Rockets

Clean Air Dulwich does seem a little confused and their posts recently make me wonder whose interests they are looking after and who is actually behind it. Currently their two strategic goals seem to be: 1) Prevent emergency vehicle access through the Calton/DV junction by closing it to all vehicles again 2) Prevent school buses from dropping and picking up children at Alleyn's/JAGS etc. When I see the below recent examples of their posts I do question what their motives are and whether Clean Air or Dulwich are really at the core of their concerns or whether they are just moaning for the sake of moaning - one presumes from the tweets that they are cyclosexuals (with credit to Jeremy Vine who coined the phrase petrosexuals which applies just as well to Cyclo-obsessives as well as car obsessives!).. The way they carpet bomb and troll all of our local councillors must really become wearing for them as the content and message is all over the place and all a bit lunatic fringe. Does anyone know who is behind it and what their aims are?

Malumbu - you're really positioning yourself as not a very nice person - just chill - live and let live - go for a bike ride or something, get some fresh air and take a deep breath - as I said before if you don't want to read my "lengthy repetitious posts" I am not going to be bothered/offended - to be honest you don't live in Dulwich nor Southwark so really perhaps the reason you find some of this content posted here so irksome is because you're not the target audience for it!!! ;-) #sorryIcouldntresist. But in all seriousness your post (even though I did laugh that you were critical of my tomes and then counter with an epic one of your own) does throw up some good points and it is all about how vested the companies providing the services are to get their house in order. I walked along Pall Mall today and from St James' Palace to Waterloo Place I counted 18 e-bikes littering the pavements - many of them abandoned mid-pavement. Forcing providers to only allow them to be parked in bays may have to be the way forward - but that works counter to the business model and the appeal of the bikes.

#savedbysadiq.......ahem....that's one way to spin a U-turn!

We are a hungry and thirsty bunch in Dulwich aren't we?!

Great news but you have to ask why the sudden U-turn by Sadiq - did he suddenly find some money stuffed down the back of the sofa at City Hall? Or was this him using Londoners in a political tug of war with the Tories?

Malumbu - no need to be rude. Try to keep it civil. If you can't be bothered reading then don't - trust me, I won't be offended. Anyhow I thought you had exiled yourself to the lounge - was it my posts that dragged you back? ;-) My trend may be to write detailed responses - yours is to deflect attention when you don't read something you have a response to or agree with.

The growing weight of evidence certainly suggests that the council have been more than manipulating the narrative with less than transparent data. Probably the recent episodes with councillors abusing TFL staff is a culmination of the stresses of the council and councillors trying to manipulate the story and finally losing control and the truth finally starting to leak out.

Malumbu - you might want to hope that it is irrelevant but if Mayor Anne Hidalgo (who is a massive pro-cycling/micro-mobility /15 minute city supporter) bans e-scooters that is a very significant moment for all micro-mobility and will send ripples to every city globally and will likely also have an impact on the approach to rental e-bikes - which are also causing similar problems to e-scooters. Talk to anyone who lives, works or visits Paris and you will know that the city is no longer functioning properly due to a lot of the measures that Mayor Hidalgo has brought in in her quest for a 15-minute city and the situation there is not too dissimilar to what has been happening across London - and like London it isn't working or delivering on the strategic objectives. Many believe, myself included, that this may shift focus back towards investment in public transport and walking - both of which have either been negatively impacted or neglected by the over-indexing and blinkered focus on cycling and micro-mobility. It will be fascinating to watch.

"Some reports"... Which ones? Link? And 1 in 20 is 95% accuracy which is pretty decent. If it's always counting at 95% accuracy then it's the same baseline throughout and the figures get processed anyway to account for a few % either way. If it's consistently missing 1 in 20, that's not the end of the world; you really don't need to count every single vehicle on every single road 24/7/365. What you're looking for is trends and patterns. Nothing is going to give you 100% accuracy 100% of the time but you actually don't need that. Ex- is the issue here that if the pre-Covid monitoring locations are no longer the ones being used for the post-Covid monitoring (and are closer to choke points and junctions) then this is clearly the council trying to use their knowledge of the monitoring strip inaccuracies to influence the monitoring in their favour? I suspect this is what has happened in Enfield and all the monitoring data has been discarded by the judge thus invalidating the council's air quality assessment as it was based on misleading data. You also say that a council would get duff data for a week or so then move the strips but the strips on Lordship Lane near Melford (which is under constant slow traffic flow for much of the day) have been there for months - what's your assessment for that - that the council are happy with inconclusive/potentially inaccurate data or something else? Surely the position the strips where they started near the junction of Court Lane would have been better for accurate number gathering? Here's my guess: the strips were put in near Court Lane as that is where, I suspect, the pre-Covid monitoring was done and the council saw data they didn't like so moved the strips to close to Melford - isn't it the oldest trick in the book for traffic monitoring experts and well known trick they use?

Wow - this confirms my suspicions on why they moved the Lordship Lane monitoring to closer to Melford Road - I wondered why the site located originally near Court Lane moved to Melford after a few months. I wonder if Southwark was seeing data they didn't like so made the switch. I presume Southwark use the same system as Enfield? Has anyone plotted where each of the monitoring sites are located as it seems that any near choke points or junctions won't be giving accurate readings. I know Ex-, as an industry insider, suggested the slow moving vehicles over monitoring wasn't an issue when challenged with it many moons ago so I wonder if they have any comment in light of the Enfield disclosure or what the circumstances of that one are that means the same thing isn't happening here. Does this mean that all monitoring data from choke points needs to be reset?

Heartblock - where did this come from? I remember in tbe early days the council moved the counter from the junction of Lordship Lane and Court Lane down to the junction of Melford and Lordship Lane where it has remained for over a year. I always suspected this was to manipulate the count. Didn't Ex- claim the under 10kmh issue wasn't correct.

Malumbu - you're doing it again. Cycling standards are not a seperate issue - when it comes to safety for all it is as much a part of the debate as driving standards or standards of e-scooters etc. If all road-users respected the rules and were courteous to others then surely everything would work perfectly? I am presuming you would agree that there needs to be better enforcement of all modes of transport not just motorists - who already face enforcement via many different ways already? You may have lost your sense of motoring entitlement but seem to have more than compensated for it with your over-indexing towards cycling - which highlights one of the major challenges for everyone who isn't a cyclist who tries to use roads or pavements right now - there are many in the cycle lobby who fail to acknowledge the wants, needs and rights of anyone other than cyclists!

Malumbu - your bias is showing again. I want to see enforcement of all traffic offences, not just those driving. There is way too much bad cycling and scooter riding appearing on our streets, to the detriment of other road users, and I sense many of them have caught the entitlement bug and there is little recourse to enforce good behaviour and future consideration to others - so maybe it's time to take the blinkers off and look at the challenges as a whole instead of your continued war on motorists.

The big problem for the council is that roads is the very area where they do have money because they are making so much from fining people for driving through the LTNs in Dulwich Village and they have to spend that money on roads as it cannot be invested elsewhere. It's why they so love LTNs cos they make them huge amounts of revenue. I suspect they will be making a play to be able to divert the money elsewhere at some point. LTNs are like cat-nip to councils everywhere as a revenue generating programme.

Mal, is there anything wrong in admitting that I don't like cyclists who of ignore the rules of the road and are inconsiderate to others? I don't like car drivers who do the same. I don't like scooter riders who do the same or lorry drivers or bus drivers..... Obey the rules, be considerate to others and we can all get on swimmingly. But many, on every side, don't. And it is perfectly reasonable to take issue with those people. So don't try and pigeon-hole us as somehow anti cyclist - it's a weak and fundamentally flawed narrative that probably highlights your own prejudice more than ours.

The council were forced to do some monitoring on Underhill, published one set of results as an addendum to one of their reports (which concluded that traffic was lower on Underhill and Barry Road than before the pandemic) but it looks like that was it. It does seem ludicrous that little monitoring is being done on streets east of Lordship Lane which are soaking up much of the displacement. Also not sure how the council and it's pro-LTN supporters can claim area-wide traffic is down when there is no areawide monitoring.

Also remember the council never followed through on their commitment to monitor Underhill Road and Barry Road, both of which are major LTN displacement routes, with Underhill taking a lot of additional traffic as it tries to cut round congestion on Lordship Lane at the Grove Tavern junction.

They know what is happening but are wilfully standing by and letting it get worse - it's criminal. They have dug themselves a huge hole and are digging it deeper and deeper. Interesting to see what is happening in areas like Tower Hamlets, London Fields and Haringey where people power is starting to make councils rethink their flawed LTN policies.

Unless you live on East Dulwich Grove of course (the increases there are catastrophic and as a direct consequence of the closures)...and remember we were promised the LTNs would reduce traffic for all across the area and that objective has clearly not been achieved. And each time they update the dashboard it gets worse with more roads turning orange and red.....

Come on, they need to tell us which council representative/s it was that abused TFL staff.....looks like they are trying to sweep it under the carpet...these are elected officials representing constituents and are behaving awfully. https://southwarknews.co.uk/news/transport/tfl-staff-left-upset-and-in-tears-by-abusive-southwark-council-staff-in-meeting-about-dulwich-village-ltn/

Looks like Andy single-handedly got the disruption removed.....only a week after they went in.....ahem....

Absolute chaos again today and knock-on effect being felt all across the area as people try to find a way around it. Let's see whether anyone bothers to work on it today because, despite claims it will be completed tomorrow, the Thames Water website still says: Current activity status: Our technicians are due to investigate the reported leak on Lordship Lane and will be there shortly. If a repair is needed we'll get this planned in as quickly as possible. Work reference number: 31874354 Has anyone seen or heard from the local councillors on this?

It gets worse, apparently the temporary lights failed and it's been utter chaos....

Zero progress - still a hole and no sign of anyone from Thames Water. The update on their website says (as it has for the last 3 days): Our technicians are due to investigate the reported leak on Lordship Lane and will be there shortly. If a repair is needed we'll get this planned in as quickly as possible. What on earth are they playing at?

And therein lies the issue - people don't leave their private bikes in the middle of pavements for a days at a time until they use them next but people using hires bikes can and do - because that is the business model - you leave it where you want because the plan is that someone else will use it and move it to the next place and so it repeats.... It means the business model is built on the ability to leave the bikes where you want/need.