wulfhound

Long ago, I knew a fellow who could make that happen exactly as described. However, it'd get us all sent to jail for rather a long time, so maybe best not to ;)

It would indeed be chaos beyond belief. For the first couple of weeks. Then, for a few months after, orderly but insufferably long tailbacks in every direction. Yet within a year, or two at the outside, the main roads wouldn't be significantly busier at peak times than they are now. Induced demand and its converse, traffic evaporation, are much more powerful forces than people recognise. Human nature's a funny thing - people are, on the one hand, almost universally lazy when given the chance - yet incredibly smart, flexible, resilient and adaptable when they have to be. By the way - I'm not suggesting that this set of closures is desirable, never mind politically possible - merely that even something that most people view as extreme would not, in fact, cause the sky to fall in. The capacity to grumble-and-get-on-with-it is almost without limit.

I actually don't reckon the sky would fall in if they closed Townley, Calton, Court Lane & yes, Melbourne Grove - leaving the South Circular & EDG as the remaining E/W motor routes for the area. Would need some supporting measures, sure, but it's not that much bigger an area, north to south, as EDG to King's. Almost certainly a poisoned chalice politically, but people are resilient, adaptable and flexible. If it happened for essential water works or some such, they'd grumble and get by. For cycling? Heavens no, we're not giving an inch for those red-light-jumping, Lycra-wearing, pedestrian-terrorising scofflaws.. ah.. I mean.. "I love cyclists. Some of my best friends" etc. etc.

Not all that hopeful, tbh. If they built HS2 the way they seem to be building the Quietways, it'd stop six times before it got to the M25, then run non-stop at 160mph to the Cotswolds, where everyone would have to get off and board a vintage 2ft gauge steam line for twenty miles, before changing on to a National Express coach for the last leg in to Birmingham. But if you've ever ridden a Sustrans NCN route, this will be familiar territory. If all they want to do is encourage a few more people resembling the present cycling demographic on to their bikes, money would be far better spent putting some new signs up on the existing LCN & spend the rest on bigger subsidies for cycle-to-work schemes, Santander bikes and suchlike.

The problem is, most contributors on this thread don't want to radically improve things for cyclists. At least, not if it means compromising universal, unfettered and easy door-to-door car access and rat runs galore. Shutting those down is the only way it's going to happen. "Some of my best friends are cyclists". I hear that a lot. "We'd love to see more kids out on bikes". Right - but are you actually prepared to sacrifice anything to make it happen? So I'm afraid a lot of the people on this thread need to take a look in the mirror, and think about what their priorities really are. TfL want to spend somewhere in the region of ?3 MILLION on the Quietway.. the question is, do people want to spend it on useless build-outs and fancy paving, or on an actual, real step-change for cycling in the area? The latter is absolutely possible - but the only way it's going to happen is if people are prepared to make some car journeys longer and slower. The money was there, the political will to do something was there, but the Right-To-Turn-Right mob torpedoed any chance of a good outcome. Result? A watered-down scheme that p***ed a small fortune up the wall. You really think the council and their contractors weren't going to find a way to spend the money just because people didn't like their first design? I cycle everywhere & every day, but I'd much, much rather the QW didn't happen at all than that they spend ?3M on fancy paving because the public aren't prepared to countenance the cheap, proven interventions (road closures) that actually work. But as the money's already allocated, ?3M worth of fancy paving is most of what you're likely to get.

This is down in College Ward but - can we get some better pedestrian crossings on Dulwich Wood Park / College Road? Couple of Zebras or push button crossings near Lymer Ave & Kingswood Drive would be nice. The junction at the top of College Road is pretty rotten for pedestrians too - multi stage crossings, wide flared entry/exit and sheep pens galore. Probably too expensive to fix for a CGS bid though.

Agreed - all the inconvenience without any of the benefits. How are people supposed to relax and enjoy the newly reclaimed pedestrian area if all that's holding the traffic at bay is cameras? Given the number of uninsured vehicles on the road, presumably quite a high % aren't properly registered with DVLA either. That's absolutely true, but equally it's hard for some people (esp kids & older people) to switch at all without some fairly radical interventions to de-traffic the streets. So if that is ever to happen, there will inevitably be situations where things have to be made worse before they get better. What they should have done is put in a lot more effort to prepare the ground first - making sure, for example, that the area is well-populated with Boris Bikes. Have to admit that I was surprised by this scheme for exactly that reason - and yet with car ownership in Zones 1 & 2 seemingly in free fall, such that in many areas a large majority of households don't have own vehicle now (70%+ along Loughborough Road), perhaps they're just less willing to tolerate the noise, pollution, danger etc. nowadays?

The accident stats don't paint a terribly useful picture in relation to kids on bikes, because there aren't currently enough of them to have much impact (sic) on the numbers. Does show a smattering of crashes, but nothing out of the ordinary for the area. So although I might disagree with your assertion that there's no problem, it's kind of irrelevant if they're not trying to solve that. The Grove Hill works don't seem to be cycling related - it reduces space & will increase car/bike conflict - though it's nice for pedestrians to lose the sheep pen in the middle. Someone at the council clearly hates those cages with a passion. I'm not sure that's our call to make. The levels of idiocy, impatience, arrogance and sheer incompetence I see on the roads daily gives me a lot of sympathy for the cotton-wool parents.

I'm not sure that it does work all that well for a kid wishing to cycle to school along there, Richard. In fact I'd wager a large sum of money that that's gotten worse in the intervening 68 years. Sure, it doesn't help that parents are a lot more protective of their offspring than was the custom in those days, but that's not entirely a bad thing. However, the least we all deserve is for those wielding the red pens to present a clear idea of which problems they're trying to solve and why.

@ Penguin68 - fair enough, we largely agree on CO2, at least as far as cycling's impact goes. There are other benefits of cycling that I think aren't just for the individual - less noise, more sociability, perhaps less road danger, reduced NHS costs from obesity etc. - but climate change as the primary argument is a fairly weak one. IMO, whoever made that call ought to be placed in stocks outside GLA HQ, and I want dibs on the first rotten egg. Because.. i) It should be clear to anyone that you can't do much in the way of meaningful improvements to cycling in a large city without affecting traffic to at least some degree. ii) As is obvious to anyone who cycles or drives in the suburbs year-round, the school run contributes an enormous amount of that traffic at peak times - in many places it's the majority. Therefore, iii) Any major scheme which attempts to improve things for cycling in the suburbs, yet intentionally and deliberately places the school run outside of its remit, is practically certain to fail. The whole thing is starting to confuse me, tbh. Why are they talking about radical changes at Champion Hill and perhaps Rosendale Road if the aim is only to cater for "nervous adults"? That can't possibly take enough traffic off the roads to justify those changes. It feels like they can't decide whether they've got the huevos to actually go through with it or not. Do it properly, or not at all.

A fair point - but in the overall scheme of urban quality-of-life, of the benefits resulting from more cycling & fewer cars on the road, carbon's not the most important piece of the puzzle IMO. If we're talking in pure carbon terms, going vegetarian / vegan, eschewing air travel & cutting back home energy consumption to the bare minimum might make as much difference. Certainly as a regular cyclist, occasional driver, annual long haul flyer & unreformed carnivore, my own co2 footprint isn't markedly different to a non-flying veggie who drives a few times a week. Nor does that same infrastructure for general traffic. Assuming the vehicle lifespan is the same, how does a steel framed bicycle weighing 15kg stack up against a 1.5 ton Golf? Not that the former can do all the jobs of the latter - but surely that's an argument for shared-ownership ZipCar schemes and the like. Road wear, maintenance & surface renewal.. yes, those roads need to be maintained anyway for goods vehicles, but discretionary & local trips account for a fair bit of the wear. Again, I'm not sure if that's true of discretionary journeys. When applied to essential traffic, your argument makes complete sense - but the same could be said (to a far greater degree, I might add) of discretionary or substitutable motor traffic delaying essential motor traffic.

A very good question. I am a huge fan of the idea of Greenways and, to an extent, Quietways, but the planning and implementation has been far from ideal. No discussion or debate of what's going on and whether it's a good thing for London as a whole before they started parachuting in to neighbourhoods with design ideas. It seems there's little in the way of minimum standards for a Quietway - at its most basic, it can be nothing more than signs and paint, like the old LCN - so the lack of facilities doesn't necessarily change the Quietway status, it just makes it less accessible and useful. Some of the proposed Quietways in Kensington and Westminster (ok, so "quiet" is always going to be relative there) are entirely useless. No doubt they are under represented - but actually getting any TfL, council or Sustrans official to put their head above the parapet & declare that Quietways must be usable by children and older people seems to be difficult. Whether this is a result of a lack of minimum standards, or its cause, I don't know. Bit of both perhaps.

This.

At the moment - not much better than before, not much worse than before, lousy way to spend ?250k of cycling budget if that's where the money came from. If I remember right, the scheme proposed "light segregation", sometimes known as armadillos. They're big rubber lumps about eight inches long by four high that are glued or bolted down on to the white line. Like a rumble strip but chunkier. Painted mandatory cycle lanes help a bit, but as with unenforced traffic laws in general, it comes down to respect or a lack thereof. A mandatory lane with light segregation, which physically prevents or makes it difficult for traffic to intrude on to the cycle lane, is the ideal here. Indeed. I wonder if they just haven't got the additional legislative things through to de-designate the pavement for cycling & designate the cycle lane as mandatory, which would then perhaps allow for the installation of the armadillos per the original. If the TMO was Sep 1st, they couldn't (at least, shouldn't) start construction on that lot until after it was signed off.

I'd read this as: Camberwell & Walworth are dense and mostly residential. Therefore lots of people live there & would like a Tube line. Old Kent Road is mostly under-developed brownfield, warehouses and industrial units. Relatively few people live there, which means it's ripe for developers to flatten and rebuild. Big money wants the Tube line to go that way. Can't help wondering if doing both is viable. Not every journey is radial - presumably quite a bit of what clogs up the A2 and Walworth Road is local-ish. Nice thing with the Tube is that high frequencies = short waits for connections = two trains for a fairly short trip is far less painful than National Rail or even Overground with its 15-30 minute service cycle.

"I love cycling and running but for some journeys (particularly involving young kids) it is not practicable" You need one of these... http://www.reallyusefulbikes.co.uk/our-brands/cargo-and-family-bikes/gazelle-cabby-from-netherlands/ It's the family car in our household. Though getting it to the top of Green Dale is, let's say, good for the heart and lungs.

"According to a friendly workman, TfL has said that a cycle lane with barrier would make Townley Road too narrow for traffic and this is why it has been refused." Well it's too narrow now.. but only after they've gone and made the pavement about 6ft wider. Massive fail. The one bright spot is that tightening everything up seems to have reduced the right-hook hazard for southbound cyclists (Green Dale on to Townley) considerably - and even more so if/when the cycle traffic lights get the early start we were promised. Much better visibility between northbound and southbound queues. If there's no cycle lane or barrier, what on earth was the point of digging up the planted area at the top of Calton?

It's no worse than other crap commuter cyclists have to deal with (including another brand new, expensively created pinch point on a future Quietway at Camberwell Grove / Champion Hill), but ?250k of cycling budget ought to buy something more than "no worse than the other crap".

Won't know til the road's reopened. Right now looks like a total mess, from a cycling POV. The whole point of the design was supposed to be something like.. narrow the carriageways to make things better for pedestrians, and provide a seperate path through the junction for cyclists so they don't get mixed up in the newly narrowed carriageways. They've done the narrowing, but if (as appears to be the case) they've not built any of the cycling facilities, then the end result is clearly going to be worse than before. At least until they finish the new facilities. I'll reserve judgement til they've finished this round of works, but it's not looking good. Nice if you're on foot though.

Sounds like a fine thing to me, on anything less than a main road. Access does of course include tradespeople, deliveries, guests. Victorian residential street grids certainly weren't designed with the function of mass motor vehicle traffic in mind. I mean quite the opposite. Someone popping from A to B locally would be expected to know the local network. Someone driving through the area between two distant points would not, but thanks to sat nav & one-button "avoid-the-jam" functions, they are nowadays able to take advantage of side streets. Or do you think that's a good thing, and we should treat any quieter streets as unused capacity waiting to be exploited? As far as I'm concerned, this particular one should be up to the residents & the various council officials. I'm of the view that doing this on a much wider scale (as, for example, they're doing right now up in Walthamstow with the Mini Holland cycle scheme) will make for a happier, healthier, safer and cleaner neighbourhood. Whether it's something the majority are ready for though, perhaps not yet.

Tragedy of the commons, simple. If one person does it? Not a problem at all. Indistinguishable, to all intents and purposes, from a resident coming and going in their car. If everyone does it - especially in the era of sat nav, where local knowledge no longer counts for anything & someone mid-way through a 25mile journey knows as much about the network as a local mum popping to Sainsburys - the net effect is that residential roads become completely dominated by traffic, to the exclusion of most other potential uses. Closing them to through traffic - and thereby opening them to people. To kids. To neighbours chatting. To cyclists. To family pets. To actually being able to leave your car outside your house overnight without some speeding numpty knocking the wing mirror off. Bring it on, I say!

No worse than anywhere else under discussion. The NW corner of South Norwood (near the Lakes) is already on the up. Ditto the north side of Thornton Heath. Not to say there aren't problem individuals/families, but it's a small percentage - and mostly only a problem if you're unlucky enough to live next door to them. No different to the less upmarket bits of ED and Peckham in that respect really - not quite such a lively feel, but perfectly OK as a place to live. "Even"? Walthamstow is crawling with hipsters nowadays & being on the Tube in Zone 3, it's hardly surprising it's become unaffordable.

Instead of making up new, impractical, and probably unenforceable, rules, making it a legally significant act to step over the crossbar of a bicycle in a way that would accomplish little apart from discouraging occasional/casual riders, would it not make far more sense to make Bikeability (the modern-day replacement for Cycling Proficiency) a compulsory part of the National Curriculum? It would also help make those who do later choose to get cars a lot more cycle-aware than some of those behind the wheel currently. Indeed, I can't think of any activity aside from perhaps hiking/orienteering or sailing that teaches a better hands-on mix of self-reliance, fitness and responsibility/risk management - and roads suitable for cycle training are rather a lot more accessible than Cowes or Dartmoor from your average London secondary school.

Also quieter, lower emissions, taking up less road space, imposing less danger on others while accepting more risk to oneself, remaining connected to street life instead of boxed-in and isolated. All these are rather more important, in a city, than carbon emissions. The health benefit goes only to the person riding the bike, so it's not really something to be smug about - though making a harder physical effort & being, as a result, more socially responsible, perhaps is. As a consequence of some considerable carnage, it must be said. If bikes were killing dozens or hundreds of innocent bystanders a year? Sure, I'd sign up to that. But until that time, how do you decide who has to take the test? The old fellow who gets his bike out of the shed on a couple of nice weekends in June, rides around the park, and then puts it away again for another year? The tourist on a Boris Bike (those, responsible for some of the most self-endangering riding I've seen)? The nine-year-olds doing wheelies in their suburban cul-de-sac? I'm all in favour of people voluntarily signing up for cycle training (especially those who haven't learned to drive & so may not know the Highway Code), and taking out insurance if they ride regularly, but for the reasons above, making it mandatory just doesn't make sense.

@ITATM thereby triggering a storm when the final plans are published & word does get around? I can think of places they might get away with that, but Dulwich Village isn't one of them.