exdulwicher

rupert james Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I just spent 35 minutes waiting for a non existent > P13 in the rain and sleet and with 8 other people > mostly OAP's > > Gave up and came home. > > I have not been able to do what I had to do by > bus. Wont happen again I will use my car. TfL's website and app both have live bus info. There's a good app called Bus Times London which is all London buses, all stop info, departures, live tracking and even little maps and arrows to show you which side of the road to go to. It's by a company called MapWay who do global transport apps for bus, metro, subway etc. My Mum uses it all the time - as a lone elderly woman she doesn't want to be waiting round ages. She knows exactly how long it takes her to walk to the 4 bus stops within easy distance of her house, so she just looks at the app, works out how long she's got and sets off. If the bus is late/cancelled for whatever reason, it'll show up and she's not wasting time at a stop in the cold and rain. Don't think she's ever waited more than about 2 minutes since she started using that app!

News from the plans to build Heathrow 3rd runway: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-51658693 To be honest, that one was always doomed to failure; there's simply no way you can carry on building runways and flying while trying to hit net carbon zero. I'm sure that in spite of that, the Government will still manage to miss that target by a country mile anyway...

Rockets Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Which by my reckoning would add at least an > additional 1.5 miles to a 3 mile journey...so a > 50% increase in pollution by an increased journey > length. Then factor in the number of additional > cars also making that journey because of the > closure of DV to through-traffic (remember the > council reckons there are 7000 cars going through > there a day) and the A205 and other roads become > more choked with traffic and so the cars spend > more time in high pollution idling mode stuck in > traffic.... > Brixton Station to Grove Tavern (upper end of Lordship Lane, as suggested). You can do this yourself on Google Mpas, picking and choosing start/finish points to test it. Croxted Road, left onto South Circular and left onto LL. 3 miles, currently showing at 16 mins by car. The alternative route suggested is Half Moon Lane, DV, Court Lane: that's 2.8 miles and 17 mins (as at time of testing which is 3.30pm Wednesday so near school finishing time). Maybe that'd change by a few minutes either side if you tried it on a weekend. Basically there's nothing in it - it's already quicker to go via the South Circular. You can test this out on all sorts of start/finish points and modes of transport - Google Maps allows you to look at cycling, walking, car or public transport. You'd hope that the council have learned some lessons from the Loughborough Junction issues (trying to do things single junction by single junction being the main one) so the area-wide plan seems pretty reasonable. The fact that all their consultation and a lot of the modelling work / figures / data is on their website suggests that there's a robust assurance framework in place for it.

laurak Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Park was empty yesterday. It's an expensive trip > to the swings. Well done Southwark, you now have a > nice bit of empty green land in the middle of > London! Possibly it was empty because it was a Monday after half term, everyone is back at school / work and the weather was rubbish! At least give it a few weeks to collate the impact of it, not just one day!

first mate Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > This is the dilemma. We all want healthier streets > with less pollution but the demands of getting > kids to school, looking after elderly or sick > relatives and myriad ? essential? journeys > weighted against increasingly crazy working hours > and demands on time, mean car journeys may also be > essential. It?s not people being lazy or > indifferent. However, those on the more extreme > end of council thinking will not be swayed or > engage in the complexities. It is all black and > white thinking and solutions. One of the S?wark > cycling reps even suggested that unless you can > cycle to work ( presumably that also involves > school runs) then you had no business living round > here and should move! And so we return to the original point of the thread. People ARE both fundamentally lazy and creatures of habit - they will take the easiet option presented to them and do "what they've always done". Much of that is down to the infrastructure they're given. If you provide every house with a driveway, lots of free parking everywhere and big roads, more people will drive. If you provide lots of good quality cycle infrastructure, secure cycle parking and make it more difficult to use a car, more people will cycle If you pedestrianise a high street, people will (obviously) walk. So if Southwark can come up with an area-wide plan (rather than a street here, a junction there) that promotes walking and cycling and public transport and demotes car-driving then people will (eventually) gravitate towards the easier options. The trick is making it equal to all. Not everyone can walk or cycle for every journey. Equally, not everyone can drive a car (or not everyone owns a car) for every journey. So if you promote mass car usage, you're depriving non drivers (or non car owners) of mobility. If you promote walking everywhere then you're obviously depriving people who need to drive (deliveries, people going long distance). There's a happy balance in the middle where the shorter journeys are predominantly done by active travel / public transport and the longer journeys mostly by public transport / car. Years of "encouragement" and a few token efforts like painting a bit of cycle lane alongside an A-road and then wondering why cyclists don't use it have done nothing to move away from entrenched car use. Engineeer the environment to promote more sustainable travel and it happens.

Zig-Zag Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I know it's a bit outside East Dulwich area, but > Southwark have made a total and pointless pig's > ear of the junction between College Road and the > South Circular. > > For reasons I can't fathom, they have narrowed the > area at the traffic light to single lane on > College Rd. Only one car can get through at a > time. If anyone is turning Right, cars wishing to > go straight on, or left, are held in a huge queue. > This is causing huge tailbacks at rush hour/school > pick-up times and increased pollution. What was > the purpose of this latest expensive messing > around with junctions? > All the reasoning is here: http://courtlane.info/2018/03/12/college-road-south-circular-junction-upgrade-consultation/ and https://www.dulwichsociety.com/news/1800-temporary-closure-of-junction-of-college-road-north-and-south-circular Somewhere, Dulwich College put in a related planning application connected with Alleyn Park, onsite parking - might be on Southwark Council's planning department pages. The problem with a lot of the junction stuff (and the same with 20mph zones, one or two of the CPZ), is they've mostly been done in isolation rather than a combined area-wide plan. Its why the conversation focusing on the coaches is only part of the story - yes, they're an issue but so is the "regular" traffic and it all needs dealing with together. Google Streetview shows the junction just after they did all that build-out work.

@Metallic, you've misquoted me, I was replying to a previous comment. College Road and Hunts Slip are both no-go for coaches. They can't turn round, they can't get out. We need to stop talking about that, it's just not an option. Also, it's outside the zones being consulted on for the Healthy Streets. Why people are still suggesting it is beyond me.

The coaches are run by a sort of arm's length foundation service (essentially contracted out), you can see the maps here: https://www.dulwich.org.uk/uploaded/documents/Coach_Service/Foundation_Schools_Coach_Service_map.pdf Some coaches do one or two schools, some will combine to serve all of them. They're not going to start doing "remote" drop-offs - plenty of kids will have instruments, heavy bags (sports kit etc) and it would add significantly more time onto the journey. Add in issues around child protection, health & safety, plus the inevitable parental outrage (they're paying ?500 for this!) and, like it or not, that's just not going to happen. It would not be the first time that Alleyn's had pledged to "do something" about the traffic that it generates and then bury their head in the sand... JAGS and Alleyns can have a "combined" drop off point easily, DC obviously needs its own. Coaches can't access College Road or Hunts Slip Road because they can't turn round and they can't get out the Kingsdale end of Hunts Slip because of the bridge so that route is not an option - it's no good discussing what-if's and maybe's, it's simply not an option. Personally I think that building out that EDG / Townley Road junction on the southern corner was a huge mistake, it severely restricted the turning circle of the coaches which impacts on everything else going through that junction. About the only thing they did get right there was the extra timing on the cycle sequence (turning the light green for bikes 5-8 seconds in advance of the cars) although even that one needed revisiting and they had to put the wands in on the Townley Road approach to stop drivers infringing the cycle lane by trying to form two lines of queuing traffic. In traffic modelling, thy do not all come under "driving" at all, that's an overly simnplistic way of looking at it. The schools should have that basic info though - worth asking. However the data is unlikely to be much use - it may say that (eg) 35% of pupils arrive at school by coach but that doesn't tell you how many coaches or the routes they're on are serving that 35%. Anyway - so long as people put their concerns into that consultation - that's the only thing that counts, not a few dozen people on the ED Forum debating it. The thread has sort of gone a little off-topic, concentrating on the coaches issue rather than the wider traffic controls proposals.

The railway bridge has a 7.5T weight limit and two width restrictions on it, it's also had one side built out precisely to avoid heavy vehicles using it. It got severely damaged many years ago by a truck hitting the sides. The coaches delivering to schools are 12T plus. Chances of coaches using / being allowed to use Hunts Slip Road is ZERO, it's not an idea that is even going to be entertained.

first mate Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > There is a contradiction here. If one of the > primary reasons for reducing cars/ CPZ/ etc.. is > to protect the health of children then how can any > parent in all conscience drive their child into > school or worse, allow their child to drive > themselves? That's why we're in this mess in the first place. As mentioned previously, there are a LOT of schools in and around ED area. Alleyns and JAGS are the two main ones getting the comments here because this Healthy Streets talk is mostly concerned with EDG / Townley Road and also Court Lane / DV junction (which impacts Dulwich Hamlet, Dulwich Village Infant School and JAPS on the Red Post / DV junction). And of course within that, there's the pupils and also the staff - teachers, admin and support workers - that can easily be 150 people in somewhere like Alleyn's/JAGS/Dulwich College in addition to the pupils Some pupils travel by coach - they're usually the ones travelling from a fair way outside of Dulwich like Wandsworth, Blackheath, Beckenham etc. Some will / can get the train (North Dulwich being the easiest option and that seems to be how most of the pupils for The Charter School (the old William Penn) come in, travelling from Peckham / Peckham Rye. Some will cycle or get the bus - they're usually the ones from within 2-3 miles, the sort of Herne Hill, Forest Hill, West Norwood type of catchment. Some will be driven - especially younger children. Here's the difficulty - some of those trips are at the start of a parent's drive to work ("I'll drop you off on the way..."), some of them are specific trips, often very short ones in the order of a mile at most. And some (the 6th formers) will drive themselves because it's new-found freedom, it's cool, it's independent etc. The increase in driving / being driven to school is a direct result of more vehicles on the road. It's busy/congested so it's "too dangerous" to walk so I'll drive to protect my little cherub. This then leads to the massive congestion as they seek to drop the little darling RIGHT AT THE ENTRANCE to the relevant school. Not 200m away, oh no. So there's a collection of cars (often big 4x4s) all converging on the same spot, multiplied by several different schools. And ALL of them are thinking that there are so many vehicles on the road so it's far too dangerous for said little cherub to walk. Catch-22. There's nothing wrong with owning a car and this isn't really anything to do with "punishing" car owners / users as Penguin68 says ^^. It's to do with preventing the insane super-short-distance car users who clog the roads up to avoid a 0.5 mile walk (or scooter/bike) while at the same time making it better (easier, nicer, safer) to walk, ride or scooter that 0.5 mile. Whether you like cars or not, own one or not, consider it a luxury or a necessity, surely most people want fewer cars on the streets? Less traffic is good for everyone - the people who NEED to use the roads like delivery drivers etc get where they're going more quickly. Buses are more reliable as they're not stuck in traffic. Cycling and walking is safer and more pleasant. Neighbourhoods are nicer (less pollution, less noise). It's a win-win all round. And given that the schools don't provide much, if any, parking on site (as mentioned by others in this thread, Alleyn's has more or less removed all on-site parking), the problem spills over into local roads. And because there are so many schools in the area, that's a LOT of affected roads in a very small area. Dulwich is a strange one because of the sheer number of schools, it does impact a lot on the type of traffic and the congestion points. But equally, it's obvious that the village was never designed to handle this volume of traffic and also that "doing nothing" is not an option.

EDBoy Wrote: > Metallic's idea of using > Hunts Slip Road as actually quite good and might > be worth investigating. > Hunt's Slip is too narrow because of the double parking (Dulwich College 6th formers...) and there's also a width restriction just before the railway bridge so it's a cul-de-sac for coaches. There's not enough room to 3-point turn them there. The pavements were widened a while ago - it used to be a right racetrack that road cos it was so wide and straight. Google Streetview

slarti b Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > exdulwicher Wrote: > > > You don't need to ask people. It's a mix of > ANPR/ CCTV data and modelling. > > Can you tell me where the council statistics come > from? As far as I can seem they don't give their > source. > > Neither do they give their source for teh claims > that traffic at teh DV junction has "doubled" or > even significantly increased in the last couple of > years. You're mixing data and statistics. Data are individual pieces of factual information recorded and used for the purpose of analysis. It is the raw information from which statistics are created. Statistics are the results of data analysis - its interpretation and presentation. So the council statistics come from their analysis of whatever data they have. I gave you some sources of that data in my previous post but to find out exactly what Southwark Council have used, you'd have to ask them (and / or TfL if they're helping with the modelling). Southwark's FOI information is here: https://www.southwark.gov.uk/council-and-democracy/freedom-of-information-and-data-protection/freedom-of-information-requests?chapter=2 srisky wrote: -------------------------------------- > The traffic is clearly not just due to the local private schools - rush hour traffic is significantly reduced this > week and there is plenty of seating on the train, not just in Dulwich but generally. Parents take time off from work as well, families go on holiday. Interesting little trial - take a bus (37 is a good one to showcase this from say Herne Hill to Goose Green) at normal school start/finish time. Past ND station, along EDG past JAGS and the Townley Road turn and time that journey. Then try the same journey at the same time when schools are in and there's coaches everywhere, all the traffic from parents dropping kids at Allyens, JAGS and heading into Dulwich Hamlet. That then highlights the frustration with public transport and buses stuck in congestion - you end up pushing people towards their cars becasue the bus is unreliable - it's unreliable becasue it's stuck in traffic and so the vicious cycle of more congestion continues. You're right though, Townley Road is lovely without the constant throbbing din of coach engines!

richard tudor Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > > For a good few years now Southwark has been > reorganising and making redundant people who had > real life experience and how Southwark really > works i.e through the old system of Housing > Offices and local Housing Officers. All now gone. > > Large offices only now Tooley Street and Queens > Road, North and South Southwark. > That's cuts to council budgets for you - all the "local" staff with local knowledge made redundant, everything run from centralised offices to save money, day-to-day "experience" of those staff lost in favour of consultations and modelling. To be fair that's not really Southwark's fault, they (and every other council) have had those cuts imposed on them by Tory Government. > It appears that many on here support charges who > do not have a problem paying, have no problems > with mobility or public transport. Wait till they > find their street jammed with cars. As I mentioned a page or so ago, I suspect that there's going to be some very undesirable knock-on effects of this - namely that residents of Court Lane, Eynella, maybe Eastlands Crescent and possibly Gallery Road are suddenly going to find that there's an awful lot of cars all trying to park as close as possible to the gates. One other possibility might be that people drive into the park, unload kids/bikes/scooters/prams/dogs and then turn round and drive straight out again (to park somewhere else or to go home and then return later to pick up again) leading to MORE traffic. I assume that if we've all thought of that then Southwark Council must have thought of it too but it'll be interesting to see how it all pans out and what the response is...

seenbeen Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > intexasatthe moment Wrote: > -------------------------------------------------- > ----- > > Woodwarde thank you for that . I'm embarassed > to > > say that I haven't looked at all the > documentation > > on line ,I find maps hard to read .Is there a > > proposal to restrict motor traffic on Eynella ? > > From what I saw they are going to almost pave over > the top of Eynella by the library so that only > cyclists and pedestrians have access. It's a bit > of a worry because the cyclists around here are > reckless in my experience and they are silent.... From the consultation document: https://consultations.southwark.gov.uk/environment-leisure/our-healthy-streets-dulwich-phase-3/ We are proposing a closure at the junction of Eynella Road and Lordship Lane. This will simplify the junction, make it easier for pedestrians and cyclists to get across and create a new public space (see artist's impression of how this might look) And then there's a pretty picture underneath of some artwork and seating outside the library, wider pavement space and a segregated lane for cyclists and various bollards to stop vehicle traffic. Re the reckless cyclists comment - if you provide DECENT proper segregated infrastructure (ie not a bit of paint along a pavement that stops in the middle of nowhere) then people will use it properly and the behaviour will be more predictable. Same for pedestrians actually - if you have a set of pedestrian lights with unreasonably long wait times, people will start running across the road in gaps in the traffic which becomes unpredictable and reckless. People behave according to the infrastructure they're given.

sally buying Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > > Parks should be free to all that pay Council tax. > Pedantically, the park is free to anyone from anywhere, Southwark tax payer or not. It's parking your car in the park that will cost money. I appreciate that this answer is not what Southwark Council are aiming at but I'd suggest the easiest answer, at least in the short term, that you park on Court Lane / Eynella Road or on Gallery Road. Dulwich Picture Gallery even advertises the free parking right outside. I strongly suspect that the introduction of parking charges in Dulwich Park will lead to a lot of that - people visiting the park but parking just outside the gates - which may then prompt further restrictions along those roads, especially if residents start complaining. If you were being especially cynical, you could even suggest that it's the prelude to a few more CPZ or to push for the Healthy Streets plan of blocking off the Court Lane/DV junction and/or the Dulwich Plough junction with Eynella... The other result might be that they simply drop the in-park parking charge if residents complain about the on-street parking of visitors to the park - especially if it happens on a sunny summer's day and there's thousands of people all trying to park as near as possible to the gates. It'd be like school drop-off time outside Alleyns or JAGS! I feel bad suggesting that because it's certainly not the result that Southwark Council or local residents will want but equally, I sympathise with your position. Good luck with your letter.

fishbiscuits Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > And speaking of long-gone transport > infrastructure... Lordship Lane station. Of course > you can still see some of the old route and tunnel > in Dulwich woods. There's some lovely old photos and a painting of Lordship Lane station, the old platforms and so on here: http://www.disused-stations.org.uk/l/lordship_lane/ Further hill name etymology on this website which seems a bit more comprehensive than the link I'd found earlier https://londonist.com/2016/04/how-london-s-hills-got-their-names

richard tudor Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Thank you for posting this. > > It least we now know for a fact that Southwark > will be doing all it can to rid the Borough of > motorcars. > That's a rather dramatic overstatement, they're simply charging a small sum to park a car.

Metallic Wrote: > > Except it is not clear how they obtained the > 'destination' figures. They certainly didn't stop > every driver as they approached this area to ask: > where are you going? Yet they seem to know how > many people drive through who are onward > travellers....... You don't need to ask people. It's a mix of ANPR / CCTV data and modelling. Organisations can buy anonymised data from census, insurance, mobile phone tracking etc. Strava (the fitness tracking app & website) sell anonymised data in the form of heatmaps to cities to help them model cycle routes: https://www.strava.com/heatmap#12.50/-0.03041/51.44512/hot/ride Google Maps is a live version of basic tracking data and it's usually clever enough to work out if you're in a car, on a bus or train, cycling or walking. Uber do a public tracking service too to analyse traffic speeds: https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/14/18623149/uber-movement-average-car-speed-data-cities

Abe_froeman Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > And with the vehicles, the sports clubs, shops and > restaurants may well also disappear. > > I suspect the schools may struggle too tbh. It > will be hard to attract prospective parents from > outside the area to send their children there when > they have to travel by the public transport that > is actually available to get to those streets As rahrahrah says, everywhere this has happened (by accident or design), footfall (and spending) in shops increases, a significant percentage of vehicle traffic does disappear (replaced by foot, bicycle, scooter, car sharing, public transport) and, while any changes always require a settling in period, generally making places car-free (or "fewer cars" is an overwhelmingly positive move. It's funny isn't it - people will go to a shopping destination like Westfields, Bluewater etc, park up - and then walk around a car-free environment because it's so much more pleasant. Many many shopping streets, high streets etc in the UK are pedestrianised, it's not an unusual sight. But suggest restricting vehicles in an area where that's not currently done and all hell breaks loose as people foresee all sorts of imaginary challenges which never actually materialise.

Romnarz Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Did the Dulwich Society ask it?s 1000 plus > members before responding ? https://www.dulwichsociety.com/news/1853-our-healthy-streets-initiative What they sent out was an initial "we're supportive of making Dulwich a better place" response, but they're inviting comments on their website at the above link and also publicising three meetings.

alice Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Are there not computer programs that can model the > effects of different road closures? Yes although it's quite complex to program it and then extrapolate. The challenge is that you don't move every single vehicle from Road A to to Road B. Some of that traffic will just disappear - the car journey done by bike, on foot or just not done at all. You can see similar on the Hammersmith Bridge closure. Some of the traffic has been displaced elsewhere, some of it has simply stopped being car traffic (the bridge is still open to cyclists and pedestrians). So modelling it relies a bit on assumptions, data from previous similar schemes etc. Asking to see the actual modelling isn't necessarily helpful - there's a reason they employ statisticians, data analysts and computer programmers to do this work and then present a report of findings. There's a decent basic summary of some of the methods, modelling, assumptions etc here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_simulation

Melihoople Wrote: ------------------------------------------------- > > I am deeply concerned by the lack of public > transport & these plans. Public transport runs as normal. P4 still goes through the village; 37 can still get from Goose Green up ED Grove and past ND station; the 176, 185 etc are unaffected on LL and the 12 can still wind its tortuous way through the back streets of Peckham to the library. The council don't run the buses. They will however consider and accommodate bus routes in their road plans. Also if there's less traffic overall, bus times become much more reliable.

mayo Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Why can?t they spread these works out a bit? The engineering works are between Streatham and Peckham Rye which takes out Tulse Hill - that's the major junction handling everything from Streatham, Streatham Hill and West Norwood. Take out Tulse Hill and you've lost three entire lines.

Depends on the size and layout of the house surely? Along with how many bikes and which one(s) need to be easily accessible for daily commuting vs only used at weekends. We've got a big kitchen with hardwood floors so it's easy to store them to one side out of the way of food prep. Spares, tools, tubes etc all need ruthless control otherwise they tend to take on a life of their own and spread all by themselves. Got a small plastic box on the fridge for easy access and then a toolbox in an out-of-the-way kitchen cupboard that's too inconvenient for any food / utensils. Between us both, it seems to work. I have in the past (in a previous house) kept a bike in the bedroom but I'm not a fan of it - no matter how much you clean it, you inevitably end up with road grime inlaid into the carpet unless you put rubber mats everywhere or have hard flooring. Plus carrying them up and down stairs is a pain. When I was at uni, I used to clean my bike in the communal kitchen (it being the only place in the student flat that had lino floor). Initially, my housemates weren't happy with that but then they realised that it was the only time the kitchen floor got swept! If you go down the option of getting a shed, make sure it (and/or access to your garden) is very well secured. Takes seconds to get through the walls or roof of most sheds - securing the door simply means that the roof will get pulled off. You can get (quite expensive, but much more secure) specific bike storage units: https://www.asgardsss.co.uk/bike-cycle-storage

geh Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > so it appears the implementation of a strategy > that deliberately targets residents rather than > longer journey commuters, and says 'to hell' with > a joined up transport network is ok then? TfL run the public transport. Not Southwark Council. If you want more/better buses or a tube line in SE London, or more frequent trains from North/East Dulwich stations or introduction of Santander Cycles to the area, that's TfL. The theory is that any schemes that impact residents (such as closing roads) are done by looking at the existing (and potential new) public transport options, then working out what is possible, feasible, realistic & economically viable when combined with those. The council is basically the go-between for TfL London-wide transport and local trips transport, the main aim being to get far more local trips done by public transport, bicycle and walking than car.