Rockets

No but when I do pass there I never ever see anyone cycling on it. Come on, you have access to Strava, tell us what the average number of daily weekday and weekend cycle journeys are - I very much suspect it is not many at all. A daft analogy if there ever was one - the difference is of course the West Coast Main Line wasn't carved out of existing transport infrastructure was it or are those displaced horses we can see....;-) I tell you what though I would like to wager a bet with you that a single West Coast Main Line train carries more people on a journey than the Sydenham cycle lane does in one week. Come on, you have Strava...tell us!!! 😉

Therein lies the issue. People see so much money being poured into cycle infrastructure (especially at a time when council's are pleading poverty) people, understandably, start to question whether that money is being spent wisely when they see no-one using it. When journeys for thousands of people are being made more difficult because of infrastructure to support the supposed explosion in cycling and you see no-one using it really makes people question how sensible that investment is. I don't use Strava - can you see the number of daily journeys made? If so, I would be interested to hear what it is for Sydenham Hill and how that compares to other areas.

Be nice @Malumbu the forum rules require it.

Seemingly not so outrageous when you present evidence of wholesale manipulation of the Railton Road consultation. So can we just agree that the council consultation process is incredibly vulnerable to manipulation from anyone with a vested interest and that there needs to be wholesale reviews of the process? Within that I also think there needs to be a grown-up discussion about whether councils need to treat them more like local referendum and honour the feedback within them. It is the very best example of utterly pointless, ill-thought out and painfully under utilised cycle infrastructure - and really makes a point that even if you build it they may not come. I agree. The road actually feels more dangerous now than it ever did as it it forcing vehicles into the path of on-coming vehicles. If you get a large van or lorry parked on that road (a lot of building work going on there now too) it becomes blocked very easily. Like much of the council's new road infrastructure it's incredibly badly designed.

Thanks for clarifying as it very much looked like you were saying there were no plans for any additional cycle infrastructure and then when I presented my evidence that there is you had a sudden change of position and pivoted to a - well it's not because of that! 😉 The original consultation document definitely said that the pedestrian refuge needed to be removed to make way for the new advanced cycle boxes - it's was the reason why I started the thread back in January 24. It is good to see that the council are rectifying the right turn issue and returning the Dulwich Village junction to two lanes - the congestion and subsequent pollution has been awful for years because of the installation of the cycle wands. The council does seem to take multiple, expensive, attempts to get traffic infrastructure right.

Ex- here’s where your summary falls foul; the council put 900 flyers through the doors of residents living in the immediate area and they got around 75 responses - the distribution of which was consistently even between the three response categories. Now look at the responses from people we presume did not get a flyer (if they lived on the Bromley side of the hill) - it’s a much higher distribution towards support and supposedly happened organically without a call to action (a flyer) - that’s a statistical anomaly. Again this actually goes to show how the council manipulates the narrative. As I pointed out to Earl, you cannot combine support and support with changes to declare a majority. As easy as it is to say people who “support with changes” is positive validation of the council’s plans (which you, Earl and the council are doing) you could also equally say those people are not supportive until the changes they want are presented. Just saying oh we made changes doesn’t necessarily satiate that. To be honest the “support with changes” is a free-pass for the anyone running a consultation. Your illustration of the Railton LTN highlights exactly what I am saying - these consultations can be manipulated and people are trying to do so on many fronts. Clearly with Railton there were some odd submissions but if you speak to people who live there who were against the measures there is a feeling that by loosely culling nearly 35% (1,600 responses) of them they ensured they “won” the consultation - they managed to get a couple of the categories to 53% that then gave them the mandate they needed to roll it out. In any other business companies would mitigate against manipulation but councils seem loathed to do it because sometimes they like benefiting from it.

@march46 why is it so difficult for you to share the link to the public information you claim you have? I cannot find details of the works on the Southwark website, since the redesign of the website it’s impossible to find things now. Surely if the info you have is public and confirms what you are saying then sharing it resolves this, I am struggling to understand why you don’t share the link. So are you confirming that there are no longer plans for an advance cycle box - that’s what I meant when I referred to a cycle lane - it was clumsy language use by me - but that what was cited in the original consultation document as the reason for the need to remove the pedestrian refuges. I found this on the Dulwich Residents Association website that clearly shows the plans for the advanced cycle boxes, so are you confirming these are no longer in the plans?

What about the advanced cycle box? Would you mind posting the links to the information you have found as all I can find on the Southwark website is the following: The Red Post Hill/Dulwich Village junction, which was part of the Phase 3 consultation, is still being developed and we hope to implement this in early 2025. Page last updated: 10 September 2024

@march46 but the initial consultation document did say that the removal of the pedestrian refuge was necessary to accommodate the advanced cycle box didn't it? You seem to have a Iot of knowledge on all the council's plans around cycle infrastructure so can you tell us if the advanced cycle box still part of the works being carried out at the moment? Might this have been because there were never any cyclists using it? The addition of the wands did cause significant congestion in Dulwich Village and they had to add the right filter to relieve it didn't they?

Yes the council added the cycle wand lane at the junction heading from Dulwich Village to Red Post Hill and reduced two lanes to one then had to add the right-turn filter to the traffic lights due to the congestion the reduction to one lane was causing in Dulwich Village as cars could no longer pass to the left of traffic turning right onto EDG.

In summary: Apparently being on a thread and passing comment on what someone else said means that you actually said it as well and it can be used a stick to hit you with even when you never actually said it. Confused? Yup, not surprised. As I said, glad to see nothing has changed in the month I was away. No wonder admin is despairing of this part of the forum. It's probably beholden on everyone to try and up their game a bit and not descend into the cycle of nonsense that many of these threads descend into. I have been taking a new approach post suspension and suggest others do too - or perhaps admin needs to issue a few other suspensions to freshen the approach of others a little too! 😉 I stand by everything I have said on this thread....except the things I am accused of saying but never actually did of course! 😉

Thanks for confirming I never actually said what you accused me of saying - I will accept your apology.

The LTN created a big surge in Underhill being used as a displacement route around the congestion on Lordship Lane heading to the A205 - it's why many of us accused the council of deliberately not monitoring Underhill post LTN as they knew a huge volume of traffic was being displaced that way and why we said their monitoring was massively flawed - we were not wrong.

"Only" but that was more than those who "supported (23)" and more than those who "supported with changes (24)" - when you strip out the non-local submissions - so by that measure that was the most popular response. There is no misrepresentation of the table. I am not angry just questioning whether there was manipulation of the consultation data by cycle lobby groups to give the mandate the council needed. @Earl Aelfheah please correct this as I have not said this. I said the central pedestrian refuge was being removed to accommodate a cycle lane/cycle advance stop - which was specifically called out in the original consultation documents (which of course no-one has been able to locate either despite telling me how wrong I am). The 5 year narrative is just a predictable diversion: time does not, and should, right a wrong if a wrong has taken place - just ask the victims of the Post Office scandal - there were many who were keen for time to make it go away (and before anyone tries to go there, let me save you the time, because I am not trying to compare the two in terms of gravity or importance! ;-)) No because that could constitute a personal jibe and lead to a suspension.....;-) Everyone just needs to be nicer to each other and respect the forum rules - admin will be proud of me!!! 😉

Come on Earl, like the council you're now manipulating the results. There are three very distinct response categories (Support, Support with changes, Do not Support) to which people are asked to respond to a plan of action published by the council. You cannot combine Support and Support with Changes and say that shows there is Support because by default someone who is saying I Support with changes is not supporting the plans as they were published. So whilst you are combining two seperate result groups together to get the result you want you can't do that because each has to be treated distinctly as each result needs a different path of action to be taken by the council. If you treat them in the spirit that consultations are supposed to be conducted (and strip out the non local borough residents) the result is: Support: 23 Support with changes: 24 Do not support: 26

No because if you eliminate the responses from the non-Southwark or Lewisham residents then Don't Support is the biggest response. Those 26 Support responses from people who live in neither Southwark or Lewisham swing it to Support and give the council the mandate they needed to proceed. Whether I am supportive of the changes or not is an utter diversionary irrelevance because the discussion and thread is whether people from outside Southwark or Lewisham unfairly influenced (on the basis of lobbying by cycle lobby groups) a local consultation and the evidence is overwhelmingly that they did. I still haven't heard any credible thoughts on what those 26 are other than non Southwark or Lewisham residents.

Northern....brilliant!

Because the original consultation document did call out needing to remove the central pedestrian refuges to facilitate the cycle infrastructure. It's why I started the thread in January 24 - yet I am the one accused of spreading misinformation.....amazing.....

Does anyone know what is wrong with it - it's a shame that such a great feature of the park is out of action for so long.

I am not 100% sure but I think it was a structural engineer's report - the ceiling in their front room collapsed and the council removed the tree in the pavement outside their house.

Of course you don't.....I am glad to see that in the month I was away nothing has changed.

Oh my, have some of us been here so long that we are seeing a second generation of baby shops opening - this clearly means the first generation of kids in "Nappy Valley" have grown and many parents moved to pastures new and there's a new influx of young families! 😉

@EDmummy101 is the tree causing issues now or is this pre-emptive? Our neighbours had a problem caused by a tree outside their property and the council did come to remove it but only after they had proved that it was the cause of the problem in their house.

I agree and I also think they need to have a wholesale review of the consultation process as it is manipulated by the council (in terms of the questions they ask) and open to manipulation from vested interest groups most of whom don't actually live in the area. To top it off of course when the council loses a consultation and they can say "well it's not a referendum" and that makes a complete mockery of the whole consultation process and the spirit in which they are run. Honestly, why bother with them at all? Council's like to pretend they are democratic and have local residents at heart but we see very little of that in practice - time after time we have seen Southwark manipulate every consultation they run to get the result they want. I can see why so many people are so sick and fed up with the way that politicians treat people (expect thohse who are directly benefiting who are happy to turn a blind eye because they are getting what they want) - you expect it from the Tories but everything Southwark Labour do is so diametrically opposed to their supposed beliefs and political ideology it's actually incredibly worrying and saddening because we should have been able to count on them to uphold the moral fibre of politics and rebuild trust.

Sorry Earl, what's your point? Surely anyone from East Dulwich or Forest Hill, and parts of Crystal Palace, would be categorised as Southwark and Lewisham residents when responding? I am saying there's a significant weight of evidence that the consultation was manipulated by people who were neither a Southwark or Lewisham resident - and the data supports that suggestion. The weight of non Southwark or Lewisham residents responding to the consultation swung it to "supports" the changes and thus gave the mandate to the council to roll them out.