Rockets

And I really hope the council is ensuring they are doing everything they can to ensure all residents are informed of the review, it seems a bit haphazard at the moment and a lot of streets have not received the review leaflet. Also, given the CPZ consultation eliminated the responses from anyone outside of the review area how will the views of, say a Southwark cyclist not from an SE22 postcode or a taxi or delivery driver doing their job be managed against someone living on one of the displacement roads? Has the council shared any details or is it just a free-for-all?

Another interesting post from OneDulwich, timely given today's discussion: Why was Dulwich chosen for an LTN? 29 Mar We?ve been puzzling for some time over why Southwark chose Dulwich Village for its first ever Low Traffic Neighbourhood. If you look at the July 2020 report from Southwark?s Environment Scrutiny Commission, Dulwich doesn?t fit any of the criteria they recommend. Ideally, the report says, Southwark should create LTNs ?as a priority? in areas of deprivation, with high levels of public transport, poor air quality, and lower levels of car ownership. Dulwich Village ticks none of these boxes. It has very low levels of public transport, generally (before the LTN went in) better air quality than other parts of Southwark, high car ownership ? and is the least deprived area in the Borough. Dulwich has the very lowest public transport (PTAL) ratings of 1 (purple & mauve) and 2 (blue) Dulwich has the very lowest public transport (PTAL) ratings of 1 (purple & mauve) and 2 (blue) So why choose Dulwich? Cynics might say that Southwark picked a highly car-dependent area in order to make a lot of money from fines. A recent FOI (Freedom of Information) request has revealed that in just seven weeks, from January to February this year, four ANPR cameras in Dulwich Village (a fifth camera was out of action) resulted in 22,424 penalties ? which, if everyone paid ?65 (the early fine), will have netted the Council nearly ?1.5 million. This is an eye-watering amount. Others might argue that the 2016 re-design of Dulwich Village junction ? which nearly 70% of locals voted against, and which arguably made cycling less safe than before ? was such a mess that the Council was anxious to close everything down in order to hide its mistake. But maybe there?s another explanation. Could Southwark?s decision to place its first ever LTN in an inappropriate area have been influenced by the expectation of strong local support? Low Traffic Neighbourhoods are, after all, controversial: you wouldn?t push ahead with implementing one in an unsuitable area unless you were pretty sure you could overcome local opposition. Dulwich has a high concentration of schools ? nursery, primary and secondary, both state and private. We know that a well-established lobby group, Dulwich and Herne Hill Safe Routes to School (SRS), has supported the idea of road filters for many years. We have also established that the Council had regular meetings with a working group before, during and after Phase 3 of Our Healthy Streets Dulwich (January to April 2020) ? a group ?set up to help run the OHSD consultation process?, according to one of our local councillors. This working group included representatives from Dulwich and Herne Hill Safe Routes to School, Living Streets (a charity that has worked closely with the London Cycling Campaign since 2018 on promoting LTNs), the Dulwich Society and, towards the end, Calton Avenue residents? association. The working group?s role seems to have been informal and advisory ? offering comments, for example, on the presentation that Southwark eventually put forward at the public meetings in February and March. No minutes of what they discussed are available. But the group?s links with the Council were sufficiently strong for its members to be given advance sight of the interim Phase 3 consultation results ? results, both then and to this day, that have never been made public. Despite this lack of transparency, and the fact that the full results remain unpublished, Southwark still talks of this January to April 2020 consultation as evidence of community support, and a mandate for the current LTN measures. It's not usual practice, as far as we know, for a council to hold private meetings with a small, select group of local lobbyists in the run-up to a public consultation ? or to share confidential data with them. Did Southwark somehow get the impression from these off-the-record briefings that the local community was in favour of 24/7 closures? Did conversations over many months with this hand-picked and unrepresentative group encourage the Council to push ahead with a scheme that was so obviously flawed and unjust? We haven?t so far heard of a working group advising the Council on the forthcoming May 2021 review, but will let you know if anything comes to light.

I think this thread quite aptly demonstrates the monster the council has created for itself and how tough this is for them to manage now. The problems are born from their lack of proper communication and engagement on the LTNs and their historical cosy relationship with lobby groups in favour of the closures. And let me be clear, I don't for one minute think there are organised groups of cyclists repeatedly riding over monitoring strips in the hope that they will convince the council to keep the LTNs. If there are individual cyclists doing so then they are only fooling themselves and opening themselves and the council's process up for further scrutiny - all you need is a video of a cyclist doing so and it massively undermines the credibility of any data on cycle use collected by the council during the whole of the monitoring process. I do, however, think that the council, and councillors, have realised that there is something other than a small vocal minority (their words not mine) who oppose these measures across the area and are now having to play the political balancing act of trying to appease 1) the advocates who they actively engaged with to get this thing moving 2) those who oppose the measures and may cost them their seats in the next council election 3) their own party's (or at least local leadership of the party) ideology and strategic plan. Throw into the mix the fact that their every move is now being watched and scrutinised by many local residents, (because trust has been eroded), and you can see that they have created a complete mess for themselves. The whole they have dug for themselves gets deeper every time they do or say something. At the end of the day they won't be able to keep everyone happy - so something will have to budge.

I think the two things everyone can agree on are this: 1) There are more cyclists on the roads at the moment (a good thing) 2) There is more congestion on roads surrounding the LTNs (a bad thing) The question the council has to answer is how much the LTNs are contributing to both. The most worrying thing for me is how the council's narrative on this has now changed in regard to traffic volume, displacement and pollution and a few things Cllr McAsh posted here that are a big red flag on the subtle, but incredibly important, change to their narrative. His postings are below and notice the change in the last post. Oct 14th 2020 The two key criteria are air pollution and traffic volume. Put simply, if these two measures are not reduced across the whole area then the scheme has failed. It is not enough to displace the traffic - we want to reduce it overall. But even if air pollution and traffic volume decrease across the board, it matters how it is distributed. I want to see a social justice approach to the analysis. No matter what we do there will inevitably be some pollution and traffic. I want this to be shared equitably: protecting schools, nurseries and hospitals above all else; and not allowing the negative effects of air pollution to fall on those least able to bear them. Feb 17th 2021 The LTNs are supposed to reduce traffic overall, by making cycling and walking safer and more pleasant and by making car journeys a little less convenient. The objective is not to shift traffic around, but to reduce its total volume. There's loads of evidence to support this approach but it's clear that the effects depend on local conditions. If indeed the schemes have led to increased traffic then they are not successful. That's what we need to know more about. Feb 23rd 2021 In the scenario where traffic decreases overall (a key objective of the schemes) but at the cost of other problems (ie congestion on specific roads) we would need to weigh one against the other. Has anyone seen the council share how they are going to assess the impact? Am I to presume that the delayed review they are now saying will be published in May will be the definitive "this was a success/was not a success" document. If so, does anyone know what the criteria for each are and should the council not be sharing that with us ahead of publication. From Cllr McAsh's posts I wonder if the council has been, ahem, refining, the criteria for success? BTW has anyone else been received the flyers for the review outside of the originally published review area? We haven't had ours yet.

And I can't imagine anyone would be foolish enough to think that cycling over a monitoring strip repeatedly would be able to influence what is a motor vehicle count. At the end of the day it doesn't matter if 1 million bikes cycled over it - if the count determines that cars are being displaced and congestion and pollution have increased on the roads around the LTNs then it doesn't matter how many bike journeys are being made. It is going to be really interesting to see how the council presents the data it is currently collating. I do think it is ironic that the council claimed they could not afford to monitor when these closures went in (well except the monitoring they put in place within the LTN area) yet now, with lockdown starting to lift, they have been able to carpet bomb monitoring strips all over the area. It will be fascinating to see the monitoring period they present in the report. Schools are starting to close now for Easter - so it will be interesting to see how selective the council is in the time periods presented.

Which twitter accounts are reporting this? Maybe Ex- can confirm but do those monitoring strips register cyclists, I thought they would only be triggered by something as heavy as a car.

Latest OneDulwich update: Did you receive your leaflet about the review? The eight-week public consultation on the road closures will start in May. Please register your interest at www.southwark.gov.uk/dulwichreviewreg and encourage friends, neighbours and family to do the same. One Dulwich has heard from a number of residents and businesses who didn?t receive the leaflet about the consultation last week. Please let us know via [email protected] if you didn?t receive yours either. We?re concerned that the process so far is already raising questions about fairness and transparency ? see [?Will the long-awaited review be fair and transparent??]. Who closed Dulwich Village junction? Thanks to an FOI (Freedom of Information) request, data about a previous Southwark consultation has finally emerged. Please see ?Who closed Dulwich Village junction??. We will publish the full report shortly. Dulwich welcomes new cyclists We?re interested to hear about a sudden and dramatic rise in the number of cyclists on Calton Avenue and Melbourne Grove. The sunny weather? The active travel we all support? We hope so. Could it be that some over-enthusiastic cyclists are going back and forth over the new automatic counting strips ahead of the May review in order to show Southwark that closing roads increases cycling? Surely not? Best wishes,

Legal - my goodness me, that council meeting all went a bit Jackie Weaver but the subject matter is far more concerning. So disgraced councillor Leo Pollack got a/is going to get golden pay-off form the council - that is outrageous. The treatment of the LD councillors by Cllr Williams and the other Labour councillors is shocking and I do hope the council will investigate the accusations of bullying laid at their door. This council appears out of control and has so little opposition it behaves like it can do what it wants when it wants. The fact it is the only council in the country offering golden pay-offs for a disgraced councillor is beyond reproach - I was shocked when I saw the supportive messages from other councillors when Leo Pollack was forced out of office after the investigation into his behaviour and it seems that not only did he have glowing praise from his comrades ringing in his ears but he is also leaving with a pocket full of tax-payers money.

Legal - my goodness me, that council meeting all went a bit Jackie Weaver but the subject matter is far more concerning. So disgraced councillor Leo Pollack got a/is going to get golden pay-off form the council - that is outrageous. The treatment of the LD councillors by Cllr Williams and the other Labour councillors is shocking and I do hope the council will investigate the accusations of bullying laid at their door. This council appears out of control and has so little opposition it behaves like it can do what it wants when it wants. The fact it is the only council in the country offering golden pay-offs for a disgraced councillor is beyond reproach - I was shocked when I saw the supportive messages from other councillors when Leo Pollack was forced out of office after the investigation into his behaviour and it seems that not only did he have glowing praise from his comrades ringing in his ears but he is also leaving with a pocket full of tax-payers money.

Sorry Nigello I disagree with this. If the infrastructure is not in place to support modal shift then it won't happen on a wide enough scale to have any lasting positive impact. If you can't store a bike you won't own a bike.

Well, to be fair, if they can put planters in (take some of them out and put in removable bollards when the emergency services complained), put new cameras up, new street furniture and signage, new right-filter traffic lights to support their LTNs then surely cycle hangars can't be that much of a challenge. It seems the priority within the council was to close the roads rather than actually support modal shift. It seems the delay in rolling out more is: The delivery of a large number of cycle hangars has been delayed due to the pause on Traffic Orders being advertised as we have converted to the map based process.....whatever that means. The council cannot expect modal shift to take place if they do not have the most basic infrastructure in place to support it - so yes, I am very supportive of the council investing money in doing this - I would much prefer new cycle hangers to new paving slabs. At this rate it is going to take them years and years to get to satiate even 50% of the demand.

It also seems to suggest that the council forecasted 100 hangars for the 20/21 financial year and only managed to install 55. As I have been saying for some time the council seems unable to put the most basic infrastructure in place to support its strategic objectives - it has put the cart before the horse with the LTNs and should have been spending more time, money and effort installing bike hangars to satiate the demand for the ability for residents to store bikes than cameras to close off Dulwich Village. It's really quite damning.

I suppose what the council is doing is saying, we want you to stop smoking and to do that we are going to tell everyone to stop smoking on these streets and yet encourage them to congregate and smoke on these other streets just down the road.

Slarti - I think the council are being forced, by the increasing awareness by residents of how things have been handled previously, to be more open, transparent and accountable for their actions. Looks at the review pull-down menu saga - I suspect more residents have complained to councillors in the past few days about their road not being included in the pulldown menus than all of those who were used by the council to mandate the DV/Calton Road closures. The FOI by OneDulwich has exposed another potential manipulation by the council to force their agenda on residents across Dulwich. The evidence of wrong-doing (or oversight) by the council is growing by the day and they are really being exposed - their rap-sheet is quite impressive. No longer can the council rely on resident apathy (and local and non-local sympathisers) to get things through - their constituents are watching their every move and demanding openness and transparency.

malumbu Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > You will probably find that the typical member of > LCC has much more interest in the environment than > the typical non-cycling motorist, so I commend > that group for supporting such brave measures. > Perhaps some of the non-cycling motorists would > like to infiltrate the LCC but you will may go > native. Maybe - but then again, the LCC could just have the interests of cyclists at heart.

northernmonkey Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Until they release the underlying data you'll have > to excuse me if i don't take their 'analysis' at > face value. > > The 'report' they produced on the commonplace > certainly stretched the limits of some of the > words used, so would like to see the data they're > basing this analysis on. > > Can't see that they've shared the underlying data > though? The irony is of course that the underlying data is data that the council had to be forced to share via FOI as they refused to share it. So I am sure that One Dulwich will be sharing all of it in due course - their note says they are doing their analysis with a fuller report to come but for those of you who haven't been able to click through this is what it says. It's well worth a look to scratch a little beneath the surface on how few people actually influenced the decision-making process - less than 100 people, many of whom are spread all over the Dulwich area - yet we have to fight the council to instigate an area-wide review. https://www.onedulwich.uk/news/who-closed-dulwich-village-junction Who Close Dulwich Village junction? Southwark Council has always claimed the closure of Dulwich Village junction was led by local demand, and that the current Experimental Traffic Orders were based on earlier consultation and engagement. You can see this on the website of ?Our Healthy Streets Dulwich Phase 3? (which ran in early 2020) under the title ?What you have told us so far?. Talking about Phase 2 in autumn 2019 , the website says, ?You told us you favoured radical action at the Calton Avenue/Court Lane junction, including a permeable road closure that stops motor traffic but allows access for pedestrians and cyclists.? One Dulwich has been asking the Council for a long time to release the results of Phase 2. We could see from the summary of feedback that the numbers were tiny, suggesting that few had heard about the consultation, or had felt sufficiently engaged to respond. So who were the people who persuaded the Council that the 24/7 closure of Dulwich Village junction had the backing of the local community? A recent FOI (Freedom of Information) request has finally revealed the truth. We are giving just a snapshot here, as we?re still working our way through the data. But we can confidently present two interim conclusions. Firstly, the assertions about the Phase 2 results made by the Council during the Phase 3 consultation are misleading and not backed up by the data. This is important, because it will have influenced the way people responded to the consultation ? and is still likely to be influencing the way people think and feel in the run-up to the review in May this year. Secondly, an analysis of the postcodes of those who responded to the online survey (which was more reliable, Southwark claimed, than the paper responses) shows that those in favour of the closure of the junction fall into two groups: A tight cluster on Calton Avenue or very close to the junction; and A group spread very thinly across and outside the borough, many some distance from the local area. We have mapped the locations so that you can see this more clearly. Is there a pattern emerging here? What might these far-flung respondents have had in common? We will publish the full report shortly.

Sue - that's good news. I think it is vitally important for everyone to have their say (for or against) and I would encourage everyone to get their neighbours to have their say. The OneDulwich FOI demonstrates that previous closures (Calton Ave/DV) have been implemented on the basis of supportive responses from a tiny proportion of the local population (if the OneDulwich map is correct the council used feedback from less than 100 people to validate their decision - many of whom lived way beyond the impacted area).

But modern society shouldn't tolerate a programme of measures that reduces pollution for one area at the expense of pollution in another. That is not equitable. If a programme does not reduce pollution for everyone then it is not fit for purpose. That's basic commonsense.

It does seem that leaflets are being distributed to areas beyond the blue shading as someone PM'd me to say they had received one and they live outside the central LTN area - so hopefully this means everyone is getting one (which is important to ensure everyone is aware of the opportunity to have their say).

Alice, is it their tweet that takes you to this: https://www.onedulwich.uk/news/who-closed-dulwich-village-junction?s=09 I had not seen this but it is fascinating and I think goes some way to demonstrate why the council might be less than keen to engage with the wider community on the LTN review. The fact OneDulwich had to use an FOI to get this data speaks volumes - what are the council trying to hide one wonders?

I am not sure - I am hoping all will become clear because at the moment it looks like the council isn't doing their best job and getting this review right. It doesn't look good: 1) Didn't add the main displacement route (Underhill) to the pull-down menu and had to be chased to do so 2) Has now added a number of roads (Underhill, Melford, Upland etc) when residents complained that they were missing yet there are still roads not included in the pulldown menus that could be impacted by displacement traffic 3) Seems to have mailed the flyer to those only living within the review area (please correct me if I am wrong if anyone has had these delivered beyond the blue shaded area) 4) Has sent the flyer that includes a map that suggests the review area is limited to the blue shaded area on the map - this was the same map Cllr Rose shared on the Dulwich Hill LTN review call and she referred to it, quite clearly, as the LTN review area I do wonder if this might go some way to explain the delay to the review - remember this review was slated to start (by Cllr Williams) in February. I suspect the council started socialising their (limited) review area and people pushed back (either within the council or outside it) that it was basically gerrymandering to get the result they wanted and they had to expand it but by that point they had already printed the flyers and they are now playing catch-up. Has anyone heard directly from the council why roads like Underhill were missing on the initial pull-down menus? It looks like, from posts earlier in the thread, that the council were alerted to these omissions by residents. A lot of this is all so familiar to those of us who lived through the CPZ "consultation". Remember how badly the results (68% of residents against the CPZ) went against the council agenda and how they had to squirm and manipulate the presentation of the results to get the CPZ in. One wonders how wedded the council are to an area-wide LTN review... The problem for the council is many constituents are putting them under the microscope and challenging their every move to make sure the review is fair and equitable to everyone impacted by the results. And the council seem to be making a pig's ear of doing that from the outset.

I am not sure, that's what I am trying to ascertain. Has anyone outside of the indicated area on the map legal shared received the council flyer on the review? I only know of people receiving it who live within the blue shaded area - it seems that everyone in the blue shaded area has received one. The flyer is definitely suggesting that only those within the LTN area and households on either side of the boundary roads (which one presumes is the shading to the east of Lordship Lane) will receive the flyer/letter.

Yes good to see that more roads have now been added to the "Register your Interest" site but why so few were added initially is a bit odd - another council oversight per chance.....;-) I have to admit that I am not totally convinced those roads being added mean that they are part of the review area. See the attached from legal from the flyer being distributed to some residents in Dulwich. Looks at the shading of, what we presume is, the review area. Another page of the flyer says that all households within the LTN area, and those households either side of the boundary roads...will receive a letter - that looks like the shading area. Does this mean that roads like Underhill will not receive the letter? Surely everyone in SE22 should be both covered on the pull-down menus and receive the letter. Does anyone have any clarity on this?

And what about those who order goods that are shipped on cargo ships that can, in one journey, put out more pollution than all the cars in a single country? Would you agree that this would need to carry a pollution tax of sorts? SE22_2020er - you acknowledge that public transport needs improving. Would you agree then that the council has put the cart before the horse with these LTN measures? That they cannot possibly have the desired effect if people do not have the public transport options to move away from the car. I would like to see means-tested road pricing brought in so that it is fair on everyone.

The review area has now been confirmed as going no further east than Lordship Lane so it is a blatant attempt at gerrymandering by the council. The council will prioritize the responses of those within the review area over those outside it even though you can "have your say". However, putting pressure on your ward councillors to force them to weight all responses from East Dulwich equally can have a positive impact. We cannot allow the council to manipulate this review in the same way they did the CPZ consultations.