Rockets

DuncanW - based on Admin's guidance (it needs to be new information and/or breaking news and relates to an East Dulwich LTN) it is perfectly within the rules for this part of the forum - so, by all means, keep moaning about it...and by default pushing it to the top - doh!!! 🤦‍♂️ Very glad Cllr McAsh is engaging with One Dulwich it will be interesting to see what comes of it (if anything as I suspect Cllr McAsh is often told to toe the party line by Southwark/Southwark Labour HQ). As much as some of the usual suspects would very much like any debate on LTNs to be suppressed it's clear there are a lot of Dulwich residents that are demanding answers from the council and councillors and are not happy to accept the nonsense narratives those on the pro-LTN lobby (who know who you are) would like everyone to believe. As Alice says...it is very much not over and One Dulwich did ask some very relevant questions. We got our OneDulwich leaflet through our door a day or so ago so good to see they are keeping it top of mind for residents (for those of you on the pro-LTN lobby side who don't live in Dulwich, or Southwark for that matter - ahem click on the link to see what the leaflet looks like! 😉 )

Interesting update from them. Campaign Update | 27 June 1. Meeting with Southwark’s new cabinet member for streets One Dulwich met Cllr James McAsh, Southwark’s new cabinet member for the climate emergency, clean air and streets (and ward councillor for Goose Green), on 23 June. Dulwich Village ward councillors (Cllrs Newens and Leeming) were also present. The meeting lasted an hour. Why the LTNs don’t work We explained to Cllr McAsh that One Dulwich is an apolitical grassroots campaign, run by volunteers, with more than 2,000 supporters. We said that: we fully support the Council’s policies of reducing car use, reducing carbon emissions, and making cycling and walking safer, but that the LTNs across Dulwich are not achieving these aims. Instead, they displace traffic, delay buses (which are key to reducing car use), damage local shops and businesses, and discriminate against vulnerable groups, especially those with disabilities; many of the roads that have taken the displaced traffic are roads with schools, with high numbers of children walking, cycling and scooting along them; Southwark’s data on traffic and air quality is incomplete, hard to access, and hasn’t been updated since September 2022. The Dulwich Village junction We said that, in an attempt to find a compromise solution, we wanted the Council to: amend the 24/7 closure of the junction to timed restrictions, in line with the rest of Dulwich Village (and in line with the Council’s vision of Dulwich as a “school travel zone”) – although we pointed out that this on its own would not solve the problem of peak-hour congestion, caused by traffic displacement, on roads like Croxted Road, Burbage Road, and East Dulwich Grove, for which mitigations are needed; open the junction at all times for Blue Badge holders, and for health professionals visiting vulnerable people at home (for example, GPs, community nurses and midwives, and carers). We pointed out that various council officers have, over the past year, put in writing that the Council is investigating the potential for access for vulnerable groups. We also said that, despite repeated requests, the Council has never done an audit of how the health and social care needs of Blue Badge holders are impacted by the junction closure. Cllr McAsh’s response Cllr McAsh said that: there is no plan to revisit the decision to close the Dulwich Village junction in the near future – although he agreed that, in principle, everything can always be amended; he would look at the issue of bus delays on LTN boundary roads like Croxted Road, Dulwich Common (the South Circular) and East Dulwich Grove; he would take up the issue of incomplete data; he advised business-owners to raise concerns with ward councillors, but agreed that shops and businesses should be consulted on issues that affect them; he wanted us to email him the various written assurances made by council officers about the potential for access for vulnerable groups and those who care for them; he would come back to us with a substantive response to all the issues we had raised in two months’ time. When we queried why his investigations would take so long, he said that he would respond sooner if possible. As the meeting concluded, we said that One Dulwich will continue campaigning unless and until the Council finds a better and fairer solution that takes into account the health and social care needs of all groups of people. 2. New One Dulwich leaflet Please see our new leaflet, which is being distributed by volunteers across Dulwich over the next few days. If your road hasn’t yet been leafleted, and you can help, please email [email protected]. Thank you for your support.

Amended accordingly...5 months of chaos and disruption.

The councillors are in a difficult position and have definitely taken a step back in terms of communication and engagement with their constituents but who can blame them - they created a big issue for themselves and they are politicians so they don't like to be held accountable. They all (bar Rahda Burgess) backed the controversial Streetspace/LTN measures when they were first announced and many doubled-down and backed them despite many of their constituents being negatively affected by them and opposing them. It felt very much like a three-line whip from the powers that be and I am sure many councillors could see the negative impact the measures were having on constituents but were unable to speak their mind. In the same way they used covid as the smokescreen to roll out the measures they used it as the reason not to formally engage with constituents or give constituents a platform to voice their views - councillors were happy to embrace arms-length politics because it allowed them to try to control the narrative - some would wholeheartedly endorse the views of the most rabid supporters of the measures but block and deposition anyone who dared to question them and they could because they knew constituents no longer had the platform to engage, Meanwhile opposition parties would be more than happy to engage to try to create a platform but being in opposition is easy - it's when you occupy the seat that things get more difficult. And post Covid the arms-length politics has stuck. Cllr McAsh, to his credit, did try to engage on here but you could see it was a thankless task and I suspect when this forum was re-birthed he took the decision not to engage via it. And why wouldn't he - as Cllr Rose found out being the figurehead of a controversial programme comes at a huge political, and no doubt personal, cost And this is not isolated to this issue in this area - unfortunately politics is becoming so polarised that national, regional and local politics are all heading the same way - only engage via carefully curated and approved channels and do everything you can to avoid having to meet the people you represent. Or maybe there is even a more cynical angle which is, and may go to explain why people are saying there are no longer councillor newsletters etc, councillors are only ever present when they want your vote and they don't need your vote right now! You can probably expect to see and hear from them as we head towards the Mayoral elections next year when they will be encouraged to rally support for Sadiq Khan.

That guy rides like an idiot. Often see, him bombing across Turney and up Calton….never looks like he is completely in control of it and riding way too fast - dunno what he has in the back but the speed he hits speed bumps I hope it’s not fragile….

Yeah I saw a group jacking three of them near Alleyns last week. They lift the rear wheel, run with the front wheel on the ground then drop the rear wheel to break the lock and off they go….click, click, click, click

If you see any kids on black bikes, dressed top to toe in black and wearing either a balaclava or mask then treat them with suspicion. When my wife had her phone stolen by one such kid the police said they all wear identical outfits and ride identical bikes so it makes identification very difficult if they are ever caught.

It seems Thames Water are going to be doing extensive works between the Townley and Heber junctions on Lordship Lane starting on July 3rd for five months until the end of November. Lordship Lane will be subject to three-way traffic controlled lights……brace yourselves as it is likely to be chaos.

DKHB - are you still trying to claim that traffic in London was slower years ago? Where are you getting this data from? There is another option - maybe take into consideration that around 11% of all London daily journeys are taken by bus whilst only around 3% are by bike. Stop closing bus lane infrastructure to facilitate bike infrastructure as the bike "revolution" - with all the millions of £ invested in it and only an 11% rise between 2020 - 2022 - is not clearly happening. Time for transport planners in London to have a complete reset and base London traffic planning on a realistic future outlook instead of this utter obsession that somehow London is going to magically turn into a cycle-centric city. It won't and their fanatical obsession with it is killing the city.

Mr Chicken - good on you. It shows a lot about someone if they are prepared to admit they got something wrong and retract something ….shame a few of your cohorts don’t have the emotional intelligence to take a leaf out of your book ;-).

DKHB……what on earth are you talking about…..it hasn’t got any faster in 40 years, not sure where you’re getting your info from because the Hansard link you sent clearly shows it was getting worse comparing 1971 (12.7mph) 1980 (11.9 mph) and 1990 (10.4 mps). Since 1990 it has got even slower to the point where…..it is now officially the slowest city in the world with speeds around 9mph…but you know don‘t let the truth get in the way of a good story and all that…. https://www.tomtom.com/newsroom/explainers-and-insights/london-is-the-worlds-slowest-city/

London is rapidly ceasing to function from a road transport perspective - it's getting ludicrous. And so much focus has been, wrongly, placed on the private car and little thought given to the impact on support for services that support the daily function of our city. For all the blusto about the supposed benefits of a lot of these measures Khan and councils' obsession with trying to make the bike the de facto standard for all city travel has backfired massively. Even the bike rental schemes are proving to be an absolute disaster.

The main problem for buses is that now a lot of the infrastructure for bus lanes (especially in central London and across choke points like bridges) has been repurposed/resized for cycle lanes and buses have been forced to share the road with other traffic as particular points. And in areas like around here bus times have been impacted by the additional congestion caused by LTNs and the push of traffic onto boundary roads - which. more often than not, are the bus routes.

“A bit clumsy”……it was downright disgraceful, let me remind you that you suggested someone needed CBT - and you still have done nothing to correct it. This speaks volumes about you…..and now your erstwhile pro-cycling fanatic Mr Chicken has embarked down a similar abusive path………if all cyclists are like you is it any wonder they have such a bad reputation for being a smidge self-centred? The aerodynamic benefits of the Lycra would be negated by the drag caused by the hair and every Full Kit Wally cyclist knows that you have to shave any excess hair (I mock but I do know friends of mine - who club cycle at the weekends and shave their legs for the aerodynamic benefits - I did laugh when they told me………)

To think of all the money that has been poured into creating new cycle infrastructure and the disruption that has caused to other modes of transport, especially buses, that daily cycle journey growth was a paltry 13% in London between 2020-2022 and that’s including a healthy dose of lockdown cycling and booming delivery businesses that are bike based and were born from the pandemic. And that growth has come from a base (in 2019) where cycling accounted for just 2% of all London daily journeys. https://twitter.com/VincentStops/status/1669590330990112768?s=20 When is TFL going to realise that its approach to modern transportation in this city has to be built around something other than the whims of white, middle class, middle aged male cyclists? How are people like Will Norman still in a job? He promised a cycle revolution, his grandiose claims of huge leaps in the numbers of people cycling was just hot air and blusto. It just isn’t happening in the numbers required to justify the disruption to other transport methods - London is ceasing to function as TFL, the Mayor’s office and councils try to force square pegs into round holes. And like the Lime bike problem it’s being caused by a lack of proper planning and rapid deployment of measures that are just not fit for purpose - clueless leadership who are basing strategic policies on hunches, warped data from cycle lobbyists and research groups that promise a fundamental shift that is just not happening.

Loads of Lime bikes uniformly placed along a large part of Court Lane this evening - too uniform to be random. This is fast becoming a real mess of a strategic policy, which looks and feels like it is part-baked and being really rushed with poor execution, and could backfire massively on councils across the country as disgruntled residents will blame them - it's a bit embarrassing that a council leader has to send a letter - do we suspect Lime have not been listening to/ignoring previous outreach/correspondence? I mean, who could have possibly seen this coming: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-63647238 - it's only happened in every place the bikes have been allowed.

It shows how bad the problem has become. Interesting that some operators re claiming their bikes can’t be jacked- does that mean Lime might have to replace/retrofit their entire fleet of bikes if the current ones can be jacked?

Yes and that's the trade off councils have to balance as to achieve what they did for the Country Show residents local to the park had to deal with huge amounts of disruption over the course of the preceding two weekends with the Mightly Hoopla and The Cross The Tracks Festival. Friends of ours who live local to Brockwell Park said it was awful as those events are much bigger individually than Gala and PITP combined. It's clear Southwark (with the proposal for two weekends of Gala that they were entertaining this year) are looking at the Brockwell Park model and looking at ways to replicate it.

Ex - to be fair we have the absolute full-house because the pro-cycle folks on here are playing the "bikes don't kill or injure as many people as cars do" which is a, factually correct, but ultimately ludicrous narrative to start peddling because unless bikes are not killing or injuring anyone then people in glasshouses should not be throwing stones. I don't want to be hit by a car but I also don't want to be hit by a bike and whilst I walk around Dulwich more often than not I feel more at risk from cyclists than I do cars. Why is that - because cars have a well established and bedded-in code of conduct (you stop at red lights, respect pedestrian crossings etc) - of course some drivers do break them (and the results can be catastrophic) but, in the main, the rules of the road are respected? Many cyclists adhere to the rules of the road but there is are a lot that do not - now, maybe it is because they don't understand it but you cannot not fail to see cyclists jumping the lights or using the pedestrian green light as their cue to dart across the road, up onto the pavement and back onto the road (just spend 10 minutes at the Plough junction if you want to see what I mean). Take Rule 74 of the Highway Code - very few cyclists adhere to that (although I was in my car turning left and one actually did which amazed me). Now maybe it is because they don't know the rule but sometimes when turning left (and being mindful of cyclists) the cyclists expect you to wait for them no matter how far behind you they are. I think the road tax argument is pointless but with Italy's strange new government threatening to head that way with registrations and insurance required for cyclists the big issue for cyclists (myself included) is that if that does go ahead councils and authorities will sit up and take note, not because they believe in it ideologically, but because of the potential for revenue generation - something car drivers have had to get used to for years!

Cyclemonkey - I think your assessment is spot on about impact to the local community and environment when comparing the two. I do wonder if Pub in the Park was struggling this year - I haven't met anyone who has paid for a ticket over the years who said they would go back and a lot of people were given free tickets. There were a lot of people taking advantage of the free music in the park without paying for admission - good for them I say as at those prices I am surprised anyone actually paid to get in.

Malumbu - you ask people not to lecture you about mental health yet you're quite happy to do the same to others...is that not mightily hypocritical of you? And I remind you, no-one has lectured you about mental health - we are asking you not to weaponise it.

Got it - but that is counter to the messages being put out by councils monitoring LTNs who have, repeatedly and consistently, said that traffic volumes have been/are lower than they were pre-pandemic. Traffic has been consistently lower than pre-pandemic, with particularly pronounced drops during lockdowns. And then in Peter Walker's article: The authors of the study, led by Dr Anna Goodman, an epidemiologist from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said the increase in average driving outside the LTNs appeared to be due to Covid and other external factors, rather than people skirting the LTNs ....... is Aldred saying that the increase in the control and near LTNs is from the pre-pandemic or post-pandemic numbers? Because they acknowledge there has been an increase in average driving outside the LTNs - are we presume that is from the lowest pandemic numbers?

OMG - this is hilarious. Don't ever, ever dare be critical of anyone on a bike - they are beyond reproach and should be treated as a deity.

Ha ha...not the first time I have been wrong about something I can assure you (cue pile-on from the usual suspects)! 😉 So what does Peter Walker mean when he says: The authors of the study, led by Dr Anna Goodman, an epidemiologist from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said the increase in average driving outside the LTNs appeared to be due to Covid and other external factors, rather than people skirting the LTNs Also, can you explain what this table below is showing then? The Near LTN figures have risen from a mean daily km of 20.3 pre-LTNs to 20.7 post-LTNs and the Control Area has risen from 20.4 pre to 21.0 post - how is that not an increase? Also. at over 200m away from the LTNs do you feel the control group is far enough away from the LTN not to be being impacted by them or does that not matter? able 2.Average daily driving time, pre- and post-LTN implementation: main analysis Inside the LTNs Near the LTNs Control area No. cars and vans in analysis, pre/post 1700 / 2025 1352 / 1658 5523 / 6598 Mean daily km (SE), pre 20.3 (0.3) 20.3 (0.4) 20.4 (0.2) Mean daily km (SE), post 19.6 (0.3) 20.7 (0.4) 21.0 (0.2) Change in km (SE), post minus pre -0.7 (0.5) 0.3 (0.5) 0.6 (0.3) Difference-in-differences change in km (95% CI), relative to the control area -1.3 (-2.4, -0.3) -0.3 (-1.4, 0.9) p-value for difference-in-differences effect p=0.01 p=0.64 Any idea why car ownership has gone up in the LTNs - is that not counter-intuitive?

Yes and it appears you have the same bias as they do! 😉 But does my interpretation not hold any weight at all in your mind? Does the fact that numerous (both Southwark and Lambeth) council LTN monitoring reports have said overall traffic levels are lower across their boroughs not make you wonder why then Aldred et al are now claiming that increases in traffic outside the LTNs is "due to Covid and other external factors". Something isn't adding up is it and if it is true that overall traffic levels have been down across the boroughs then what might be causing the increases in traffic outside of the LTNs around the LTNs.........?