Rockets

Let me correct you I didn't fall for anything - I was merely asking whether anyone saw the quite lengthy section that the BBC News ran on it - perhaps they are gullible too!!! 😉 Some on here always love a knee-jerk Pavlovian reaction anytime someone posts something you don't agree with and love to throw in a bit of finger-pointing! I am presuming you did not see it? Here's the link to it starts at 3.24 in. https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m001v6pw/bbc-london-late-news-10012024 37 minutes and 20 seconds to do a 10km journey does seem quite long does it not and that is a one minute increase since last year? And they only exclude one continent from the survey it covers 387 cities across 55 countries on 6 continents. Interesting that Sadiq's spokesperson claims the report is misleading yet then goes on to say that TFL's data shows no lengthening of journeys on their roads since 2019 (interesting that they selected that date given traffic levels are still lower on many roads post-pandemic and travel pattern have changed) but, correct me if I am wrong TFL doesn't run all of the roads in London does it - it only controls 5% of them? If so, maybe Sadiq's spokesperson is trying to mislead people!

Anyone else see on the BBC London News tonight that London is officially the slowest city in the world……for the second year running…..with Sadiq and council rollouts of 20mph being cited as one of the main causes? I am not…I am flagging the nonsnese of traffic planners “keeping everything in-house”….we’ve seen it all before so many times….Dr Aldred et al being awarded £1.5m to research the effectiveness of LTNs….which she lobbied for and the funding for her research provided by the very authorities who rolled the LTNs out…they love a closed shop!

BBC News - Wales 20mph speed limit adviser to lead review https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-politics-67940087 Ha ha, more local authorities marking their own homework....its ludicrous they think this is acceptable....

Do we interpret this that Alleyn's have offered to meet in person yet CAD has not taken up the offer? It will be interesting to hear from CAD on how the meeting with Alleyn's goes and whether they believe they are doing enough. If CAD doesn't take up the offer to meet you'd have to question why not given Alleyn's have been the focal point of their crusade.

I don't think you have understood the point I was making! 😉

No-one is doubting that some see benefits but are you not even slightly concerned that if the usage patterns show that people are replacing short walks with short Lime-bike etc rides then actually that is having a detrimental impact on active travel and sustainability - not all cycled journeys are good journeys - my son's usage patterns are driven by his laziness and his reluctance to walk and his usage is negative to active travel and the environment and his peer group all use them in the same manner? I remember someone coming on here claiming that use of such bikes was "environmentally friendly" or "good for the environment" but that is only true if the journey they are replacing with the cycle has a more negative impact on the environment. In the early days of my career I used to travel into Charing Cross by train from south London and then walk 20 minutes or so through Covent Garden to Bloomsbury everyday to my office - I bet if I was doing that journey today I would be using a Lime bike rather than walking from Charing Cross and that would make my overall journey less active travel and less environmentally friendly.

Is there still one at Herne Hill station too?

This is great - you're the poster-child user for Lime (switching from public transport to a mode that does increase your active travel) but I am not convinced you are the norm and that many Lime bike etc users are switching from walking to Lime bike use to do very short journeys - my son tries to find one when we walk to the railway station or walk to Lordship Lane - which is a negative active travel impact rather than positive. I very much suspect the reason there is no usage data shared by Lime etc is because it would likely highlight that my son's use case is more prevalent than yours - and that is a problem. But Lime are only encouraging councils to install new bays so they can try to force other providers out of the game - because it is a volume and branding game right now. Lime has the might of Uber (and other VC firms) behind them and they want to flood the market with bikes (whether people are using them or not) to ensure they win the e-bike rental market battle and become the sole provider of e-bikes in London (something which that have verbalised before when the council/s were critical of the bike parking problem). If, as Lime's own commissioned research suggests, that in the usage area 97% of users are withing a two minute walk of a bike then there is zero need for new bays - new bays are just an excuse for more bikes and remember this thread started because Lime was carpet bombing Lime bikes across the area - which, rather ironically, led the council to complain to Lime etc about the problem to which Lime etc countered by saying we need more bays to which the council have now duly obliged!

It seems to be very difficult to get data from the providers on usage patterns for some reason. If you search for usage patterns you get a lot of reports based on the Lime-commissioned Steer research that suggested more parking bays are required (which was part of the lobbying efforts by Lime to get councils to oblige - which Southwark seemingly has now done) but absolutely nothing on the data to back up the need for more spaces. in fact, that Steer research suggested that in the Lime operating zone 97% of people were within a two minute walk from a bike which actually run counter to the argument that you need more bays - unless people nowadays aren't prepared to walk for two minutes!!!

Dawsons Hill...wins by a country mile...on a clear night you can see all of London's fireworks (including the Thames display) and every year a few hundred people gather to take it all in.

I think most data points to younger usage and journeys under one mile...and if my experience with my son is anything to go by he gets on a bike to do very short journeys he used to walk...so he is doing less active travel now - which if it is a trend that is seen more broadly complete negates the point and is creating a negative impact on active travel. I suspect the new bays will do nothing to ensure e-bike parking compliance but is much more about Lime etc flooding more bikes into the area to try and win the battle of the "trials" and force other providers out of the market.

Looks like the council gave in to the commercial pressures exerted on them by Lime etc and are adding more bays...amazing how quickly things get done when there is money involved... https://southwarknews.co.uk/area/southwark/southwark-council-to-replace-over-100-parking-spaces-with-e-bike-and-e-scooter-bays/

Far from it Malumbu, just trying to inject a bit of brevity and humour by using a local news story...you should try it some time.

Cllr McAsh has allegedly issued a statement following the removal of the drone stop sign on Commercial Way. He is heard to have said: "One of our 300 parking wardens circling the borough to tax Southwark residents noticed something strange being attached to a lamp post. It appeared to be a flagrant, personalised attack on the council's war on cars, sorry I mean climate crisis response, and we took this very personally so we instructed council officers to remove it immediately and have it destroyed. Clearly the sign was erected by a racist, right wing petrol guzzling Daily Mail reader who also has the audacity to own a garden. Moreover, I am pleased to announce that our plans to role out drones to police CPZs and LTNs will only start when the current deal with Apcoa reaches the target of £500m revenue generated from parking fines for local residents. We expect that to happen by May at the latest." When challenged on whether the sign was actually a Banksy work of art worth £500,000 Cllr McAsh responded: "Does he drive a car? £500,000 you say...we will find it and sell it to fund another 300 wardens and a proper Southwark council Christmas party". Some of the above may not have actually happened....;-)

Quite a few wardens circling on mopeds this afternoon, no doubt in the hope of bringing some Christmas cheer to those trying to help the independent businesses on Lordship Lane..... Cllr McAsh and his crew must be overjoyed!

How is it in whichever borough you happen to live in.....perhaps if you don't like it, maybe find a forum closer to home (#Insert joke on whether home is London or second-home in France) 😉 ? Bottom-line remains (and trying to keep this on track as Malumbu you seem to be trying to distract and divert the thread....AGAIN - you really should get an award for being the Threadkiller in Chief) Southwark seems more interested in spending £11m of our money (Southwark residents) on getting a company to massively increase the number of parking enforcement officers to raise more revenue from fining their own constituents - if you think that's acceptable or at all palatable when the council bleats on endlessly about a lack of funding/austerity etc then good for you but it seems utterly reprehensible to me - £11m...just let that sink in - that's the same as nearly 3,500 annual council tax bills for Band H houses in Southwark......it seems budget issues don't apply when it comes to raising even more money from people going about their business in Southwark.

And now watch for a load of people getting erroneous fines as the flocks of wardens try to meet their targets by ticketing anyone and everyone-and the appeals process is a nightmare for anyone who has been wrongly ticketed. The council always says that wardens don't get paid per ticket but they have to be on some sort of incentive else why would they bother.....I would love to know how the council structure the agreement with APCOA.

Not sure if anyone else is having problems with stolen parcels as well. We have had two parcels from Royal Mail that were "delivered" but the photo proof of delivery was a blurred photo of nothing and nothing was delivered. We had another one a couple of days ago where there happened to be another Royal Mail parcel driver outside our house and we thought he was delivering it but the note we had from Royal Mail said that it had been delivered 15 minutes before. As soon as the other Royal Mail parcel delivery guy saw the blurred photo he said: "they've nicked it". Anyone else had any similar issues?

No, because there is absolutely nothing to suggest CPZs reduce the number of cars or the number of journeys. In fact there are many who think, like LTNs, they increase journey length and duration - especially in the increasingly online delivery world we live in. CPZs are yet another intervention where councils try desperately to convince people that they are doing it for the environment - which is utter nonsense. Look we need to ground this in the fact that LTNs were promised to reduce car ownership yet within the Brixton LTN car ownership went up by 8% after the LTNs were put in so those that make these claims often don't have a track-record to suggest they should be believed on anything.....;-) CPZs having a positive impact on the environment is about as believable as suggesting they are needed in Dulwich Village because of "parking pressure" - a fanciful dream thrown out there to dupe the dupable!

They can only spend money they earn from fines and CPZs on road and street infrastructure so, currently, they cannot use it to pay for anything outside of those areas. But I do wonder whether they think a new Labour government may relax those rules given so many councils are going bankrupt and are trying to plant the seeds to create revenue streams for the future.

It is clear the council are desperately trying to find a solution to a problem that doesn't actually exist. It is truly ludicrous how much tax-payers money they are wasting to try and create a platform to take more revenue from their constituents. The only place that parking pressure and stress actually exists is in the mind of the council and our councillors. There is zero need for a CPZ in Dulwich Village. Zero - and the council knows this.

The council does seem to be powerless in these circumstances. There is a Volvo on Dovercourt with a note from the council saying it has been there for a very long time and has not moved and whilst they cannot forcibly remove it they are asking the owner to move it.

Southwark Labour's new tagline is now: For the money from the many! It really amazes me how far socialism has come from its for the people beginnings that loads of folks come on here defending the council for doing this. I do think Corbyn managed to detach elements of Labour from their sociaist principles that some are struggling to shake off. If it was the Tories doing it they would be up in arms....#theblinkerednatureofpoliticstoday Bottom line is Southwark is spending huge amounts of constrained money on purging money from their own constituents and it is utterly shameless and utterly indefensible...

But don't for one minute believe that the aforementioned things are what the council is trying to reduce - all they want to do is raise revenue. And they have gone out of their way to try to create parking pressures in the Dulwich area (extension of double-yellow lines to the legal maximum a few years ago). £11.5m is an absurd amount of money to spend on a contract with a third -party parking enforcement company when the council bleats on and on about reductions in council budgets and a cost of living crisis - around £9m of that is funding the 48 new traffic wardens - many of whom are circling Lordship Lane daily like vultures..... Yes Joseph parked in front of the hospital as Mary was giving birth but upon appeal the council said that giving birth to baby Jesus was not grounds for them to overturn the parking fine on their donkey. The donkey had also inadvertently passed through the Dulwich Village LTN camera zone twice on its way and had also paused, momentarily, in a CPZ parking bay near Melbourne Grove as Mary was having a contraction. In total the council issued four fines, doubled them because Joseph had not received the fine notification in the post because the local postal service was appalling, and Cllr McAsh said (allegedly): "A donkey emits more emissions than a bicycle so we cannot agree to over-turning the fines - Mary and Joseph should have used one of our rentable cargo bikes because you can leave those anywhere without any form of recourse. The good news is Mary and Joseph's fines now take the council's Punish The Hard-Working People of Dulwich (They All Send Their Kids to Private School You know) accumulator to over £20m - a new record - hurrah - that'll learn them." He went on to, allegedly, add: "I am a socialist not a marxist, honestly...why doesn't anyone believe me..we really, really, really are socialists - we'd like to thank APCOA for their help in achieving our goals!"

You're right Malumbu,.life moves on...and in Southwark life moves on with a million new ways for them to take your hard-earned money from you. The whole point of this thread is the fact there are swarms of parking wardens now descending on Lordship Lane. Why? Because Southwark has spent £11.5m of our money on securing more parking wardens to police the CPZ zones that there is absolutely zero need for (except of course if you are a council desperately trying to drain every £ from your constituents). And the laughable thing is they claim to be socialists....