes, but didn’t think about drains, drain covers, road defects, &c, &c.
Maybe they will as part of this new development, but I’m not holding my breath…
I don’t actually think the
I don’t actually think the problem is with the car drivers here; I think it’s with the road design. It’s actually difficult to interpret where the cycle lane actually is. Is it the red coloured lane to the right of the bollards, or is it the space to the left of the bollards next to the pavement? It’s not immediately clear. Also, it’s ambiguous as to whether parking really is disallowed.
From the lane positioning of the cars in the first photo in this article, you can see that the motorists are interpreting the red painted area as the cycle lane, so it’s not a great leap of logic to assume that the area to the left of this is NOT a cycle lane.
We all kinda know what it needs. Paint the red cycle path next to the pavement, add some double yellow lines and ticks for the really thick drivers, and maybe put a kerb in between the cycle lane and roadway.
The problem is with the car
The problem is with the car drivers.
Asha2820 wrote:
The red painted cycle lane was there before the wands – at that time, the area to the left of where the wands are now was parking and there was a painted cycle lane in the door zone.
After the wands went up, the council didn’t scrub off the old lane (any more than they tidied up the rest of the road surface). They also put “No parking” notices up on the street furniture and put a “Not in use” yellow cover over the parking payment machine.
As a positive, the red lane still being there was useful for whenever you couldn’t use the new lane because of people parking in it.
As an anecdote: one time, I asked someone parked in the ‘protected’ lane why they were parked there. Their reply was that they didn’t realise that they couldn’t park there (despite being next to the aforementioned yellow-bagged ‘not in use’ machine and actually on top of a flattened wand). I asked whether they’d paid for their parking – No. I asked what they thought that the wands were there for – Aren’t they to mark the parking spaces out?
Some people, eh…?
We’re still in the age of
We’re still in the age of “unless you make it really really clear we can’t drive / park somewhere, we can.” (And noting some entries in the “car crashes into building” thread even physical impossibility isn’t always a clear enough “no”).
I’d love us to be in the opposite situation where it’s no parking by default, except where marked. Like in NL. For one we’d have cleaner looking streets and we’d save millions on yellow paint and notices.
It’s obvious that the red
It’s obvious that the red painted area is to encourage safer overtaking of cyclists in the lane.