Deeper Surface

I WAS PASSING PC WORLD ON ARGYLE STREET WHEN I NOTICED THAT THE CAR PARK WAS FENCED OFF.

Then I noticed a sign that stated:

“SORRY FOR ANY
INCONVENIENCE
CAUSED DURING
CAR PARK
RESURFACING WORK”.

That seemed fair enough.. that is until I glanced through the fence at the work itself.

Please double click on any picture to enlarge.

I was stunned to see how deep these excavations were — this was not a resurface, this was archaeology!

I may be cynical, but was this all really necessary?  It just seems a tad excessive.  Things are certainly getting worse when a car park’s surface is a metre and a half!

Pot Luck on Roads

THE ROADS ARE IN A DREADFUL STATE.

However, it seems that the council’s new LLCs would rather spend our tax-quids on speed cameras and speed humps in parking bays than fix the pot holes!

It is no exaggeration, and there is often no opportunity to avoid driving into them because of cars parked either side of the road.

These photographs were taken at the Battlefield monument right outside the Victoria Infirmary (one of the two southside hospitals in Glasgow city).  I pity the occupants of ambulances that have to deal with these pot holes on a daily basis!

Mind you, according to a news story I read, the repairs are never done very well. It’s all one big money-spinning racket. We’re going to pot (holes) — and, yes, things are still getting worse!

Speed Parking!

NO ONE LIKES SPEED BUMPS.

In an earlier post we explained why the council have used speed bumps (and things like extra traffic lights) to force drivers to use particular routes (such as the M77).

The Tantallon Road Traffic Calming Scheme (part of the M77 Corridor scheme) provided for speed humps because The Scottish Executive states “Road humps are the most effective traffic calming measure available for reducing speed. “

What can we say about a speed hump in a parking bay (double click on picture to enlarge).

Bizarre. Things are definitely getting worse when the council spend thousands of pounds of our council tax money on rubbish like this! I would dearly love to hear the official explanation of this silliness!

Inconsiderate Car Parking

SOMETHING SHOULD BE DONE ABOUT INCONSIDERATE CAR PARKING.

In the photograph, the car is parked inconsiderately; it is blocking a service lane — which is not merely blocking access to rubbish and recycling bins, but also blocking emergency access to electrical, water, sewerage, and gas utilities, and to the fire service.

This may come as a surprise to our regular readers in consideration of all our posts on the subject of parking.

We here at GW see a difference between being considerate and being legal, and we back being considerate in the hope that restrictions get changed, and laws revised where required. It really is just a common sense approach. So it is just a fluke that the car parked in the above picture is both inconsiderate and illegal!

Being considerate is about thinking less about letter of the law, and more about people and health-and-safety.

You’ll know from older posts that I have no problem with cars parked up on the kerb to allow utility and emergency vehicles to use the roads.

When a car is parked up on the pavement, pedestrian pavement access may be restricted — but this is quite often the (partial) fault of the overgrown hedges or dumped rubbish.

In a traffic calmed area, filled with speed cameras, fences, one-ways, speed bumps and zebra crossings, pedestrians can move about a lot more safely than if the traffic was fast and heavy flowing.

That’s the compromise — we have reduced the amount of through traffic, reduced the speed of the traffic, insisted that rubbish be dumped on the pavement, allowed residential hedges to take up a large part of the pavement area, and let people away with dog fouling. This simply means pedestrians have to weave a bit through the obstacles of cars, hedges, dog mess and rubbish.

The alternative would be to allow “proper pedestrian pavement access“, meaning more restrictions and red tape — residential hedges would have to be regulated, dog-fouling enforced (CCTV?), rubbish would have to be dumped in back lanes again, and cars would have to be parked completely on the road — impeding emergency vehicle access, utility vehicles, delivery trucks and vans and so forth.

I think that this is why police and wardens turn a “blind eye” throughout  Shawlands, and quite right too!

Let’s face it; the high density of residents in block of flats means that emergency and utility vehicles must have access at all times.  The sheer number of resident means that car numbers will be high — and people need to park near their flats (they may be disabled, elderly, infirm or have shopping, babies and toddlers to contend with).

That’s why we can say that the car in the picture is in our opinion parked disgracefully, but that cars parked on pavements and between bollards is OK.

The Silly Road Sign

IS THIS THE SILLIEST ROAD SIGN EVER?

Just look at it!  It is TINY.  It is the size of a business card.

It says “No loading at any time”, but you’d need to either have outstanding eyesight, or park your vehicle, and walk up to the sign to read what it says!  It is also very high up; you would need to be fairly tall to read it comfortably.

Look at the size of the pole that supports this small sign!

It beggars belief that they couldn’t have fixed this sign to the WALL — what a lot of bother digging up the pavement to erect the pole!

It is completely daft, and goes to illustrate the lack of common sense by local authorities who spend our hard-earned council taxes on bizarre things like this.

When I first saw this, I imagined it was some expensive public work of art; that’s how ridiculous it seemed.  Yes, things are getting worse!

Network Fail

LET’S FACE IT: RAILWAYS ARE RUBBISH.

I recently watched with horror as an elderly man with a stick tried to cope with the stairs down to an east-end railway station, and I just wondered how any mum with a pram would be able to manage to use this so-called “public transport” service.

Railways are definitely for able-bodied people only — and they seem to be required to additionally be reasonably fit and healthy too; getting the train is not for the faint of heart, let me tell you.

Buses often have a low step to help people get on and off, quite a lot also have wheelchair access, and all have provisions for prams. The newer bus stops have raised kerbs too.

When are we going to own up to the fact that the era of the train is over? They do not have staff, the costs are high, it is risky and frightening, and completely the opposite of “user friendly”. To improve things, they would have to completely redevelop the stations at massive expense, and I just don’t see that happening in a million years.

Presently stations are dark, dank, stair-filled, exposed places — a place for winos and druggies, neds and yobs. The picture to the left shows Pollokshields East station’s stairs on a bright, sunny afternoon — a massive and steep flight of steps takes you to a landing where you can head off to the right or left under the bridges where the pigeons and starlings live and shit. It is too dark to get a picture even during a sunny afternoon, and the lights merely cast scary shadows against the blackened, mossy dripping wet Victorian walls.

Stations are always either sited a lot higher or a lot lower than the entrance from any road, so this is typical — imagine dealing with a pram! If that is bad, a pram and a toddler would be too scary to bear thinking about. A zimmer or crutches is impossible, as would be any form of wheelchair.

For goodness sake, it is bad enough trying to cope with high heeled shoes!

The railway network is denied to a massive number of people, this is a serious prejudice indeed. If we cannot fix the problem, we ought to either shut them down and turn the tracks into roads, or at the very least, own up to the truth.

The first step of which would be to stop including trains in discussions about public transport, particularly about viable alternatives to the car!

Urban Off Road Adventures

OFF ROAD VEHICLES LIKE TO PARK OFF ROAD.

It stands to reason, doesn’t it: you have the money to get a big off road BMW, but you only use it to pop to the shopping centre, it never goes off road, so why not park on the pavementy bits provided in the massive car park?  At least that’s off road.

This picture was taken at the Fort, so all the car parks are equally as near to the shops, so it’s not as if this tactic was to get handier for the shops.

Why bother stealing a disabled space or a mother-and-toddler bay?  Mounting something is far more satisfying, especially when you cannot get a ticket!  Even though car parking is free and easy, why not stand out from the crowd and do your own thing? No wonder things are getting worse!

Better Parking Spaces!

AT LAST!

A good idea that helps ordinary people everyday: the Silverburn shopping centre’s multi-storey car park has a great system. Each car parking bay has a sensor and two lights (one green and one red). The default is an empty space, so a green light will show at every bay when the car park is empty. It simply senses a car is parked and changes the light to red.

Simple — and so, because the indicators are located high above each bay, cars driving into the car park can simply look around to see if there are any green spaces anywhere.

This ought to be the minimum service provided by all multi-storey car parks. It is nice to see something worthwhile, we’re all excited here at Getting Worse as this is the first new idea that is not rubbish. Even the red-green colour-blind criticism doesn’t count here because traffic lights use these colours (and for almost the same meaning)!

Hazardous Bus Stops

THIS IS TRAFFIC CALMING GONE MAD.

We have posted before to explain what so-called “Traffic Calming” is really doing to us, but what we have found here is stress-inducing and life-threatening… and all for no apparent reason.

To set the scene, we have a big, spacious dual carriageway with an island in the middle and two lanes either side. The pavements are wide and there are bus stops. This is all just a few metres for a big roundabout in the Corkerhill area of Glasgow.

However, the town-planners have decided (reasons unknown) that the traffic flow was far too good, and so has narrowed the road down to one lane going in either direction. The way this has been done is annoying at best — and dangerous at worst. Look at the pictures and decide for yourself (Click on the pictures to enlarge).

Now, at certain times of the day, vehicles innocently and correctly travelling on the inside lane will suddenly discover that the road has abruptly ended, so a queue will form to try to merge with the faster moving traffic on the outside lanes. The queue backs up to the big roundabout and chaos ensues. Brilliant.

Now, as though this was not enough, the town-planner has decided that — at the very narrowest point — to put a bus stop! This is Academy Award Winning Stupidity! And it is done on BOTH SIDES of the road AT THE SAME POINT!

This means that, in addition to the traffic merging problem and the traffic back-up to the roundabout, EVERYONE has to wait behind a bus while people get off and on — and wait while they pay, get their change and find a seat!

Things will continue getting worse if we sit back and allow such blatant stupidity run riot at the council. At least the “Daftest Bus Stop” we found last year was not at all like these — the daftest bus stop was on a special bus lane, caused no delays, did not congest traffic and was not dangerous. It was just silly to have a shelter so far away from the bus stop. The mess they have made at Corkerhill, on the other hand, fails to raise a smile.

Kerbs

THE COUNCIL SPENDS A FORTUNE on fences and bollards in an attempt to stop people parking up on the kerb when all they had to do was make the kerb higher.

There are plenty of examples of high kerbs, especially up in the Park Circus area, but also on Paisley Road West (see picture) , the West End and in Giffnock too.

The high kerbs were originally to do with getting into and out of horse-drawn carriages.

If the council really was serious about putting a stop to kerb parkers, then they could raise the pavements or sink the roads — but then the bollard company might go out of business (I wonder if any councillors have vested interests in fences and bollards).

It’s a bit like the speed camera idea — instead of allowing cars that can exceed the speed limits, governments could quite easily pass a law so that no car could go too fast — but that would not bring in any revenue. Having high kerbs would solve a ‘problem’, but there is income to be had from ticketing offenders — and even moreso when there are double yellow lines.