wulfhound

Not wanting to get too personal Cedges but... Goose Green to Peckham Library is barely a mile, and practically flat. With a bike in OK mechanical condition & clothes suitable for the weather, a flat mile really shouldn't do that. The likes of Dog Kennel Hill will unless you're fairly fit, mind. (There's also E-bikes of course, which are even less work to pedal - but you won't get much there for under ?500).

Straight on in to Cronin Street avoids Commercial Way - at least when they're not digging up all the gas pipes in the estate there. Either way you end up on Chandler Way. It can be pretty busy but for some reason drivers there seem to be much more considerate than around Bellenden. Or take the underpass in the park, take the next path on the right & pop out opposite Portland Street. Roadworks there at the moment which may (or may not) be some much vaunted cycling improvements to that junction which they consulted on last year.

Money talks. Commuters from Brighton, Eastbourne etc. are paying 5x more than we are. So if there's a shortage of train crew (whoever is to blame - DfT, Southern/Govia, rail unions...), it's obvious we're going to get the short end of the stick. Do think DfT takeover is essential though - even if it was their insistence on Southern moving to driver only operation that got us in to this mess. Interesting write up on Inside Croydon https://insidecroydon.com/2016/06/15/southern-failways-civil-servant-wants-to-break-rail-unions/

@ OP The old cars won't, for the most part, be scrapped - they'll be sold. While they're still roadworthy, better to have them polluting less densely populated places, no? Any scrappage scheme really needs to encourage people towards car clubs (Zip Car etc.) and ultralight EVs (G.Wiz). Using a lower powered vehicle most of the time, with something beefier available to rent when you need to take to the motorway, clearly saves masses of energy vs using a car engineered for the Autobahn to drive a mile to the station.

Went that way this morning in the rush hour - the entire 3 seconds of cycle green light exiting Townley, there were cars turning R from EDG to Townley blocking the junction. Eight or ten cyclists with a green light and nowhere to go. Outside the rush hour it's not nearly so bad.

Can echo that feeling. Did give me pause for thought, especially as I was hit by a car when our son was a baby - but ultimately I want to still be able to keep up with my kids (within reason) when I'm in my 50s and 60s, and cycling to work is one of the best ways to ensure that (especially as I'm a little fonder of high-calorie food & drink than most medics would advise). It's very rare for cyclists to be killed by cars in Inner London 20mph zones - buses and HGVs are far more deadly. So if you can find routes that minimize your overlap with heavy vehicles, that helps mitigate the risk a lot. (I can only find one incident of a cyclist being killed by a car in Zone 1+2 in the past year - where a driver who was far in excess of the speed limit hit a cyclist who was well over the legal blood alcohol limit). That said, when I did give up cycling for a couple of months, found that jogging in to work a couple of times a week was pretty much as good from a fitness point of view. Rather more time consuming though & neither my legs nor my schedule could handle there-and-back every day. Cycling to work = no need to change clothes if you ride slowly, or you can carry a change with you. Running, no option for that - a shower when you get there is non negotiable, so you have to plan ahead.

@rendelharris ED to Blackfriars Bridge in 10 minutes by bike? You are Chris Hoy and I claim my ?5 ;)

Carlz88 - there's a bunch of routes between Crystal Palace and Dulwich - either Farquhar Road & Dulwich Wood Avenue, or Fountain Drive & College Road. You can go east or west of the College - east is quicker but really busy at school run. Either way, you want to end up on College Road heading for the Picture Gallery roundabout. From there follow the signposted "LCN 23", you can look it up on Open Cycle Map: http://www.opencyclemap.org/, goes through Camberwell, Burgess Park, and cuts around Elephant & Castle to the north/east. For Holborn you're probably best taking Blackfriars Bridge using the new Cycle Superhighway. I think the easiest from LCN 23 is, immediately after you cross Newington Causeway, take Keyworth Street to its end, left on to Borough Road, then a rather convoluted right turn on to the Cycle Superhighway at St George's Circus. That will get you all the way up to Ludgate Circus, should be easy from there.

jacks09 - there's a pretty good route to Greenwich - across Peckham Rye Common, Stuart Road / Surrey Road, Brockley Way, over the railway, down in to Ladywell, left at Algernon Road, and then head North on the "Waterlink Way" signposted cycle route all the way to Greenwich, from where you can walk your bike through the foot tunnel. From there you can take the river path (pleasant, safe, slow) or Westferry Road (gets the job done). Or the above "City" routes will also work - taking Tower Bridge & turn right on to Cycle Superhighway 3 at the northern end, from which Canary Wharf is about 15 minutes on a very well signposted route. The junction at the north side of Tower Bridge is pretty bad though, getting from there to the start of Superhighway 3 is terrible at the moment.

A good route that Caesi01 - curious why you dog-leg east at Peckham though? Kelly Avenue / Chandler Way is almost traffic free apart from a short stretch on Commercial Way. Only down side being you miss the excellent coffee van that's at Peckham Arch most mornings.

I used them for a year and had a similar experience to Lowlander, so didn't renew the ?50 membership when it ran out. But when my bank offered me a free year's membership, was on it like a shot. Here's the thing: you pay for all the time the car is away from the space. So for day trips around the London suburbs, the full day hire rate of ?60 ish is very expensive compared to Uber unless you're going more than 15ish miles. For multi day trips, even though it's much more convenient than a conventional rental, the rates are so much higher that (for me at least) it's worth the extra hassle to got and pick up the regular car, being about ?15/day cheaper. So in my experience, the sweet spot for ZipCar tends to be: - Day trips over 12 miles. Great for trips to the beach & tourist attractions around the Home Counties - too far to Uber, too long on public transport. - Day trips where you're driving to more than one place.. visitor attraction & then on to a friend/relative's house, then home. - Overnight breaks, maybe two-night breaks at a stretch, their 3 day rate is ?175. So then the question is really whether you do enough of that to justify the ?50/year membership. I genuinely can't fault the service. The cars are clean, well maintained and good quality (especially the Golfs), the customer service is helpful and thorough. It's just not quite as easy as I'd like to make the sums add up.

Councils _do not_ make money from speed cameras. That goes to the Treasury. They can & do make money from parking fines, meters, CPZ charges and suchlike. A cynic might suggest that there is a causal link between this and their apparent lack of concern around one, and their enthusiastic enforcement of the other.

Couldn't agree more, rendelharris. There are a lot of genuine advantages todays' kids have. Reliably warm homes, safe vaccination against a dozen common diseases, food shortages mostly unheard of, historically low crime rates, access to the sum total of human knowledge at their fingertips. But the amount of independence they've lost is a crying shame. Even the Mail, not known as a haven of progressive liberal bleeding-heart-ness gets it.. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-462091/How-children-lost-right-roam-generations.html Spot on. It's a great pity that so many people who did enjoy these freedoms seem to be so unsympathetic about what their grandchildrens' generation is missing out on, and why.

I'll eat my hat if they do 10m. Yes, that's what the Highway Code says, but it's patently excessive on these roads. 5m would be a big improvement to the sight lines on some of these, however. As a regular cyclist and occasional ZipCar-ist, some of these corners are needlessly tricky to see around, even when you're stopped. For example, I wouldn't let my son cycle down Crystal Palace Road (which is supposed to be the Southwark Spine cycle route), because the sight lines at some of the corners at the top end are lousy, it's hard enough for a grown adult who can see over the top of the parked cars, never mind someone smaller. Traffic emerging from the side roads has to pull way out to check that it's clear - or sometimes just doesn't bother.

Walk to your nearest bit of Brockley line (trains every 5 minutes to New Cross Gate) & change at the latter? Bit of a hike but beats sitting on the bus.

There are a couple of problems from a Quietways perspective with College Road. Firstly how do you join it up to Calton Avenue? I mean - I cycle through the Village all the time, but I'm not the type to need a designated route. The bit from the Calton junction to the gallery can be kind of dicey. The other problem is, where do they go at the top? Personally reckon that allowing cyclists on the Park side pavement from there up as far as the Crystal Palace bus terminus wouldn't be the end of the world (great big pavement with essentially zero pedestrians), but that's Bromley's land and I can't see them ever allowing it. The other alternative, if the Dulwich Estate decide don't want to play ball, is to use the existing South Circular cycle track along to Alleyn Park, then up Bowen Drive through the Kingswood. There's an existing, albeit never used, cycle track on Dulwich Wood Park (no.3 bus route) that runs most of the way from Kingswood up to Farquhar Road - if they fixed that & joined it up to the other stuff, they might even get some actual cyclists using it. That's not so much different to how it is now, though. I mean, either way without a much bolder intervention (fat chance of that) there's going to be a conflicting turning movement there. Only ways to avoid that are more radical traffic reduction at Court Lane (personally would support that 100%, but I'm probably the only one here), or sending the Quietway down some more "Southwark Spine"-ish alignment, down Woodwarde Road and through the park. IMO the new layout (Calton having priority) is slightly better, at least the onus isn't on supposedly novice cyclists to be looking in four directions at once to get from Calton to the junction. If any council or TfL bod seriously suggests putting in pedestrian cages as part of a cycling scheme, I'm organising a whip-round to buy them a Japanese ceremonial sword. The hills are unavoidable around there, but Gipsy Hill itself can certainly be avoided. Ever since this route was first announced, I've been trying to convince the council to look at routing along Dulwich Wood Ave or through the green instead (they are hell bent on the Rosendale Rd & Turney Rd routing). People do cycle up Gipsy Hill, a surprising number actually, but it's hardly suitable for the supposed novice users these routes were once intended to attract. Am inclined to agree (although I do think they should look at Bowen Drive instead of / as well as Alleyn Park), but how would people feel about losing all the parking through the Village on one side of the road? The Village would surely need a segregated cycleway to attract new users and school kids?

I don't disagree, but it's hard to think of a less obtrusive shape that does what they've decided is needed.. bit of nice paint and planters along the side & they don't seem ugly enough to waste energy on getting offended by. At least, that is, in a city that built the Walkie Talkie and Cheese Grater & is now planning the Garden Bridge.

Here's one of those hangars looking a lot less fugly.. http://winerides.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Bikehangar-Planters-Wood.jpg @ keano77 they're basically just bolted down - and if nobody's using it, I'd imagine the council will move it to somewhere that it will get used. So that they can charge people to use it. No point in having them on the street if they're not used.

I suspect the next Mayoral contest is going to throw up some interesting stall-setting-out on that front. Labour have all-but-declared in favour already. Some interesting rumblings on the latest Bakerloo report on the ever-well-informed London Reconnections blog: http://www.londonreconnections.com/2016/extending-bakerloo-not-transport/ From the article: "This seems to be awfully like a TfL proposal to improve south London lines to provide a more frequent all day service. Generally known as TSLO (pronounced tis-low) it stands for Turn South London Orange. The diagram appears to be part of this long awaited proposal, the details of which have until now, for the most part, been kept strictly under wraps. When it surfaces, we will cover it in detail here." My guess is, they need to let Thameslink bed in until 2018-9, but once it does, virtually all the longer-distance trains (which TfL aren't permitted to take over) will be "through" at London Bridge. At that point, there's surely a case for TfL to and grab the remaining Southern Metro services which start and end at LB. If that happens, they can fix the ticketing situation pretty quickly. Actually making the trains more frequent and reliable will take longer, the lead time on new trains is measured in years, but if the Overground operators can get exclusive use of the South Bermondsey & the New Cross slow tracks, that's surely a step in the right direction.

Suppose it's another reason to invest in a helmet camera.. seen quite a few cyclists & motorcyclists using them recently, figured it's mostly for traffic accidents but also handy in a theft situation, providing the little toerags don't realise you've got one at least. Judging by youtube footage, they seem to take a pretty good picture even in fairly low light.

What kind of bike? Worth keeping an eye out on Scumtree, StolenRide & BikeShd.co.uk.

@rahrahrah the Peckham Road crossing is on traffic lights at least. Seems reasonably safe for cyclists, northbound you need to position yourself in front of traffic in the Lyndhurst Way queue (to avoid possible left/right hooks), southbound you have to keep an eye out for right turning traffic out of Lyndhurst, but overall it's not too bad. By speed do you mean exceed the posted 20mph limit, or the 30 one that some on this forum wish was still in force? Piece of cake getting to 25 along there, car or bike. 35? Maybe not. @ed_pete The problem with cycle training / ride leading / confidence building *on its own* (don't get me wrong.. think it's a great idea & all cyclists or would-be-cyclists should do it) is that it excludes the young from actually getting from A to B by bike. You can't train an 8-year-old to cycle independently in busy traffic conditions any more than you can train a pig to sing opera. They lack the basic physical and mental attributes required - most importantly, predictable behaviour themselves, good judgement in the face of the unexpected, and the ability to intuitively see things from other road users' point of view. Even older kids & young adults display some pretty questionable judgement on the roads all too often, as anyone who's ever tried to get under-21's car insurance knows all too well. So while I don't believe in cycle paths everywhere - and I haven't seen anyone credible suggesting that - the kind of traffic volume reduction on minor streets which this scheme proposes does create conditions more suitable for some younger riders. I'm very much in favour of cyclists sharing the road with other traffic, but only in situations where the other traffic has been reduced/calmed to a point where few are excluded from cycling if they want to. The existing layout is fine if you keep your wits about you, but it does have a certain element of "surprise" (for pedestrians, cyclists & drivers alike) and the inexperienced aren't likely to cope well with that. If you think cycling in London should be limited to the kind of people who are fit to hold a driving license, sure, leave it as is, it hasn't killed anyone AFAIK, but I personally think we should aspire to something a bit better than that.

Why not..?

Have done so, DiD - but they're going to need to do something on Lyndhurst Way. The proposal ought to make the Bellenden area, or most of it, good enough for more secondary school kids to cycle (Choumert / Chadwick end of things likely to be a bit of a snarl still). But, by pushing more traffic on to Lyndhurst, that's going to need intervention to get them the rest of the way to the Harris. Seems to me that they could fit a protected cycle track along one or other side of Lyndhurst if they so wished.

Yes, it would, I was more talking about the prospect of running Tube-like frequencies on the Overground. Hard for TfL to improve things for existing built up areas at the moment, I guess - so little money from central government, it all has to come from property developers.