Here's a bike approaching from Frenchay, on the road.
Here's another one. Again, on the road. There's a nominal 30 mph speed limit, which the approaching van is actually following
The Evening Post should be proud that there are no-pavement criminal cyclists here, and that this pavement is safe to walk down.
Except, what's this? The pavement is actually marked as for bicycles as well as pedestrians?
That's right. This 1.5 metre wide path is meant to be for bicycles as well as pedestrians, even though all these cyclists are ignoring it.
And the best bit. By providing such a stunning cycle facility, the local council can acquiesce to the campaign of the local conservative and unionist councillors -and the prospective parliamentary candidate- to re-open this narrow rat-run to cars driving UWE and the business park.
This feature, costing £120,000, is something which South Gloucs. council is actually proud of and had a big press event when it opened last autumn. Because as everyone knows, cyclists would rather cycle on a pavement than enjoy a traffic free road. As the council put it, these works were "designed to improve the environment for cyclists and pedestrians"
This must have been a great moral dilemma for our local legacy-printed-press. One the one hand, they hate bicycles on pavements. On the other, they like roads being opened to cars. What to do? Because they'd rather a bicycle on the pavement than slowing down their cars, they went with unrestricted praise in Bristol Road Reopens; title and prose on a par with "Berlin Wall Comes Down" or "Nelson Mandela Released". The best bit is the comments section where "Rob, Frenchay" complains that the biggest problem now is that some bikes are completely ignoring their pavement and slowing down the cars, and requesting that the council "enforce the cyclist to be on the path".
Yes, this is a bike path that the Evening Post, the Association of British Drivers and we in Bristol Traffic can all be proud of, even if none of any of these parties, drivers or cyclists alike, consider it worthy of use.