Rockets

Cllr McAsh, Thank you for your responses Some more questions for you: PHASES 2,3 and 4 Given your concerns about the negative impact of the Phase 1 closures made in Dulwich Village would you not agree that it would be foolish to proceed with any other phases of the closures until the issues created by the first Phase are resolved? It appears clear that Phases 2, 3 and 4 are designed to do no more than chase the displacement created by the first phase. Surely the negative impact of any closures needs to be properly assessed before more closures are put in place? PHASE 4 In the current Phase 4 plans East Dulwich Road will no longer be accessible from the East or West fork of Peckham Rye. Are you not concerned that this will force more traffic around the back-streets of your ward, further increasing congestion and pollution and will have a negative impact on the lives of your constituents? Why is the council so determined to try and stop East/West travel across Dulwich? Has this been identified as the major cause of traffic through the area? Surely closing these routes (DV junction, Townley Road, Burbage Road, no right turn onto East Dulwich) is just going to force more traffic down other routes like East Dulwich Grove. The issue remains for the council that you cannot close every road and each time you remove a road it places more pressure on the other roads. LTNs - monitoring Is all of the monitoring in now? Will you be willing to share all of the data received to be independently verified - the council doesn't have the best track record in reporting accurate monitoring figures? From what I can gather from your email you are we to assume that you will not have like-for-like numbers for comparison? Why did the council initially decide to only put monitoring in place on the closed roads? Lordship Lane You rightly raise concerns about displacement on East Dulwich Grove and thank you for that as the situation there is untenable but are you also concerned about the impacts on Lordship Lane. Both ends of it, north and south are now awful and the northbound section heading towards Goose Green roundabout is particularly bad and this is having a significant negative impact on the shopping area where a lot of your constituents chose to shop and eat and drink. Are you concerned about this and what, other than removing the closures causing the displacement, can be done? LTNS - public virtual meeting I was suggesting this imminently rather than waiting for the evaluations. When would the council be willing to use a virtual meeting to engage with the Dulwich community? There is a significant weight of public opinion against the closures and 1,500 people signed up to support One Dulwich who are suggesting pragmatic half-way house measures but given the council seems reluctant to engage in discussions about these ideas over 2,400 people have since signed an e-petition to have all the closures removed completely - the council's inaction, and determination to force more closures, is leading people to lobby for the complete removal. E-PETITION Do you know why the e-petition was closed by someone at the council? It has since been re-opened but it would be good to know why it was closed and who closed it. LTNS - consultation, Southwark Cyclists You don't need to consult Southwark Cyclists whether they agree that the closures should be put in place because you know the answer to that already but it looks very bad that the council can find the time to engage with them (and seemingly pander to their every whim and request) and yet cannot engage with the residents directly impacted by the closures. Why does the council need to prioritise the opinions of a cycle lobby group, given them the same level of influence (or maybe even more so)than the emergency services, TFL and refuse collection services? You would have to agree this is, optically, a very bad look for the council especially as both the council and TFL has departments dedicated to cycling and can surely provide the same input? So, why is this group considered so important and are the people the council engaging with at Southwark Cyclists local to the Dulwich area? Finally I can assure you, no-one is asking you to engage in frivolous banter - unless of course you happen to categorise the serious concerns many Dulwich residents have about the closures of roads around the area and the associated traffic displacement and increases in pollution as banter. ;-) Many in the wider Dulwich community just want some answers to questions they are posing due to the negative impacts these closures are having on large parts of our communities. Whilst some of the least populated parts of Dulwich revel in their joy at closed roads and their ability to hold street parties on what used to be a key route through Dulwich others on more densely populated roads are having to live with dangerously high pollution caused by the significantly increased congestion caused by the closures. This is completely untenable and I am, frankly, surprised that any Labour council or councillor is happy to stand back and let this continue.

eastdulwichhenry Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > > it's easy to like road closures It's the impact > on > > the other roads. Congestion, pollution, delays > and > > dangerous roads that we don't want. > > None of which are supported by any evidence other > than "it looked a bit busy on Lordship Lane > today". Reality check: Lordship Lane has always > been busy. But at least pedestrians and cyclists > now have a real alternative. Hopefully it is here > to stay, despite the pathetic rearguard shown > here. Just five posts above yours was a pasting of a post from Cllr McAsh, a key advocate for the closures, who is acknowledging that the closures are causing problems elsewhere. The only rear-guard action here is of the pro-closure lobbyists who continue to insist the closures aren't causing any problems elsewhere and that everything is awesome! It's the type of myopic, deliberately blinkered and unbalanced approach to this that is galvanising so many Dulwich residents to fight it.

Cllr McAsh's comments are very telling and bravo for him sticking his head above the trench. Needless to say there are some things that arise from his post. 1) Cllr McAsh is aware of the big issues that are being caused by the closures (particularly those in Dulwich Village) and the displacement issues impacting his constituents. What is, of course, most interesting is that Cllr McAsh was well aware of what was going to happen when the DV closures came in and it cannot have come as any surprise when, what many of us were predicting would happen did happen. Remember, Cllr McAsh was lobbying for Melbourne Grove closure as part of OHS when it became clear that the DV OHS closure would displace traffic onto EDG. (https://twitter.com/mcash/status/1231554193275736065/photo/1). It didn't take a genius to work out that EDG was going to take the brunt of the displacement traffic from the DV closures. 2) The pro-lobby now can stand down from trying to convince everyone that everything is awesome (sorry Lego movie) and that these closures are not causing any issues. The closures are causing issues and even Cllr McAsh admits as much. Interesting though that he only highlights East Dulwich Grove and whilst I realise the problems on EDG are massive I cannot help but think that he is highlighting that road as he knows that when Dulwich Village gets closed at the roundabout those problems get moved somewhere else. Interesting he doesn't mentioned Lordship lane that will likely take another hit when DV gets closed northbound in the next phase of the closures. 3) Interesting that he reiterate this is a trial and that conclusions can only be reached when the dust settles but the problem with that is that the council is forging ahead with Phase 2/3 and 4 of the closures and creating more dust. Surely if Phase 1 is having such negative effects on his constituents would it not be sensible to hold off on Phases 2/3 and 4 until the dust has settled? Chasing the displacement, as the council is doing, isn't solving the issues it-s moving it elsewhere. Each councillor seems keen to move the problem off their ward. 4) His comment that Covid made it impossible to consult is, as we all know, utter nonsense. We should also remind ourselves that these measures were, supposedly, fast-tracked to support social distancing. See the survey he set-up to lobby constituents for closures: (https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSec3c3OCsSboVdTnBrOScgFUz6YjVpU1l7GTdYobFNKZCYdvw/viewform) 5) He says the council will seek feedback from the community. That will be interesting to see how they do that. If they follow their usual path they will only seek input from those people who live on the closed roads and discount input from anyone that doesn't. So the only fair and equitable way is to seek input from the wider East Dulwich community but the last time they did that 68% said they didn't want a CPZ but the council went ahead anyway. 6) What is urgently needed is a bi-directional dialogue between councillors and their constituents not one-side, one-directional updates such as Cllr McAsh has posted. If the council is so happy to pro-actively engage with and take input from Southwark cyclists then they should be doing the same with constituents. The council could very easily organise an online meeting to hear the concerns of their constituents but they chose not to. Cllr McAsh's blog post: The great Labour politician and founder of the NHS, Nye Bevan, once said ?The language of priorities is the religion of socialism?. His visionary politics led to the creation of the modern welfare state. His priority was to protect the most vulnerable from the excesses of capitalism. As a councillor in East Dulwich, the priorities I find myself juggling are not so clear cut. Nowhere is this truer than in the ongoing - and seemingly endless - discussion about traffic management. Here, we need to balance a range of competing interests. Drivers and pedestrians. Residents on main roads and those on the side streets. The needs of our local economy, and the existential threat of climate change. It can be impossible to find a solution that everyone likes so we often settle on the least-worst. This summer we faced a huge challenge. As the lockdown began to ease it became clear that a tiny fraction were using public transport: capacity had dropped and many wanted to avoid it. Meanwhile, more people were driving and more people were cycling. Local authorities across the country faced the same two problems. How to make our roads safe for all types of road users? And how to keep emissions to a minimum? We all reached the same solution: to trial Low Traffic Neighbourhoods (LTN). Low traffic neighbourhoods aim to do two things. First, they try to reduce emissions overall, by encouraging cycling and walking by making the road network safer and more pleasant. In addition, they try to segregate cars from cyclists as much as possible - making it safer for both groups. The ward I represent, Goose Green, has a small number of such measures on the streets around East Dulwich station: various roads which were cut-throughs are now cul-de-sacs, dramatically reducing their motor traffic. Although not in Goose Green, there have been similar - and potentially more significant - changes in Dulwich Village, which have had a knock-on effect in East Dulwich. The goal - to be absolutely clear - is to reduce traffic overall, not simply to move it from one road to another. At the moment, it is hard to measure its success. For a start, we always anticipated a transitional period with higher traffic whilst everyone grows accustomed to the new layout. But more significantly, car-use is rising across London so it is a complex job to assess whether the roads would be better or worse without the new measures. If you?re in a warm room and wear a sweater to go outside, you may still be cooler than you were before but that does not mean the jumper did not warm you. Since these measures were introduced, we councillors have been inundated with comments from residents. Opinion is split: many residents have written to us with tales of their children playing in the street, but others are concerned by increased traffic on nearby roads. We are particularly aware of the issues on East Dulwich Grove. Covid-19 made it impossible to consult as widely as we would like before implementation. So that?s why the measures are only a trial. When the dust settles we will look carefully at the data and seek feedback from the community. At that point the measures can be maintained, amended or removed entirely.

Cineworld has confirmed they will be closing all of their cinemas from Thursday. Really feel for all of their staff and in particular the great teams at the Picturehouse and Ritzy in Brixton.

I suspect Picturehouse is more viable as it has smaller venues and it's clientele is not just motivated by "blockbusters". Also, this leak of the letter is part of the, understandable, lobbying the creative industry is doing to the government for more help. So hopefully it won't come to the temporary closures that are being discussed as it is in no-ones interests for 5,500 being made redundant (even if the expectation is that they would be re-employed when the cinemas are able to reopen).

The rules affecting the creative industries are awful but I think for cinemas the biggest issue is the lack of films being released to draw customers in. It's a vicious circle as movie companies don't want to release anything as they fear it won't recoup the revenue - Bond being the classic example - they need packed cinemas to get a return on investment.

Someone has filed a legal challenge at the High Court for a judicial review of the Ealing Council LTNs. Will be an interesting one to watch because the filing claims the way the council has implemented then is unlawful.

No-one seems to know why it has been closed. It could be because it passed the 500 signature threshold to get it debate by the council but it crossed the 5000 threshold a long time before it was closed. It certainly looks as if someone from the council has gone in and manually closed it as it had been set to run until the end of December. I am sure someone will find out in due course. I am glad that some councillors are now listening, it looks like the community pressure may be starting to have an impact.

tiddles Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I?m surprised the residents in dulwich village are > not contacting the council - if I had that traffic > jam and associated increased levels of pollution- > I?d be a bit cheesed off > > Also to add that apparently the businesses have > had a distinct downturn in business I think they have been given a promise that the council will shut DV to through traffic at the roundabout. That's part of the phase 2 plans I think.

FairTgirl, did you get the sense those councillors who spoke to the shopkeepers were actually going to do anything about it? Or did you sense they were just paying lip service? I do wonder if any councillors are allowed to have an opinion beyond the party line. Unfortunately, the council e-petition that you link to has been closed by the council. No one knows why but the suspicion is the Cabinet Member for Positive Communication, Misinformation and Statistical Manipulation became aware of it and ordered it to be shut down! Still the 2441 people who signed it know they at least tried to register their annoyance at the way the council has been behaving!

JohnL Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Well I'll go down Consort Road onto East Dulwich > Road. > > Problem is so will everyone else :) > > (it took me three goes to read that map) It's another example of the council forcing traffic from lightly populated streets onto more densely populated ones....they really are completely out of control and with each closure are making the problems worse and worse and increasing congestion and pollution throughout Dulwich. But Southwark Cyclists are happy so it's all worth it! ;-)

JohnL Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Rockets Wrote: > -------------------------------------------------- > ----- > > This has nothing to do with buses and is a > trojan > > horse to prevent cars from turning right from > > Peckham Rye onto East Dulwich Road (which now > will > > not be possible) - it makes no sense at all. > > > > It's received a lukewarm response from the > > emergency services, refuse services and even > TFL > > themselves but it has, you will be pleased to > > hear, received the blessings and full support > of > > Southwark Cyclists ;-). It will inevitably send > > cars looking for other routes through quieter > > residential roads around Bellenden Road or > along > > Barry Road to get to Dulwich from Peckham. > > Trying to work this out. > > So will traffic that currently tuns right at > Peckham Rye east southbound into East Dulwich Road > westbound be diverted to Peckham Rye West > southbound and be allowed to turn right there or > will there be an alternative route through the > lanes further east It certainly isn't called out in the pdf that they will now be allowing right turns from the west fork of Peckham Rye. One of two things seems to be happening here: 1) this is part of the strategic plans to make east/west travel difficult across the area 2) they are trying to cut traffic to reduce the impact of the closures on East Dulwich Road, East Dulwich Grove etc. But I think we can all start playing the new game Dulwich residents are getting used to playing: Which roads become the displacement roads...any bets anyone?

Dogkennelhillbilly Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Rubbish. Public transport is not just the tube. > We've got multiple train stations and train lines > in and near East Dulwich, tons of buses (inc 24 > hour routes), and we're in the borough with one of > the lowest rates of car usage in London. If you > actually read the submission, you'd see there is > plenty being done to improve public transport. The tube is a big part of public transportation in London. 2 million people used to use it everyday. But, as you pointed out in your opening gambit, no tube coming this way anyway soon meaning access to one of the most popular methods of getting around the city is limited - more so than any other part of London. As you quite rightly pointed out..ain't gonna happen chief....bugger indeed.

Even the local councillor Jasmine Ali seems less than impressed.....the quote from the report below is of someone who has been told they have to fall in line...I love the...."requested we engage with residents to promote a positive message on this scheme". She knows what's coming and how this will be received by the residents and is saying good luck trying to convince the residents they want this!!! ;-) Rye Lane Councillor Jasmine Ali was in favour of the proposals to promote walking and cycling, and agreed this is in line with the Council?s policies on active travel and climate change. The councillor requested we engage with residents to promote a positive message on this scheme.

Yes that tube map on page 20 very visually answers the question why so many people drive in South East London. It is so ironic that at a time when we are all being encouraged to ditch the car there is being nothing done to improve public transport. South East London is the land that public transport forgot!!

This has nothing to do with buses and is a trojan horse to prevent cars from turning right from Peckham Rye onto East Dulwich Road (which now will not be possible) - it makes no sense at all. It's received a lukewarm response from the emergency services, refuse services and even TFL themselves but it has, you will be pleased to hear, received the blessings and full support of Southwark Cyclists ;-). It will inevitably send cars looking for other routes through quieter residential roads around Bellenden Road or along Barry Road to get to Dulwich from Peckham.

I am sure there must be a good explanation why the council has closed the petition but they need to let the person who started it know as the optics of closing it are really bad, especially given no councillors are prepared to engage in any communication about the closures by email or any other means. Perhaps they didn't like what they saw! ;-) Or perhaps rahrahrah lobbied them to close it as they did Admin on here to get duplicate threads on the road closures shut down! ;-) SE22_2020er - unfortunately a lot of people don't like walking and cycling in the rain and because the council has closed lots of roads, on days like today it makes EDG unbearable. It rains, on average 106 days a year in London, but I don't think the council factored weather into their pro-cycling and walking campaign! I am afraid this is all too predictable and inevitable and another Achilles Heal of these closures.

Dogkennelhillbilly Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > "Labour HQ will be well aware of the damage it is > doing..." > > Delusions of grandeur. Ha ha...so you don't think Labour HQ, with a new leader, after the most humiliating of election defeats where the biggest accusation was that they had lost touch with the electorate, isn't watching with interest what is going on across London with councils, the majority of them Labour run, over LTNs? I am not the delusional one....;-)

Ha ha...he was more than happy to when he was pushing his questionnaires to help justify the closures...;-) We all miss him and the back and forth we all used to have - he gave as good as he received. I do feel sorry for him as I do suspect he can see the folly of these closures and he did, when he came last came on here, say he was concerned about the inequalities it might be creating. I very much suspect though that councillors have been placed under a party gagging order on the subject and encouraged to hunker down and not talk about it - it's becoming a white hot political hot potato and Labour HQ will be well aware of the damage it is doing ahead of the mayoral and council elections.

DougieFreeman - would love to although the council has to agree to my rider which is that I will insist on joining the Zoom call from my bike. I will start the call on one of the closed roads (preferably one with a string quartet playing on it in front of multi-million ? homes) and then cycle to the displacement roads and join the long line of traffic coughing and spluttering as I go. I will then tailgate a fire engine getting stuck in the traffic, interview the fire fighters from the window of their engine and then deliberately cycle into one of the Road Closed planters and scream: "Who put that stupid thing there?" Tiddles - to bury something requires it to actually exist....by not taking any readings the council doesn't have to bury them.....;-) But I am sure the pollution estimates they are working on will be completely reliable, 100% accurate and available for in-depth scrutiny.....ahem....

SE22_2020er Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > @Rockets - you make some good points here and I > can see where you are coming from and I agree that > doing nothing is not an option. It breaks my > heart when I see the levels of pollution along EDG > with children walking along the pavement. > > i'm a fat middle aged lady who has just taken up > walking 5 miles every day because I feel so guilty > about the fact that i was one of the people that > i'm talking about sitting in there car on EDG. And > I don't like being so fat! > > but i guess people are to selfish to only use > there cars when they absolutely need to. If they > did that then we would not need any of this. I think you are like a lot of people in that you are doing what you can and looking for different ways of getting around rather than a car. I think that is one of the few silver linings to come from this crisis in that people want to abandon car journeys as much as possible because 1) they want to get fitter and 2) it helps deal with the pollution challenges we are all so aware of. But, unfortunately, by trying to force change faster than it was happening naturally, and by closing roads, the council are making the problems a lot worse under the false idea that everyone will be able to stop using cars. You and I and others on this forum, who are changing their driving habits, are amongst the 11% reduction in car use associated with LTNs across the country - unfortunately it's the remaining 89% who are being displaced that cause the problems we are seeing across Dulwich as the council chases the displacement.

The council doesn't put big signs up because they don't want to acknowledge that they are making the problems worse! In all seriousness, what the council are doing now will be contributing to a massive increase in pollution and, unfortunately, that doctor will be seeing the collateral damage from this in the coming months and years. Doing nothing is not an option but what the council are doing is making things a lot worse and they know it is and this is why they refuse to monitor pollution levels as they will be sky-rocketing on the closure displacement roads. Meanwhile the message from the council is....give it time....but given the urgency they are trying to bring in closures to Burbage etc I am not convinced they really believe that time is what is needed and that the problem "evaporates" as they would like us all to believe.

I may have missed this and apologies if it was posted elsewhere but the councillor responsible for these decisions posted on here twitter feed that in the week of Sept 21st she was planning to meet with traders from Melbourne Grove. Did that meeting take place and anyone know what was discussed?

It is completely crazy. What is also very telling is the list of stakeholders they have engaged with to get input on the closures: Emergency Services - not overly happy about it TFL buses - ok with it Refuse Collection - not overly happy with it Ward Councillors - advised the council to engage with residents to push a positive message to them about the closures Southwark Cyclists - the council "accommodated all of the suggestions from Southwark Cyclists" Very telling that the council prioritises and pro-actively requests the input of Southwark Cyclists over that of local residents and gives the cycle lobby the same weighting as emergency services etc. It's unbelievable that they would even allow this document to go public as it validates the fact that they are more interested in pandering to cycle lobbyists than they are to the views of local residents impacted by the schemes. It also shows there is increasing resistance from emergency services and refuse collection services. http://moderngov.southwark.gov.uk/documents/s91051/APPENDIX%201%20PECKHAM%20RYE.pdf

Yes it seems as if all councillors have a LTN filter on their inboxes that sends any email from anyone daring to question what they are doing to their trash! Are they all still unable to do surgeries at the moment? If so, what I can't work out is that in this modern world everyone else is managing perfectly well to communicate via video calls etc yet our councillors seem to have given up on any direct contact with their constituents - using Covid as the excuse for zero communication. Or perhaps they don't want to talk to people right now! ;-)