wulfhound

Write to your councillor and ask that Southwark get on board with the Bike Hangar programme. http://www.cyclehoop.com/product/bike-lockers-2/bike-hangar/

8A seems to be both - pedestrians get direct crossings, diagonal crossings, and a timely end to the staggered crossings and sheep pens. Cyclists get a feeder lane on Calton Ave, protected approach on Green Dale and lots of.. "other stuff". Given that a Quietway is supposed to run through both junctions, cycle funding seems like a good place to look - even more so if the same pot can be used to bring considerable benefit to pedestrians as well. The Quietway budget is big - much, much more than the ?200,000 at stake here - though it obviously has to cover more than one junction. Seems to me the sensible thing is to use the ?200k here, and start thinking about what pedestrians need at the Village junction so that when that money is released, it can be put to good use. I know your 2007-8 design wasn't intended to do anything much for cycling, but if they're really going to build something like your proposal or "Option 10", slap "Quietway" branding on it, and declare the job done, doesn't that render the entire Quietways exercise rather pointless? If the Quietway and/or Southwark Spine programs don't deliver something that families can use to cycle from Dulwich to Burgess Park, say, why bother?

Love it. Walking is great for kids - secondary age kids should be aiming for at least a mile each way every day. Those with illnesses, disabilities or double basses excepted, of course. Wonder what it'd take to get a wide exclusion zone established for parents' cars - don't bring it east of Croxted Road, west of Lordship Lane or north of the South Circular without special dispensation. Me too - but add on management overheads, public liability, national insurance, paying for them to attend compulsory diversity awareness workshops - at work I use a rule of thumb that employing someone costs double their salary, and we're a small IT shop - probably a whole lot more efficient than the council. So I doubt their cycling teacher is pocketing more than half that, but if I see any cycling instructors riding around on ?10K TdF superbikes I'll let you know ;)

I'm not a gigantic fan of the Copenhagen turn as proposed here (in as much as, if a cyclist can't deal with traffic, EDG is probably the wrong road for them - not a road I'd ever use with the family - although it seems the council has other ideas), but it works as everyone's moving off from a standing start. That's very misleading of them if true - the picture plainly indicates paving stones. Surely they're doubling back on themselves to do that? Seems like they ought to be able to narrow the back of the bay a bit to alleviate the pinch. Good question. The case for the bays seems very much dependent on the Quietway and whatever else SRS have planned. Accident rate measures accidents - it doesn't measure whether a road layout is a barrier in other ways. Sheep pens have a low accident rate, but are nevertheless an inhumane and miserly way to lay out a street. For the existing users, the bays are undeniably over-engineered. If the QW gets built to the gold standard or somewhere near, and some of the SRS plans goes ahead, they make sense - you could get 4-5x the present numbers of cyclists, with a high proportion of young riders - but it's about as clear as mud what the rest of the QW will look like. Right now this junction is one of the weaker links, but by no means the weakest (Calton/Court/Village is obviously worse). If the QW gets built to the bare minimum standard (basically paint and signposts, a pure PR job) and none of the SRS stuff happens, you'll get the same riders as now in slightly higher numbers.

Won't the Alleyns kids be crossing diagonally now, though? Perhaps that's why they've kept the crossing island east of the bays too, to keep pressure off that pinch point a bit? Would be helpful if they gave us a lot more WHY to go with the WHAT... Not so sure myself - I tend to avoid the busiest times, but Townley can be awkward to filter up on a bike when it's full of queueing traffic. So the protected feeder lane looks useful from that point of view, giving a clear run from Calton to the lights, but it depends how bad the delay is from the "gate" signal. If you use the feeder, it looks like you have to use the bay. Can't see that being too bad, honestly - it's a queue, and a turn. Traffic speeds on Townley northbound aren't high. Those sort of problems are much more prevalent in the other direction - southbound I'm usually turning right from Townley on to Calton, so I ride centre of the lane from the lights to the turn. Vast majority of drivers know the score, but there's always the 1-in-10 or so impatient thickos. Given its experimental nature, we need a clear answer to that one. I'm in favour of them trying this kind of thing, but there needs to be a mechanism to unwind (and, most importantly, money put aside to do so) if they don't work out.

The problem individuals won't see the posters, they're too busy playing with their bl**dy phones. What's needed is not billboards, but police officers. Most /cyclist/ fatalities. Which, in London, is only about 10-20% of the total. Absolutely true, and we should all be calling on the police and elected officials to up their game in this respect, but I suspect lowering speed limits is far less expensive than an effective (re)-education campaign. Given the current cuts, I'm not sure the police would have the manpower to do it, even if it were politically expedient to do so.

It's a shared area *now* - as in, you are legally allowed to cycle on the pavement of Townley Road between Calton Avenue junction and EDG. Virtually nobody does (perhaps some school kids?), but it's legal to do so. The plan appears to *remove* the shared area and replace it with a seperate pavement (on which cycling won't be allowed) and a kerb-separated cycle lane alongside. Seems sensible to me - shared cycle/pedestrian spaces at busy junctions are a bad idea. If that's not the case, can you point me at where to look on the new drawing for the shared space? What I'm reading says "Existing shared use area to be removed", but possibly I'm looking in the wrong place?

It was there in the Labour Party's election manifesto for anyone to read. They won the election. Seems democratic enough to me. Every single last one of us is a pedestrian some of the time. And while *you* may *think* that "cyclist" is a word for a tribe of weird death-wish fitness enthusiasts with a rubber fetish, what it actually means is anybody, any time they decide to pick up a bicycle and use it to get from A to B. Which, for quite a lot of journeys, is actually rather pratical. It's your right to try and do so. Me personally, I'll be voting them back in.

Because 20mph can be thought of as primarily about reducing the number and severity of casualities , and the overwhelming majority of injury collisions happen on the sort of roads which "common sense" would hold to be the 30 ones. Denmark Hill (whole stretch from Herne Hill town centre to Camberwell) seems to average about 4 "serious" (per Stats19) collisions per year. The residential roads adjoining it? Practically zero. Whether 20mph is a good or effective tradeoff is debatable, but doing it on minor roads only has very little effect on the problem it's supposed to address. In percentage terms you probably can, but Sydenham Hill has a fairly good safety record for its type & so the absolute numbers won't be affected so much. Arguably the top bit of Sydenham Hill is plenty wide enough to put in good quality cycle lanes & leave the limit at 30 for other traffic, but I can see why a blanket limit is easier for people to understand.

E&C is all Red Route. That means it's TfL controlled, not Southwark. They're planning to spend ?25M of yours and mine fixing it... http://www.standard.co.uk/news/transport/notorious-elephant-and-castle-roundabout-to-be-revamped-in-25m-bid-to-cut-accidents-9684878.html ... quite why anyone cycles around that monstrosity at all, I've no idea - there's a well signposted bypass route to the north and south which avoids it entirely.

10 = longer crossing distances and no islands either. I'm not opposed to islands per se, when their use is optional & they're provided for those with wobbly legs, or if you've got a big dual carriageway style road that can't practically be crossed in one go - but designs where pedestrians get penned in every time for the sake of maximizing traffic flow should be thrown in the bin. Good point though re large vehicles. In particular, I'd like to see them publish a swept path drawing for coaches turning right EDG/Townley. Doesn't look great for cyclists waiting in the two-stage right (EDG to Green Dale) or indeed the Calton advance stop box in that case; there are other junctions where Southwark have gotten this wrong & oncoming or turning traffic routinely cuts across the ASL (if you ever cycle down Camberwell Grove, the ASL at the railway bridge is particularly bad for this - stay well left or prepare to get flattened). Anyway, I'm sure they'll have done such drawings so we should ask for them to be published. @mockingbird they're not LCDS..? Surely it has to meet TfL LCDS if there's supposed to be a Quietway through the middle of it in a year or so? Otherwise what is the point of such standards existing?

They're not. Look at the "Results Table" in the consultation. 9s are the worst and have been ruled out because of that; 11s are second-worst; 10s have the best performance in the AM peak and 8s are best in the PM peak. Overall there's not that much in it between 8 and 10, according to the models they've posted. Bear in mind that wider roads (2 lane approaches) = lights need to be held red for longer for pedestrians to cross. Conversely, narrower junctions = shorter reds. I suspect that's the reason for the weird bottle-neck-shaped cycle bays.. they want to be able to hold a load of bikes (ultimately perhaps 2-3x as many as now) at the light without putting them in front of traffic (fine for commuter cyclists, not fine for 11 year olds), but they have to keep the pavements as close as possible to keep crossing times short for pedestrians. It seems very clear to me that the new design is an improvement on what's there now for pedestrians. The new cycling bits are likely to be *safer* than what's there now (with one or two exceptions - not sure about the semi segregated feeder lane southbound on East Dulwich Grove, for example), but whether they're more *convenient*, I wouldn't like to say. My guess is, at busy times it'll be a bit nicer to cycle than at present, but at quieter times it'll be a bit worse (cyclists likely to get held at a red "gate" signal needlessly). Definitely feels like a safety-first design, though. I can't imagine any of it is entirely untested - they wouldn't be allowed to put it in if it were, think of the lawsuits. I'm told they had to get special dispensation just to allow bikes on the zebra crossing at Gipsy Hill roundabout, so something as major as this has surely been signed off by the high-ups.

@slarti they have something like this (hard to gauge from the drawings exactly how similar, though the principle looks to be the same) at Bow Roundabout, a junction 100x worse than this, scene of several well publicised deaths from left-hook collisions. It does appear to have solved the problem there... at least, nobody's been killed there since it went in. For commuter cyclists this feels like both overengineering and overdumbing, but I get the feeling they're anticipating a much larger number of kids cycling to school in the future, and I can see why it's a better design if they want 12-13 year olds using it (teenagers aren't great at judging hook hazards). Certainly it would help the jams if more of the kids cycled, but I can see why parents won't let them at present. I'd have thought the cycle "gate" will remain green for the time that the "advance start" is green, so there's /some/ chance of making it straight through in one, but you're certainly more likely to hit a red than at present. Outside school run hours perhaps they should leave the gate signal flashing amber - proceed with caution? After all, most of the time in the evening commute there's no general traffic on Green Dale. @Tessmo - re 3., is that building work confirmed and approved? More school run cars on Green Dale is most unwelcome.

Depends where.. much is a middling 3 or 4 out of 6, but some areas over towards Honour Oak / Forest Hill are indeed very low. Areas south of the Village too, but most of that is parks and sports clubs. It does rather highlight how poor the public transport is on the Kingswood Estate though. I'm not sure what the criteria are but it seems to penalize walking distance quite heavily. For example Rye Lane is 5's and 6's, you only have to go a couple of hundred metres west to reach 1's and 2's around Chadwick Rd. You'd have to be either severely mobility impaired or bone sodding idle for that to be in any way comparable to being marooned in the public transport deserts of Zone 6.

@holymoly PTAL = public transport access level. It's a single-number measure from 1 to 6 of public transport provision in an area. Used by planners to decide how much parking they should or shouldn't provide for a given development. Map here - not sure how up to date. http://www.maptube.org/map.aspx?mapid=131 Obviously one number isn't going to capture the complexity of individual peoples' travel needs, how far they're willing to walk etc., but it's a reasonable guide to how easy it is to get from A to B without a car in any given area.

Electric bikes are definitely worth taking a look at. I'm lucky in as much as the times I have to turn up at the office door looking sharp are few and far between; it's tricky to ride a full Dutch style bike (full mudguards, enclosed chain, hub gears, fat tyres etc.) from ED to the West End without breaking at least a bit of a sweat. Power-assist solves the problem, albeit at a price (about an extra ?500 on top of the cost of a normal bike for a decent battery/motor combination).. basically means you can carry lots of extra weight on the kind of bike that'll keep your clothes clean & still not get sweaty regardless of fitness levels. If having to be places 9 sharp in a crisp suit were a more regular occurrence for me, definitely what I'd do.

You weren't able to get the plates? Only reason I ask is that a friend had a van of that description stolen not far away last week. Though the blighters have probably switched the plates by now anyway.

@ JohnL separating cars and bicycles on main roads can't happen soon enough. But I think we'll be waiting a while, the Cycle Superhighway that was supposed to run along LL and DKH has been cancelled. If only this were true. A friend of mine recently saw a driver in a Ferrari California (?150,000 supercar) with instantly recognisable custom numberplate using an iPad as he drove across Tower Bridge. She reported almost immediately to a police officer on a bike (don't know if City Police or Metropolitan); the officer took absolutely no interest whatsoever.

If you have the plates, report here: http://content.met.police.uk/Site/roadsafelondon Also worth finding out when the Safer Neighbourhoods Team are having a surgery, pop in and talk to them. Although routine traffic policing is not something they're resourced to do much of, they can often be persuaded to carry out enforcement blitzes where there's a particular identifiable problem.

There's mountains of evidence of kids (and adults, ahem) not being active enough. Walking or cycling to school is one way, albeit not the only way, of combating that. No, but I'd imagine "they've locked up the boy-racer tw@ts and cut the accident rate in half" will be enough for a few more kids to be allowed to walk to school on their own. Politically motivated how? It was in Labour's manifesto, which they won on, which presumably gives them the confidence to bring it in without much of a consultation - they already have a democratic mandate from the people. I'm not sure why there is a political gain from imposing it if it's not effective though? If they don't think it'll work, why would they put it in the manifesto?

Is it that you don't think kids being driven to school unnecessarily, adding to jams & making them less active, is a problem - or you don't think 20 will in any way help with that? I've explained repeatedly, but here goes again. 20mph, when applied to Borough roads (non red routes) in an inner London area, has minimal impact on most journey times, for a seemingly large reduction in the severity of injury to pedestrians, cyclists and motorcyclists involved in collisions with cars. You're never more than a couple of miles from a Red Route, even driving the length of the borough at 1am will only take three or four minutes longer than before. 10mph has a far greater impact on journey times, and it appears that 20 reduces injuries to a degree such that 10 can't do very much more. Below 15 or so, most of the nastiest incidents involve heavy vehicles of one sort or another, and speed limits don't really help much. There is perhaps an argument for 10mph in home zones & other small side roads where nobody's trying to get anywhere (& so journey time cost is irreleant), but elsewhere the tradeoffs aren't in favour of anything much below 20.

Doubtful. Even if there is much enforcement, the rules on what they can do with the money raised are very tight. You can thank Eric "Ending Labour's War On The Motorist" Pickles for that one. Indeed not, but the accident rate is high enough over the borough as a whole that the trends will be unambiguously clear in a couple of years - well in time for the next round of elections. And targetting only the black spots, paradoxically, ends up targeting the roads which appear at first glance to be best suited to fast driving (most of the crashes are in the busiest places i.e. main roads); and leads us back to the patchwork of confusion which OP complains of. I don't really buy the lost work hours argument - with the exception of delivery companies - and even then it's more like lost operator profits from having to employ additional staff. To which I'd reply, sod the lot of 'em, they don't get to profit from public space by needlessly endangering the public. I've a bit more sympathy for self employed cabbies, but ultimately businesses don't get to make the law. In theory this will help those with viable alternative ways of getting from A to B to do so, make travel times more predictable overall. Slower roads = more kids allowed to walk and cycle to school, more non lycra types cycling to work = less school run jams, fewer mums losing work hours playing Taxi, reduced obesity costs on the NHS etc.? It's not about cause, it's about severity. Speed will always be a factor in the amount of damage done, even if most of the time it's not a causative factor. Whether or not speed was a factor, whether or not it's even the driver's fault at all, not relevant. Pretty standard H&S really - create an environment which is tolerant of mistakes. They're spending ???? on cycling at the moment, but most of it isn't on cycle lanes - few borough roads are wide enough to put in decent, consistent cycle lanes without further aggravating the parking situation and/or losing bus lanes. That appears to be why the planned Cycle Superhighway along Lordship Lane got canned & they're now looking at back-street routes.

Um, mako, the insurance companies profit regardless... nice cuddly bleeding-heart socialists they are not. Instead, if accident rates are down, insurance premiums come down, and ordinary people have more money to spend on other, nicer things. Next up: smokers are actually doing us all a favour by creating employment for doctors and nurses who'd otherwise be scrounging benefits on the dole?

Labour introduced, Greens also support. Not sure where the Lib Dems stand, am sure Cllr Barber will be able to say. Tory or UKIP - some of the latter would like to see speed limits abolished entirely. Croydon's roads are a law unto themselves. There's a good cycle route all the way, but it's well hidden. Up to the top of Crystal Palace Park on College Road or Farquhar Road, through the park (it's rarely, if ever locked, although sometimes pitch dark), then Hamlet Road, Southern Ave, Holmesdale Road, Dagnall Park, Sydenham Road, you come out by East Croydon station & can avoid Wellesley Road entirely. The main road alternative is pretty bad, driving standards seem to get lower the further south you go (or it's the same low standard and they're all just driving faster, IDK).

Yes, Lambeth are going 20. Looks likely Lewisham will follow in a year or two. Major A roads - A205, A2, A3, A21, A200, A23 etc. - will be exempted.