Residents' parking: Clifton traders march in protest

Traders from Clifton Village marched to City Hall in protest of the council’s proposed residents’ parking scheme, which they believe will lead to the “death” of the village.

Protestors are worried that the introduction of parking meters and time limits on parking will result in fewer people visiting the village, leading to Clifton losing its character. Alison Bracey from business group BID Clifton Village, who organised the protest, said: “We don’t feel residents’ parking is going to benefit the businesses.

“There’s a lot of businesses in the village that have a high number of employees. There’s actually no way that those staff can get to work. Some of those businesses have around 90 employees. If they can’t get their staff to work, then they can’t operate and that’s actually really scary.”

Tony Golledge, owner of The Mall Newsagents, echoed these concerns:

Ferguson responds

Mayor George Ferguson has been responding to queries about the scheme on Twitter:

Good question @missionverdana It's fear of change. General experience is that residents parking schemes improve place & increase turnover.

— George Ferguson (@GeorgeFergusonx) April 3, 2014

Although campaigners are worried that parking will be limited to an hour, Ferguson has replied saying that there will be three and five hour parking bays available a short walk from businesses:

We have @CSwinscoeHair @Paulnuk there is 3 hours within 3 minutes walk. Campaigners fail to mention this for reason best known to themselves

— George Ferguson (@GeorgeFergusonx) April 4, 2014

Proposal maps released by the council show different restrictions on each road, with some roads only catering for residents or traders with permits.

However, people on the streets of Clifton are unhappy about the proposed changes:



The new parking measures will be introduced in Clifton Village on Thursday 1 May. A review of the scheme will take place six months after it is launched, which will give the council the opportunity to change the scheme to make sure it still meets the needs of the community.

The following area will be covered by the Clifton Village residents’ parking scheme:



It is clear that traders in Clifton Village are unhappy about the introduction of a residents’ parking scheme, but it remains to be seen whether the changes will actually impact the area negatively.

Objections to the proposals can be made in writing or sent to the council via email until Friday 11 April. Please quote reference CAE/NMT/P/888 and include your name and address.

Related links:

Bristol City Council: Residents’ parking schemes (RPS): how new schemes work for residents

Bristol City Council: Residents’ parking schemes (RPS): how new schemes work for businesses

Story by Rajitha Ratnam

Clifton Residents' Parking

Hello!

I'm catching up with my backlog again. Last year there were a number of protests around the Residents' Parking Scheme proposed for Clifton Village in Bristol. I went along to one and covered it for my Multimedia Journalism coursework.


 

Local business owners and residents believed that the changes would be the death of Clifton Village's character and vibrancy as people would no longer be able to get to the area easily without being able to park.



As part of the assignment I also made a video package:



I've just spent the day on a stall for the University of Bristol's open day so my brain is a bit melty and not wanting to write words, so I've uploaded the full article I wrote about the parking protests back in 2014 instead. Enjoy!

What is Computer Science?

Hello everybody!

I've been hard at work on my project, which I am very close to making public - just waiting on the last couple of interviews to be done before I release the site for testing.

I really wanted to share some of what I've done with you all, so I've put a video up on Youtube. To give you a little bit more context, my final project is about the new Computing curriculum in English schools and the outreach that is being done to get kids interested in Computer Science.

I wanted to keep the feature quite general, so it would be the kind of piece that could slot in to the features section of a national news website, rather than being specifically tailored to a technical audience. In order to achieve this, I had to explain what CS is. Throughout my undergrad degree, I often had people asking me what I even learnt...so who better to explain than crytographer extraordinaire, Nigel Smart?

Nigel is a Professor at the University of Bristol, doing research into cryptography as a means of securing systems. Here's his take on CS:




One of the important things with a large multimedia feature is to have a variety of page elements - I didn't want it all to be text, but I also didn't want every section to have the same format. I thought I'd experiment and try making an audio slideshow - a great way of showcasing some photos and getting Nigel's point across without making people read swathes of text.

If you're interested in checking out some more audio slideshows, I would recommend the Guardian's poetic piece about Van Gogh. My tutor suggested looking at Ciara Leeming's work, which is simply beautiful, definitely worth viewing!