exdulwicher

Taxation is a greater good type arrangement. If everyone chips in a bit according to their means then there's a pot of money to benefit everyone with shared services. But then there are aspects of life which don't have any sort of greater good and indeed inflict significant harm on society. Smoking being a classic one where it's reasonable for the smoker to bear some of the additional costs that they are inflicting onto society as well as have some restrictions put on where they can "enjoy" their habit to protect others. Same with driving/parking - no-one (other than the owner) benefits from their private property being left on public space or given unrestricted access due to the significant negative externalities such as noise, pollution, road danger etc imposed on everyone whether they drive or not so it seems appropriate to charge extra for that and/or put some restrictions on it, no? The garden waste one is an interesting middle ground - why should everyone pay towards a service that only some use when there is no greater good aspect to it? There's no societal benefit to charging everyone for it, it's solely personal. So yes, someone with a garden should pay extra for the service that they (and they alone) benefit from.

Well since road upkeep is paid for by the council, the bulk of it comes from council tax. And if you're going down the wrong-in-so-many-ways "they don't pay road tax" argument, I assume you'll also be having a go at emergency services vehicles, agricultural vehicles, most electric vehicles, mobility scooters, historic vehicles and vehicles that are used by organisations providing transport for disabled people which are all exempt from VED.

https://www.como.org.uk/shared-cars/overview-and-benefits Scroll down, it's all there and there's access to all the reports from the last few years plus further links to the existing operators.

They sort of are and the Superloop is coming to outer London soon but the problem in London is that you can't fit any more onto the roads. That's part of the reason they removed some services into central London or through London and out the other side (requiring a change midway although the Hopper fare means there's no additional charge), it's because the sheer number of buses going into places like Oxford Street, Strand, Regent Street etc was causing congestion in and of itself. And any ideas about putting in 24/7 bus lanes gets met with howls of outrage and "what about the parking?" / "what about the elderly?", the result being there's a patchwork of confusing lanes that are sometimes in operation and sometimes not - and the times when they're needed for fast bus travel is also the times when everyone wants to park in them to access the shops. All of this - the "penalising car owners", LTNs, CPZ, bus lanes, ULEZ etc has to work together. None of them, on their own, are the answer. They are all an answer, but none of them work to anything like their full potential unless backed up with complementary measures. If you just have ULEZ then everyone (OK *most people*) simply swap to a compliant vehicle and carry on driving, which solves nothing. If you have free/unrestricted parking, people will carry on driving cos it's cheap and convenient. The challenge is that all of this is being introduced in a relatively short timeframe as our glorious leaders have very gradually come to the realisation that you can't just keep filling the roads with cars - if they'd actually have started this process 20+ years ago the initial pain of it now wouldn't be nearly as bad.

On average, each car club vehicle in the UK replaced 22 private cars. Shared mobility (be that bikes, scooters or cars) is absolutely the way forward and if you can use a car on a pay-per-use basis, it frees people from the sunk costs of owning a car like insurance, depreciation etc and makes people think much more about their journeys. You need something like CPZ and/or ULEZ to start that transition as well otherwise, even if there's an LTN in place, people will often tend to hang onto their cars "just in case" - even if they're using it less. And CPZ also allows the council to create more specific parking bays for car club parking - one of the major problems with them at the moment is the limited number of parking spots.

It's not trolling at all, it goes back to the central point of OD "being fully in favour of reducing car use" while suggesting stuff that is: a) not in Southwark council's power or responsibility b) not practical c) might be workable given sufficient time/funding which isn't (yet) available - Electric buses - yes they're coming but every local authority wants them, there's a limited supply of them and there is not the funding to buy them all. It's a process which will be played out over the next 5+ years to replace the existing fleet. - ULEZ - excellent, good to see support for it but that is PART of the bigger picture. Replacing every car on the road currently with an electric vehicle solves "pollution at tailpipe" issues; it does not solve parking, congestion, road danger, tyre and brake particulates... - banning all petrol engine cars in London is not practical and would requires billions in scrappage scheme - it's quicker, cheaper and easier to just restrict journeys of ALL cars. - BBQs/wood burners - nothing to do with Southwark Council, TfL or transport, probably mostly unworkable and a classic bit of whataboutery - look at the problem OVER THERE ->>>

Nope! It was one of several conditions and caveats lumped onto TfL in various rounds of funding from central Government including such unworkable rubbish as "looking again at driverless options for the Tube". Government stipulated that the ULEZ expansion (which by the way was already on the cards and going to happen anyway) should be brought forward. https://www.transportxtra.com/publications/local-transport-today/news/71906/tfl-to-get-1-2bn-from-government-in-long-term-settlement/ Same with LTNs - it's a Government policy, funded by central Government and then they sit back and let the (mostly Labour) councils deal with the fallout because it suits their political narrative. They know full well that it'll meet resistance and opposition so it's made out to be the fault of the council (or TfL, either works from a political point of view). Transport should be a cross-party cooperation and it isn't at all, it's a political football (much like the NHS) where Government can (for example) de-fund the buses then blame the councils for failing to provide a service or cut rail reform funding then blame Network Rail and the Train Operating Companies. It's interesting that the councils opposed to ULEZ expansion who have brought the current judicial review (Bexley, Bromley, Harrow, Hillingdon and Surrey) are all Conservative controlled councils and they all have appalling records on active travel and EV charging installation in particular, they're the ones that ripped out all their LTNs within weeks of them being put in - basically they're the ones who have done nothing to promote or enable less polluting methods of transport and now they're kicking off going "it'll hurt the poor who depend on cars..." Well yes, you're the councils that have done nothing to enable any other mode of transport. And also, you're arguing against a direct instruction from Conservative central Government. And now you're throwing hundreds of thousands of pounds at a judicial review which will come back and say "probably not perfect but yes, it can happen" - much like all the anti-LTN judicial reviews that people got conned into donating for by the various One... groups that brought the reviews. CPZ isn't quite the same but it's in TfL's London-wide Transport Plan, it's in all the borough transport plans and occasionally it'll get its own "chapter" like Lambeth's flagship Kerbside Strategy which ties into the overall transport plan. The rollout is slightly more dependent on the councils as it'll have to fit in with stuff like roadworks, utilities and so on. Also CPZ works best alongside active travel and bus priority schemes, they're very much complementary.

I've had a decent amount of credit in the past for picking up badly parked bikes and riding them a short distance to a parking bay or safe parking area. You get a £1 credit for doing that or a free ride (depending on whether you're using a Ride Pass or not).

And since that is 10+ years away at best, your solution is simply to do nothing until then? This is all just textbook "retain the status quo", kick the can down the road, make it someone else's problem while confidently claiming to support measures to reduce car use knowing that nothing you suggest is going to happen in a meaningful timeframe. It's the One... playbook (derived directly from climate change denial) of wanting a perfect solution that disadvantages no-one, is completely equitable to all, receives 100% approval, and requires that no-one really changes anything because it'll all be dealt with for us. Policy perfectionism. Since you can never have a perfect policy, it's all just pie in the sky. If road pricing were to come onto the political agenda tomorrow, there'd be some further reason why that is not the answer. We've seen it with ULEZ expansion - oh it's sort of the right thing to do but not now because we're in a cost-of-living crisis / oh we support the principle but what about the poor/elderly/disabled/shift workers/those that can't afford a new car/those that rely on their older car...

Exactly - you've answered your own point! THEY ARE DRIVEN. They are driven because the roads are too busy and dangerous to allow them free rein to walk and cycle - at least that is the major perception. And that adds to the congestion and then everyone looks at the traffic and goes "oh, it's far too dangerous to walk, we'll drive..." Vast amounts of time and effort are tied up in "the school run" -it's been commented on these pages endlessly because it is well known that the sheer number of schools in the area is a major factor in the traffic. You can reduce that substantially if you have cycle lanes, LTNs, school streets etc providing a safe alternative to the car. It's not ableist at all, it's the exact opposite - it's enabling people who cannot drive to travel independently, saving parents money and time on "doing the school run". Same applies to all non-drivers. My grandfather was cycling to and from the shops, church, Dr's etc long after he'd given up driving as his eyesight was too poor to drive. What allowed him to do that was a reasonable quality shared path from his house into the village where he lived (this was outside London). Without that provision, he'd have been utterly reliant on a neighbour driving him. With that provision, he remained independent right til the end. Now I know that not everyone is in that position but you at least provide the option for those that can. It's the exact opposite of "ableist" and frankly that's just a lazy and dismissive insult.

There's also a large swathe of people that can't drive. Anyone under the age of 17 for starters. Some elderly and disabled as well - "the disabled" covers a huge range of society and people so trying to use "what about the disabled?!" as some sort of catch-all justification for an anti-LTN stance is ridiculous. Either way, everyone benefits from reductions in private vehicle usage.

It's both. It's a stick to discourage car use but at the same time it is a carrot to enable and encourage active travel and P/T use. 1) no-one is being TOLD to give up anything. Streets remain accessible by car. 2) people are being supplied with alternatives - it's now easier and more pleasant to walk and cycle and the buses and trains that were there before still exist now.

No, you want to tie everyone and everything up in hyper micro scrutiny of active travel schemes and argue interminably about individual sensors and 15-min traffic counts. It doesn't work like that - it's at the macro level that you see the effects most clearly and all the evidence at a macro level for every city that's implemented these sort of measures is that they work. Problems arise when you don't go far enough - the more exemptions and caveats that you put in, the less well the system works. Paris for example has achieved a 40% reduction in traffic and a 45% decrease in air pollution in less than 10 years thanks entirely to it's active travel policies.

Other way around. Reduce the cars first - you HAVE to do it that way around because if you have unrestricted car use, very few people are going to cycle because it's unpleasant and dangerous. Same with walking; it's unpleasant, dangerous and inconvenient to be walking along side heavy traffic, waiting for ages to cross at traffic lights etc. If you try and add more buses into the existing network, you end up with more congestion because the buses are trying to compete for road space with the existing vehicle traffic. You have to reduce traffic first and you start by doing it on the residential streets because that's the easiest option. Reduce that and you end up with fewer vehicles coming out of side roads (therefore less congestion at junctions) and once you've done that you can start on more interventions along main roads. There it usually has to be reallocation of road space towards bus lanes and cycle lanes rather than actual modal filters (although bus gates work well). Remove (or at least significantly reduce) vehicles and cycling, walking, scooting, mobility scooting etc becomes easier, more pleasant and more convenient so more people do it. Reduce car usage on main roads and it becomes a lot easier to re-purpose parking spaces for bus lanes or to fit more buses in anyway and they can travel more quickly which makes bus travel more of an option. But none of that works if you haven't first removed/reduced private car use.

The roadworks permit was granted by Lambeth (as it's in their borough), the applicant was TfL. The basic permit says "highways repair and maintenance" scheduled to last until 6th July.

Excellent, we've almost got a full house of anti-cyclist bingo! Rather predictably, that's exactly where this thread has ended up... Do we move onto tH3y DoNt PaY R0ad TaX!!! next? https://twitter.com/AdamBronkhorst/status/1585987868593307648?t=BzXBgLeIaG0dH8xBGbjUMA&s=19 There's about a million uninsured vehicles on the road and a quick look round the area will show you plenty of parked vehicles on pavements which means they had to be driven on pavements to get there... It's not a "cyclist only" issue by any means - we could add the vast amounts of general pavement clutter like bins, signage, poor paving surfaces etc into the mix as well. Although on the plus side at least they're not moving!

Firstly, it's no more or less prevalent than the countless instances of lawbreaking by drivers (motorists?) which includes driving and parking on the pavement as well as speeding, mobile phone use etc but it's telling that you've only chosen to focus on e-bikes specifically. Some of it is so harmless that it's not even worth mentioning - I picked up a Lime bike from it's (actually very well parked) pavement location a few days ago, got on it and rode 10m across the pavement to the road. No pedestrians were "nearly killed", no old grannies sent diving for cover. No car drivers were forced to swerve violently to avoid CERTAIN DEATH as I joined the road. Most of the illegal e-bikes around the place are the ones being ridden by UberEats / Deliveroo. Basically MTBs with motors and batteries strapped to them, you can buy the kits online. The bikes are already illegal for use so the distinction between pavement and road seems even more arbitrary but society seems to want fast food delivered in 20 mins from moment of order... The gig-economy workers delivering that food are not going to be waiting at red lights - they'll be up and down pavements, they'll ride right to your door - because they know if it's not there in time, they won't get paid. I'm not really justifying their actions but you're not going to stop it with "enforcement", you need to change the whole structure of gig economy and ultra-fast food deliveries. Also it's generally in their interests not to hit anyone or anything cos the food will get spoiled and/or the delivery will be late and they won't get paid. There are also so many of them that enforcement in terms of stopping and fining would be like swatting ants. You need to go after the companies that offer this service and society needs to understand that if it wants a Big Mac in 15 mins, there's going to be some 'creative' cycling to get it to you. If you want strictly law-abiding riding then the delivery window needs to go out to 1hr. As I said further up, pavement cycling is more or less decriminalised - the reasons are: - police resources - yes you could do a blitz but then the police get told off (usually by the very people complaining about pavement cycling) that they're not out catching "real criminals". - confusion over where it is and isn't allowed; there are so may bits of "shared use" footpath / cyclepath, so many instances where drivers are allowed to cross the pavement (driveways) and so many "uncertain" areas that it gets messy quickly with what is and isn't allowed. See [url=https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/mar/02/pedestrian-jailed-manslaughter-cyclist-fall-car-huntingdon]the recent case of manslaughter where a pedestrian caused a cyclist to fall into the path of traffic[/url] - not even the council were able to categorically say that the area was a shared use path although in the end it was decided that it was. - kids (accompanied or not) are "allowed" to ride on pavements, again there are certain caveats but that (more or less) gives parents a green light to ride (considerately) with them. It's not an unfortunate one off, but critically it's usually no more than a mild irritant. The hospitals are not full of dying pedestrians, their only epitaph a Deliveroo motif on their forehead. The pavements are not overrun with some sort of Charge of the E-bike Brigade. 🤷 I saw an SUV driver get bored of waiting at the Townley Road lights the other day and he drove up onto the pavement to undercut the traffic and turn left into Calton Avenue. Have others suffered this abusive use of 4x4s or is this (I sincerely hope) a one-off of thoughtlessness, or indeed even recklessness?

It's gone up everywhere. But by less inside the LTNs than outside. I never said it wasn't. That's the control group, you can pretty much assume (with various caveats) that with no interventions, that's what would happen "globally" (ie across the whole area of study) without an intervention. So your "do nothing" scenario is that driving would increase by 0.6km / day average and car ownership would increase by 10% over that time period. Your "intervention" scenario (is introducing an LTN) is that the pattern, instead of following the control group trend, has shown a decrease in average daily km and a smaller increase in car ownership. Outcome (again with caveats) - if you'd have done nothing across the whole area, driving and car ownership everywhere would have increased by the same metric. Also overall vehicle mileage is down, ie overall fewer km being driven.

Other way around. It's not an increase outside LTNs, it's a decrease inside. This applies across all sorts of studies - you have one control group where you have no interventions and one test group where you put in place an intervention. Could be an LTN, it could equally well be something like having 2 groups of mice and you give one group a growth hormone. After a while you look at your intervention; the control group is broadly "this is what would have happened to everyone without the intervention", the test group is " here is what happened with an intervention". Outside LTNs, with no restriction on driving, people continue to drive. Inside LTNs, where driving is restricted in some way and alternatives like walking and cycling made easier, more convenient, people gradually shift behaviour. None of this is rocket science. Unlike your version (let's call it Rockets science...) which is wrong.

He's doing more political stuff at the moment, I think he was over in Washington on the recent Sunak / Biden meeting which (I'm just guessing here) is probably of more interest to more people than a couple of LTNs in Dulwich... This is fascinating on a number of levels. Firstly it's the one Aldred / Westminster study you haven't immediately panned as being biased, flawed, manipulated, paid for by Big Cycling... and I suspect that's because you think it's negative towards LTNs. Interesting how any study that's positive about them immediately gets slated but anything negative is held up as the epitome of perfect research... More fascinating though is how you have completely misinterpreted it. It doesn't need "spinning in support of LTNs", it's already supportive! I'm honestly not sure here if you're deliberately trolling, trying to throw out a hook (I was in two minds as to whether or not to even bother replying...) or actually completely misreading, misinterpreting and misrepresenting everything about the study. Read it in detail: https://findingspress.org/article/75470-the-impact-of-2020-low-traffic-neighbourhoods-on-levels-of-car-van-driving-among-residents-findings-from-lambeth-london-uk Have a look at the methodology and what it's actually looking at, why they selected those 4 LTNs (hint - you need CPZ data from the control zones) and understand what a "control" actually is in scientific terms. The graphs within it show that, pre-LTN, the control zones and what would later become LTNs were the same in terms of km driven. Then the LTNs were implemented in June - September 2020 and stayed there. After that, there has been a gradual divergence in driving, with those INSIDE the LTN driving less and those OUTSIDE the LTN mostly continuing to drive the same or slightly more than before. This isn't to do with circuitous routes around them, it's residential data. Where you make it safer, more convenient etc to walk / cycle, people do that more. Where no such interventions are introduced, people stick with their cars. As an aside, that's all the more reason your constant "Dulwich has poor PTAL" (with the unwritten implication that therefore everyone relies on cars and we shouldn't do anything to discourage that) is so wrong - such a car-dominated place is the absolute perfect area to begin with introducing measures to reduce car-dependency! The study finishes by saying this: (my bold) In summary, our findings suggest that residents in Lambeth started driving less once their area became an LTN. Notably, our outcome measure captures total past-year driving, including trips that the Lambeth LTNs are less likely to impact (e.g., inter-city trips, or travel outside London). It is plausible that for shorter and more local trips the relative decrease in LTN residents’ driving would be greater than the estimated 6% decrease in total past-year driving. This suggests that, in Lambeth and other similar inner-city areas, widespread roll-out of LTNs could make an important contribution towards reducing how much residents drive, and towards reducing local volumes of motor traffic. It's not a huge wide-ranging study, it's slightly limited in where you can do it because you need CPZ data from pre- and post-Covid alongside the LTN data and it needs clearing up to remove (eg) someone who bought a brand new car in 2020 which is not subject to MOT for 3 years as well as people who have moved into or out of the area and so on but there's still a substantial set of data to give a statistically meaningful result. Once there's an LTN, people drive less because it's easier and more pleasant to walk, cycle, scoot etc. All the stuff about people within LTNs driving much further to get from one side to the other is not true; overall they are driving less, the vehicle mileage data shows that. From the paper: This suggests that the decrease in driving observed inside the LTNs was not simply due to ‘residential self-selection’, whereby households that drove a lot had left the LTNs and/or households that drove less had moved in. Instead, it indicates that existing residents were changing their behaviour and starting to drive less. This tallies with numerous other studies worldwide on similar such interventions. What the paper is saying is: LTNs work to reduce driving overall, we need more of them. From here I guess we have several options. You can admit you've misread / misunderstood that paper. You can double down on your own interpretation of it. Or you can go back to the standard rhetoric that as Rachel Aldred is one of the authors it must be biased, flawed, manipulated, a pack of lies, too small a study to mean anything, it might have worked in Lambeth but it doesn't work in Southwark...

The store layout there is terrible, it's almost an open invite for shoplifting with the tills as far from the door as that. That's another crime that's regarded as "petty" - police won't take an interest in it unless it's really high value or incredibly persistent and in many cases store staff are told not to even bother challenging it due to the risk of violence against them. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/jun/06/im-burnt-out-from-dealing-with-shoplifters-in-our-london-store

Depends on the bike. Normal pedal-assist e-bikes (which includes Lime etc) are treated in law as a bicycle so they can go everywhere a bike can. "Other" electric bikes which include the majority of those contraptions being ridden by UberEat/Deliveroo etc are already either illegal anyway or they require tax and registration in which case they're treated as electric mopeds and they can't use cycle lanes. And pavement riding is more or less decriminalised for various reasons.

There are plenty of videos of ambulances stuck in solid queues of traffic... You do know that the emergency services are statutory consultees on road closures, yes? That's for all events - the Coronation & Jubilee street parties, Brockwell/Peckham/Dulwich Parks events, bigger things like London Marathon & RideLondon, smaller things like the market on North Cross Road and even more ad-hoc things like demos which may not necessarily be known about but which have fall back options in place. It's all in there along with response plans, evacuation, safety and emergency protocols for the event itself, access routes... Normally you find that response times are quicker during such events. It's a lot easier for a crowd of people to move to the side than it is for a bunch of cars.

We get to move the whole conversation onto Dulwich Park next week cos it's that Pub in the Park thing at the weekend. https://www.pubintheparkuk.com/dulwich Those ticket prices... 😳

Because the council manage issues like public safety, licensing, road closures, noise control, liaison with partners/sponsors/emergency services. The land is owned and managed by the council and "community" is part of the council's remit. I'm (marginally) less bothered by the rubbish issue (bear with me!) because after an event the park usually gets blitzed completely so *everything* gets tidied up. It's the low level "background" littering which happens constantly that gets ignored because it's "only" a couple of crisps packets or a drinks can... There was a festival on at Brockwell Park as well on Sunday although I only saw some of the aftermath of people leaving the area. Lot of police and stewards around, it all seemed relatively in control. Didn't see what the park looked like though.