Inspired Parking

I was intending to write about a bike ride over the weekend, but ever more snow came down, and on Valentines Day Beautiful Wife was stuck in bed with ‘flu, so I was looking after her and Da Boys and shovelling snow every day, which doesn’t leave much time or energy for going out on two wheels. So instead here’s something that made me laugh out loud a couple of weeks ago.

Exhibit 'A'

Exhibit ‘A’: A possible contender for the People Powered inspired parking award of the year. If the car was any closer, I’m not sure they could have opened the door. This sets a very high standard for the rest of the year. I don’t know if it could possibly be bettered.

If you’re wondering, it’s blatantly, clearly, obviously, not a parking space, but neither is where exhibit ‘B’ is parked. I’m wondering if they are in the same meeting, or if the car was parked there in protest. Exhibit ‘A’ is going to have a real job getting out: maybe the peasants revolt has started after the Christmas break.

Exhibit 'B'

Shared Space (sort of)

'Shared Space' in action...

So I’m walking home, and as I come around the corner this is what I find. I know that trucks are a part of the transport system, and I’ve been told many times that they are often the most economical way to bring food to supermarkets. (This is one of those ridiculous arguments that we’ve come to accept because we’ve been drilled into believing it, but if you think about it for a few minutes it starts to look pretty suspect: It was more economical for the British Empire to produce cotton and sugar with slaves, but that doesn’t make it right). Anyway, leaving aside the role trucks play, but they have no business parking on pavements (sidewalks). I am able to see so I didn’t walk into it as a blind person might, and I don’t need to use a wheelchair, so I could have walked through the narrow gap left for foot traffic, but that struck me as dangerous if the truck started moving, and besides, why should pedestrians scuttle through what gaps are available so cars can drive how they please?

So I walked on the road, right in the middle.

Yes, I did cause a traffic jam.

Look on it as a sort of  ‘Shared Space’ experiment.

Peasant’s revolt.

The Status Quo

Since getting the Xtracycle we’ve started shopping at a small supermarket in the next village: they have a wider variety than the one local to us, and covered, secure bike storage that’s visible from inside the shop and nearer to the door than most parking spaces. The staff say they get a lot of customers by bike. The shop is only a couple of Kilometres from our house, over bike/farm roads, and because it’s more direct than the road I’ve been known to be quicker than cars coming from the same village.

Almost every time I went, there would be a car parked right by the door, in a ‘no parking’ area. Every time, the car would be a Mercedes. which makes sense: as I’ve mentioned before, a Mercedes doesn’t have to follow the same rules as everyone else because, well, it’s a Mercedes. ‘No parking’ in this case obviously means ‘Mercedes drivers only’

Peasant's revolt

A couple of weeks ago, Someone parked a car in the ‘Mercedes only’ spot that was blatantly not a Mercedes. The next week, a Toyota had been rakishly left in another spot. What had happened? Was this some kind of peasants revolt? Was the ‘credit crunch’ causing Mercedes drivers to economise?

Then, this week: a brand new Mercedes with a white poodle accesory had bee placed in the spot. The unwashed masses were banished to the legal parking spaces and forced to walk at least ten metres further, in keeping with their lowly state. The economy may be going down as fast as an SUV’s fuel gauge, but the Mercedes parking space is safe.

Fightback

Family Mobility.

My wife is looking for a fairly simple, traditional bike. She likes the Velorbis Victoria a lot, but  despite them being made in Germany they are a bit beyond our tiny budget right now.  It would also be a bit impractical as we don’t live in Denmark, or even somewhere nice and flat, but in a small village near Stuttgart with steep hills everywhere, so we’re going to need a multi-geared bike. After some trial and error, we found my wife is happiest on a 16” high crossbar mountain bike frame, with 26” wheels, straight handlebars and some way to carry shopping or other things. Most importantly it should be dark green, to match my bike, or something neutral like silver or black. So we went looking for bikes.
I haven’t had a good look at new bikes in nearly a decade, and to be honest I’m not that impressed. While there are some good bikes out there, many are what my dear old grandmother would call ‘Mutton dressed as lamb’: they have a lot of flash, full suspension and disc brakes, but with a frame made of scaffolding and components that may just last 20km on a good day. I’ll probably go on about this in a future post.
It seems like we are between two markets, but we remain hopeful. The worst case scenario is that it’s impossible, in which case we would try and find a 16” steel/CroMoly frame, either new or second hand, some basic forks, and build up a bike from that over time. It’s entirely possible as we are good friends with several craftsmen who will let us use their facilities (including a paint shop) and help us out if needed, but that isn’t really the easy option.
We will continue searching for a place that sells simple, practical bikes which can be used on a normal day, by normal people, in normal clothes.

Delivery

A few days after I wrote that post about the rental van reversing along the pavement the same van was involved in an accident with another road user while parking for a pick-up. Fortunately no-one was hurt, just someones’ alloy-wheeled Opel was scratched and the police were called to check out the insurance claim. It took almost an hour.

Don’t two policemen have better things to do than be the arbiter of an insurance claim between two drivers?

Delivery

Our branch of the German Post Office is cost cutting. Instead of renting a building with silly things like disabled access and a loading bay for deliveries, they have moved into a small desk in the local electronics store with four steep steps to give disabled customers the opportunity to feel really ignored, and absolutely nowhere to fit a delivery van.

In the bad old days when drivers were employed and drove yellow post office trucks, this would have posed a problem. Drivers would  waste time finding a safe parking space some 50 metres away (next to the old post office for example) and then take several minutes to haul wagons full of post. This was obviously uneconomical, so now the post office contracts out to anyone with a truck -or anyone who can rent a truck)-and the drivers know that if they aren’t quick enough someone else will be in the job next week. This ensures the drivers can’t let outdated ideas like safety get in the way of making a timely delivery.

This van has seen the post office where he needs to pick up the mail, but is unable to find a safe parking space. Knowing full well that the red and blue ‘no stopping or parking’ sign is a throw-over from the old days, it pulls onto the Motor Vehicle Overflow Zone (Previously known as the pavement or sidewalk).

The van is now several metres beyond the door, which could mean loosing precious seconds, so it then reverses along the Motor Vehicle Overflow Zone o so he can be right opposite the Post Office entrance.  But wait, what is this? people are getting in the way of commerce by walking on the pavement motor vehicle overflow zone, causing vehicles to pull onto the road and inconvenience other drivers.

Fortunately at this moment a driveway entrance became available across the road, so the van was able to park across that, and save those vital seconds.

This, of course, shows why cycling on pavements is dangerous: you could obstruct reversing trucks.

What’s a Mercedes driver to do?

One thing you must understand about Stuttgart is that the normal rules simply don’t apply to Mercedes drivers. Pavements, bus stops and bike lanes are simple another place to dump their hunk of metal so that Mercedes Man or Mercedes Wife don’t have to walk more than 50 metres to the shops.

This is a prime example of the way Mercedes Man rises to the challenge of the city. As we can see Chrysler Driver inconsiderately took up the last parking space, and Mercedes Man faced the possible ignomony of paying to park and then walking perhaps a whole kilometre to the shops. However Mercedes Man is not your regular driver. Quickly he realises that there is a further parking space, (traditionally known as a pavement) and without hesitation, he launches his 1.5 tonnes of metal into the gap created by fleeing pedestrians.