Joe D » bristol

AWWTM: Pickles peddles pointless parking press release

Joe — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 16:55:21 +0000

This week, the Department for Communities and Local Government put out a press release about town centre parking. Unlike last time, they didn’t even have to announce that Pickles is ending The War On The Motorist™. On that point, their work was done for them, by 36 newspapers and the Daily Express. Aren’t they well trained?

This time around, Rubberknickers Pickles is ending The War by lifting restrictions on how much of our town centres can be given over to car parking. The idea is nothing new, of course, but it is assumed that most will have forgotten the previous occasions when it was announced. The “news” is that the paperwork has gone through: the new version of the government’s planning rules are complete.

Continue reading at At War With The Motorist…

AWWTM: State intervention

Joe — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 20:17:54 +0000

In reviewing the Radio 4 documentary Bristol: Cycling City (I didn’t hear it and was too slow on the iPlayer), the Guardian‘s radio critic Elisabeth Mahoney once again revealed the bizarrely muddled thinking of a nation so thoroughly addicted to its car culture. The Cycling City project, in which a mere £22 million was given to the city to invest in cycling infrastructure and projects, was, she said, a “large state intervention in lifestyle issues”.

Continue reading at At War With The Motorist…

Cotch: Arno’s Vale Cemetery

Joe — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 12:31:39 +0000

Over at cotch dot net, I’ve thrown together a quick photo essay on the Victorian park cemetery at Arno’s Vale in Bristol, which until recently was rather derelict and overgrown. You can read the while post at Arno’s Vale Cemetery.

AWWTM: Shared space in Portishead

Joe — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 12:25:11 +0000

Every journalist and cycling campaign group can cite one great example of a town where the simple switching off of every set of traffic lights has transformed it overnight into a transport utopia: Drachten, half way between Amsterdam and Groningen in the Netherlands. Here in the UK, Drachten’s experiment is being repeated with reportedly great success in the nearest equivalent town that we have — Portishead in Somerset.

Continue reading at At War With The Motorist…

At War With The Motorist: Superhighways

Joe — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 21:45:53 +0000

On At War With The Motorist, a short review of the London “cycle superhighways”, after a quick go on “CS3″. They’re exactly what you’d expect from the sort of “super” infrastructure that can be installed for pennies within a couple of months of being announced: pointless. Read it here.

Cotch: 15 May, 2004

Joe — Sun, 30 May 2010 13:50:43 +0000

A short early-morning photo-walk around Bristol’s Floating Harbour — an account of how I first came to be spending my time taking photographs — is available to read at cotch dot net.