Rockets

Ex - and the council have failed massively on engagement - they haven't taken the majority of the people with them on this journey and now they are reaping what they have sowed. Bottom-line is the majority of people want the council to do something but their ham-fisted attempts to do something, seemingly measures at the behest of a few pro-LTN lobby groups from outside the area, have backfired spectacularly. In one fail swoop they have managed to make congestion and pollution worse, divide and set elements of the community against one another and create a toxic atmosphere of distrust. That's not what any of us voted for or gave them a mandate for. They have failed. Now let's see who is willing to take responsibility for those failings.

The Phase 3 consultation report also demonstrates that, without hiding behind the Covid pandemic to get the LTNs rolled out, the council would have struggled to get their closures in - the consultation results do not give them strong enough support to mandate the closures as they did. They did not have majority support. If you apply the same logic that they used for the CPZs then they would have failed to reach their own threshold. Firstly, only 44% of those within the consultation zone believed the measures they were suggesting would achieve the objective. If you apply the council's 50% threshold then they could have closed the DV junction (55% support) and Townley Road (53% support) but could not have done anything on Melbourne Grove or Burbage. It's becoming clearer and clearer that they used Covid as the cover to get these in as they knew there was not broad support for the measures that they were suggesting - even within the areas likely to benefit the most. This is why they played the "social distancing" card when everyone knew it had nothing to do with that. The fact 81% of people were in favour of the overall objective yet so few agreed with the specific measures demonstrates clearly that their measures were flawed and that they should have returned to the drawing board.

This is very telling..... remember, this is the consultation done in early 2020 so to interpret this as the LTN measures are supported is wholly inaccurate. This consultation happened before any of the measures went in but I actually think this suggests the main review will not be an easy ride for the council and the LTN supporters. I am actually really encouraged by this. Take a look: Whilst 81% support the overall objective within the consultation zone - this drops a lot to only around 50% (+/- 5%) supporting the specific measures. Remember this was before any of the LTNs went in. Also once you get to the borders - i.e. those likely to be impacted most by the closures it swings a lot towards a negative sentiment - those people won't be swayed to the positive now things are so bad. "Others" is interesting as well as this probably shows the input of groups beyond the area - cyclists, taxi drivers etc. I think, on the basis of this combined with the broader awareness of the negative impacts of these measures since this consultation was done (remember this concluded months before the measures went in and any of the impact was felt) the council is in big trouble and will struggle to get majority support for the measures. The list below from the report is quite telling and probably shows why "others" is broadly very supportive of the measures: Responses were received from many community organisations, businesses and other representative bodies. In all cases, these were asked to encourage their members to respond individually. Nonetheless, organisations who supplied a corporate response are listed below: Online responses (titles as given): Lambeth Cyclists Mayflower Gardens Herne Hill Velodrome Trust (Charity based on Burbage Rd) Hanbury Hill Croydon Living Streets Group Old College Tennis Club Dulwich Podiatry Ltd Harold George hairdressing and beauty Camberwell Plant Hire Ltd. t/a Premier Plant Hire United Cabbies Group Southwark Community Sports Trust Langley Dog walking Stradella and Springfield Residents' Association Dulwich College Crystal Palace Transition Town Transport Group Turney Residents Assoc Cypress Cyclists Dulwich tennis club on Gallery Rd Dulwich Village Church of England Infants School Email and other responses provided by: Turney Road Residents Association (survey) London Cycling Campaign Dulwich & District U3A Dulwich Society Dovercourt Road North Residents Association (survey) Dulwich Village Residents association (survey) Stradella and Springfield Residents Assocation Dulwich Village, College Road and Woodyard Lane Residents Association (survey) Dulwich Estate Burbage Road Residents Association (survey) Dulwich & Herne Hill Safe Routes to School Group Clean Air For Dulwich Lambeth Cyclists Eynella Road residents (survey) 60 Mums for Lungs Propensity to Cycle Tool (PCT) authors Southwark Cyclists Metropolitan Police (Road Safety)

Otto2 - proceed with caution - you're about to reopen a can of worms and reignite the debate on who actually responded to the consultations back in 2019 and 2020! ;-) I refer you to the below from One Dulwich and their report as when detailed analysis was done it was clear it was anything but overwhelming support! https://www.onedulwich.uk/news/who-closed-dulwich-village-junction-bias-misleading-data-and-selective-reporting Who closed Dulwich Village junction? Bias, misleading data and selective reporting. 10 May On 21 March, after a Freedom of Information (FOI) request released the data, we shared the disconcerting news that Southwark?s claim of popular local support for closing Dulwich Village junction in early 2020 was not supported by the evidence. The results of Phase 2 (October and November 2019) were based on a tiny handful of responses, many from outside the Dulwich area, from Hammersmith to Islington to Croydon. The very small group in Dulwich who supported the closure was tightly clustered round the junction itself ? and cannot be said to represent local residents? views. This is important because (in the confusing history of Dulwich road closures), Phase 2 apparently gave the green light to Phase 3 (spring 2020), which ended up as the closures we have now. The Council says that these past consultations somehow justify the current measures ? not only the 24/7 closure of Dulwich Village junction, but also the excessive five-hours-a-day restrictions and the massive fines. But the results of Phase 2 don?t support this picture at all. In fact, the more we looked into the data from Phase 2, the more uneasy we became. Only 1.3% of voters in Dulwich Village ward supported the 24/7 closure of Calton Avenue. The survey was so badly set up that people could select up to eight options, which not only inflated the figures but also led to contradictory answers ? closing a road, for example, while making it one way and adding timed restrictions. Online responses from outside the area were favoured over paper responses from local workshops. Some results show evidence of manipulating the data to make it fit. In their published summary, for example, the Council referred only to those voting in favour, while leaving out those who preferred alternatives, or those who didn?t want any change at all ? a bit like reporting only Yes votes in a referendum, but leaving out all those who voted No. You can read all about the poor process, misrepresentation of data, evidence of bias and selective reporting in the full report here. Two key questions follow on from this: Has Southwark Council given the local community misleading information so far? Does Southwark Council have the necessary skills and resources to run a public consultation? These issues matter, because Southwark is about to embark on yet another public consultation into road and traffic in the Dulwich area. The leader of the Council has promised us a fair and transparent process, which we have every right to expect. One Dulwich is encouraging everyone to respond to the new consultation. But we will challenge anything in the process or the final results that shows bias, misleading data, or selective reporting.

Legal, I think the council has dug in for so long now and made such a mess of the implementation that wholesale changes will need to be made to restore local confidence in their ability to do what they are elected to do. The fact councillors are suggesting there might be changes as "they are not perfect" (one questions why it took them so long to work this out when everyone else could work out what was going to happen before they went in) suggests they might tweak and then say...give it another 12 months..... To have any impact on the displacement tsunami they have to reopen east west access so Court Lane/DV has to reopen and you then will need to remove the DV timed closures. They can probably keep Melbourne Grove. It will be interesting if they pursue the rumoured creation of a one-way Court Lane/DV junction.

Tilt - I agree, wilful ignorance or a complete dereliction of duty. Unfortunately, this is what happens when there is no opposition to a dominant party - they start doing what they please, when they want, how they want - regardless of what anyone thinks - and then instead of course-correcting they dig in their defences and battle it out to the last. By which time they have done the over-riding strategic objective huge harm - then they'll start looking for someone else to blame for the debacle.

Rahx3 - it all comes back to what % of change needs to happen for it to have a material positive effect for everyone and that probably needs to be getting way over 50% of car reduction (and remember this is the council's stated objective - although they have backtracked quite a bit from that) and there isn't an LTN programme anywhere that has delivered anything beyond low single digit modal shift. Why? Because the basic infrastructure needed to support wider modal shift is severely lacking - 50% of the residents in Dulwich do not have access to bike storage facilities. So whilst Southwark bang on and on about the % of Southwark residents who don't have access to a car they miss the point entirely and seem to think that is the justification for these measures (I hasten to add a large % of Southwark's population lives close to a tube station in the north of the borough, which they always seem inclined to overlook).

alice Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > The puzzle always has been: Why was the centre of > South Southwark deemed to be > Calton/village/junction? > > I asked this at one of the zoom meetings and was > asked whether i wanted the same measures on my > road. Not an answer to the question. It's because the folks of Calton/Court Lane/DV are considered differently than others - do you know, for example, that the council cleans their green, brown and blue bins every couple of weeks.....?

Ex- surely the objective should be to reduce pollution for everyone - not just some? I know planners are currently obsessed with "nudge interventions" (it seems to be THE buzz word) but I am not sure how anyone can agree with such a strategic policy that is so imbalanced and one that creates bliss for one and hell for another. What people really mean by nudge intervention is that you throw something in that makes life so miserable for those impacted by the results that they just say please give us what they have - the fact this is being pushed by, so called, socialist administrations is quite shocking. Also, defaulting to the "we just need more of them" is another tactic employed by those who favour them and is horrendously flawed as you can't just keep pushing the collateral damage to another street. It is the weak argument of those who have no idea how to try and tackle the problem holistically - it's lazy and gets rolled out by every councillor. I am sorry but your fly-tipping example just doesn't work. Fly tipping happens on my street and I would much prefer to see something that removes fly-tipping at source rather than just saying - get it dumped in the next street along please. This is not about sharing pollution it's about sharing the responsibility for reducing it and not, in the process. reducing it for some yet doubling it for others. This seems to be the part of the issue that pro-LTNs fail to grasp and it's not actually that difficult to understand.

Heatblock - Labour have completely immersed themselves in the pro-LTN propaganda and are drinking the Kool-Aid by the gallon. The use of the Fact Check carries as much weight as the Tories doing it on their twitter feed during the election (and that's before it takes you to Peter Walker's articles ;-)) - I would love to know to which LTNs they are referring to that have reduced traffic on both residential and boundary roads as there isn't one in existence - I suspect they are regurgitating the Waltham Forest "success" - which, as we know, was anything but successful for anyone who didn't live within the closed area - the 28% increase in traffic 3.1 miles from the outer edge of the Waltham Forest LTN speaks volumes! Re: school drops Court Lane is also a school car park at drop-off and pick-up time but at least they are walking the last 100 yards!!! ;-)

Heartblock - can you share the documents that have been shared with you from the meeting? What meeting was it? Was it a meeting for Labour members within the LTN area? Are political parties allowed to try to influence the outcome - fine if they are telling people to go and look at the review but not so fine if they are telling people how they should respond - at what point does that become interference?

Indeed, given the coop of aforementioned Mr.Chicken is "close to the Calton Avenue junction" - as they stated on one of their first posts here - I think we can all determine what Mr.Chicken's objective is....their tongue-in-cheek postings were entertaining to begin with but now appear to be nothing more than a exercise in disruption. Perhaps they might shed their cloak of obtuseness, join the debate properly and tell us what they really think.....;-)

The challenge that the council has, and why the LTNs are not working, is because whilst car ownership is some of the highest in our part of Southwark the flip side is that the number of local journeys done on foot or by bike is also some of the highest in the borough. So what gives? It suggests that locals are not using their cars for unnecessary journeys yet are being unfairly punished by (many of them) having to live with the displacement caused by these closures. To be fair, if 68% of local journeys were being done or foot or bike in 2018 you can bet that, thanks to Covid, is probably up near the 80% level and you won't get much higher than that no matter what you do. In fact, maybe these measures will actually have an even more negative impact. I have worried for a long time that Lordship Lane is suffering because of the increases in traffic. Now it never was the quietest of roads but the pollution is becoming horrendous with the traffic queuing along its length with the displaced traffic. I suspect a lot of those 68% were walking journeys to and from the Lane and at what point do people no longer go to shop or eat there because of the pollution?

Also as Otto2 was posting earlier some people with cargo bikes currently stored in their houses would be very keen to use cycle hangers but the challenge is, given the huge waiting list for cycle hangar spaces, can the council devote (what looks like) three of 4 normal cycle storage spots in a hangar to a single cargo bike - there isn't the infrastructure in place to aptly support demand for normal bikes yet alone cargo bikes. Modal shift will never amount to anything more than low single digit percentages if councils don't wake up to the fact that stick alone won't make it happen - there has to be some carrot. Every time I see a pro-LTN twitter groups posting pictures and videos from the Townley Road junction of children on bikes I do chuckle and think to myself that all it is validating is that modal shift only happens for those who attend some of the most expensive private schools in the country (where finding places to store bikes at school is not an issue) and are able to cycle from some of the largest houses in London (which also have no problem storing bikes).

It is also very telling that in the Netherlands, despite their love of the bike, they own more cars per capita than we do in the UK.

The council has monumentally failed when it comes to the support infrastructure to enable modal shift - is it any surprise only 3% of the 68% of journeys locally were done on bikes back in 2018? No, because look at Lordship Lane - very few places to secure a bike and the council could, and should, have been doing more to provide the infrastructure to support it. It's embarrassing. The council got so side-tracked by obsessing over trying to close Dulwich Village to traffic that they took their eye off the ball. Look at how much money they have spent in the village to try to close it to traffic yet people across the wider Dulwich area have been crying out for infrastructure to be put in place so they can store bikes. Over the last 18 months of the pandemic the council's efforts to install bike storage infrastructure has been beyond pathetic.

LTN BooHoo Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Think outside the box and encourage the council to > do more not less. Given the way they have mishandled the existing LTN closures I am not sure they should be encouraged or entrusted to do more. In fact I am not sure many would trust them to do anything anymore. Don't forget the ludicrous plans for Peckham Rye and other areas that they had to scrap at the beginning of this debacle. It was interesting when our councillors held their ward meeting on the issues, someone said that they were unhappy about having to live with the displacement and one of our councillors said: "Let's discuss whether we can install measures on your road". It seems the preferred council solution to the chaos these measures cause is to pass it onto someone else. Maybe this can be the council's new slogan....Southwark...making someone else deal with the problem?

An update from One Dulwich. One Dulwich Campaign Update | 24 May Dear all, The Dulwich Review Still no rush to fill in the Dulwich Review, which closes online on 11 July. None of the promised supporting data has so far materialised, and some of it won?t be available for weeks. There are two more online meetings organised by the Council (yesterday?s meeting was just about the basic aims of the Dulwich LTNs) on Wednesday 26 May at 7pm, and Saturday 19 June at 2pm. Tickets are free, but you need to book via the link above. We have been looking carefully at the survey, and are raising a number of serious problems with Southwark Council. These include: No specific options put forward for Dulwich Village junction (for example, ANPR cameras) if you want a different solution. This is not what the Council promised. The high risk of duplicate entries and fraud, as surveys can be completed using just a name, email address and postcode (but no house number). The ?unique identifier? appears to have no purpose ?? we have heard of multiple printed copies with different ?unique identifiers? sent to single-person households. Data protection and whether questions are age-appropriate: there is no minimum age for filling in the survey and under 16s are encouraged to respond. How will Southwark know whether answers are from a 15-year-old or a two-year-old? Traffic displacement: there are no specific questions about the traffic displacement that is badly affecting residents and schoolchildren on roads like Croxted Road, East Dulwich Grove, Lordship Lane, Dulwich Common and Underhill Road We will keep you closely in touch with next steps. Our fighting fund The fighting fund we have set up with the Dulwich Alliance has now reached ?13,184. Please continue to spread the word via social media. Donations are being used to print and distribute leaflets and posters, and to progress our legal advice. Leaflets and posters Please go to www.dulwichalliance.org and click on the LEAFLETS or POSTERS tab if you?d like further copies. Our new leaflet, highlighting the impact of 24/7 closures and excessive timed restrictions on local businesses, is being delivered to 18,000 homes in the Dulwich LTNs area.

Does anyone know why in 99% of other places the LTN barriers have been made permeable for emergency services yet in Dulwich Village they persist with immovable barriers - what is the rationale behind that - they made the Melbourne Grove barriers permeable? Is it because the grand plans for the "Square" would not be possible if the emergency services need to have access?

The council is organising some meetings to discuss the closures - the first is this Sunday. Council meetings on the closures: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/dulwich-streetspace-review-community-meetings-tickets-153435899907 Community Meetings to discuss the Highways schemes in Dulwich About this event We want to hear from as many people as possible in the local community - what are your views on the current Highways measures in Dulwich Village, East Dulwich and Champion Hill, and what would you like to see in the future? We have scheduled 3 online meetings during the consultation period:- 1. Sunday 23rd May - the council will discuss the highways schemes, our aims and objectives. 2. Wednesday 26th May - we want to hear the views of the public and different stakeholder groups. 3. Saturday 19th June - we will break into smaller groups and look at the issues and challenges in greater detail - so everyone should get a chance to speak. Please register your interest here and provide your email address - the link to the meeting will be sent out on the day and will come from [email protected] (please check your Junk folder)

This thread seems to be doing more research into the root cause of the problems than the council has ever done! ;-) 68% of local journeys were being done on foot or bike in 2018 and I suggest post-pandemic that that figure is even higher - so clearly the issue does not lie with us locals yet it is us locals who are having to live with the displacement being caused by the sledge-hammer to crack a nut closures installed by the council. If only they had done some proper research to determine what the traffic issues across the area were being caused by and look at measures that could adequately address the problems but, unfortunately, they were allowing themselves to be led by a small group of anti-car protagonists whose sole aim was to close roads to car usage and create car-free/massively reduced zones for the benefit only of those within them. The council's misguided, ill-conceived and executed strategy is backfiring massively.

Northern I think the issue is that a lot of people don't support these measures as they create even more unacceptable queuing traffic. That's the crux of the issue. There is broad support for measures that would reduce queuing traffic everywhere for everyone - these get nowhere near that unfortunately.

PollyGlot Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Some local residents had the opportunity to > discuss LTN matters with a Councillor today. This > was none other than Margy Newens, who is Deputy > Community Champion for the South Area. > > One of the first questions presented to her was > "What is the PRIME purpose of the LTN measures?". > > Her emphatic and unequivocal response was "TO > REDUCE TRAFFIC". No mention of pollution!! > > She apparently failed to understand that pollution > would be reduced if electric cars were exempted > from the LTN penalties ( as is the case with taxis > and buses) and that if they were exempt, then that > would accelerate the adoption of electric cars and > bring about rapid reduction in pollution. > > She was unaware that the statistics provided by > Southwark on their website are 20 months out of > date! > > What hope do we have when our community has > representatives like this? We have to frame her response in terms of what the underlying objective for Margy Newens was: To reduce traffic......for her constituents..... It's been clear from day one that that was the only objective and that this was to be achieved by any means necessary - even if that meant that other councillors' constituents had to absorb the displacement. I am glad she has put that out there as if the council cannot prove that this has happened area wide to a significant degree then the scheme will have been a complete failure. One wonders then whether any councillors will admit they were wrong and take actually responsibility for their mistakes - I very much doubt it. The amount of money the council has wasted on this is absurd.

OMG - has anyone started to fill out the review documents - talk about lose the will to live!? Firstly it re-stats the affirmation that these measures were brought about as part of the Covid response to aid social distancing and then asks a load of leading questions (all of which are linked to the success of such measures) - not one question addresses whether there have been any negative impacts associated with the closures. Astonishing. Of course you can leave comments but they don't measure comments. I started filling it out, trying to be as balanced as possible and then found myself getting more and more annoyed by the blinkered questions as I could see how the council were going to try and manipulate the results. It appears the only way to voice any concern may be to strongly disagree with all the assumptions made in the review.

The article doesn't explain what the kerbs are and does say that the researchers think the number could be massively higher. Is it just me or do a lot of the Guardian's articles seem to be a little light on detail.....an attention grabbing headline but that's about it, as you read down the article so the headline becomes weaker and weaker. Of course, the point the Guardian or the cycle group researchers who did the research miss is that all those modal filters weren't dropped in at once or caused the type of displacement chaos we are seeing in many areas that have these new ones (like Dulwich). But these articles do little to try to establish what is actually happening and are written from a position of justifying why they shouldn't come out - and that is an important distinction and why they are just part of the pro-LTN propaganda machine. I am still chuckling at the childish and pointed Laurence Fox reference.....;-)