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SE22_2020er

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Everything posted by SE22_2020er

  1. Rockets - you really are a very funny person (and if you don?t mind me saying, a little odd :-) ). I assume you see the irony in what you write. Now that this thread really has just become a parody of itself, fingers crossed it will collapse under the weight of its own self importance. Happy Christmas everyone
  2. James James James - what on earth do you think you're doing - are you mad?! Just because schools have broken up and you've got a few free minutes on your hands - don't get involved!!! There are several different people (I resist the urge to write "oddballs") who have posted over 1000 times on this thread alone. They have somehow managed to keep this "conversation" going for 283 pages and I fear that they're just getting going! They will ensnare you, twist your words and their tenacity knows no bounds. Honestly - for your own mental health stay away and let the madness continue unabated. Escape whilst you still have the chance - or at least ask to meet them face-to-face and watch as they drift into the shadows! :-)
  3. Readers, I woke up this morning, excited like a small child on Christmas Morn. You won't even be able to imagine my disappointment when I saw my inbox was empty. Not a jot from Rockets. I feel so let down, my hopes for a relationship have been dashed. I'm sorry Rockets that you've chosen a life of being a keyboard warrior over a relationship with me. Oh well, I'm off for a long bike ride to try and mend my broken heart. I'll pop back in the New Year to read through the next 50 odd pages of pointless hyperbole, but until then, goodbye Rockets. I will miss you. Yours, Spurned of East Dulwich Grove
  4. @Rockets - I am being serious - drop me a PM.
  5. @Rockets - not particularly keen to get into a back and forth conversation that will go nowhere (as you and I both know, and 279 pages of this thread clearly prove). Drop me a PM and let's go for a drink or a walk and talk it through face-to-face. I suspect that may give a more positive outcome rather than typing out yet another post that won't actually get anyone anywhere. Looking forward to meeting up with you.
  6. @abn - I completely agree with you. The problem is the number of car journeys. I'd completely support increased road tax. I think Congestion Charging is a good way of doing this taxing as it taxes the actual problem. I do also like the idea of electronic toll gates: "Sure you can drive along EDG at 08:00 in the morning, but we'll charge you ?5 for the pleasure of ruining the air quality for the people who live on EDG" If I was being charged ?5 each way to drop my kids to school then they'd be getting the bus on day 2!
  7. @Rockets - I cycle down EDG every day - 7 days a week. Please don't refer to my view as 'blinkered'. Every day I count the number of vehicles that are sitting in traffic at 8am in the morning and whether they are cars or vans. The overwhelming majority are cars - i.e. more than 80%. Happy to provide you the numbers that I write down every day - just send me a PM and I'll respond. Please hold back on your disingenuous comments, unhelpful.
  8. How many pages of hyperbolic drivel will it take until people actually understand that the root cause of the problem is the number of journeys that are being made by car and the number of cars that we've allowed to take over our streets and absolutely not the LTNs. The LTNs are a first step in redressing the awful balance that has been set in allowing cars to take over this city over the last 50 years. If you think that East Dulwich Grove was a car free panacea before the LTNs then go and get your head tested. There were regularly tail backs from the JAGs lights all the way back to Melbourne Grove - and yes, even on a Saturday. I used to marvel at how stupid people were to waste their weekends in cars when I cycled back to Lordship Lane from Herne Hill on a Saturday morning. Are you guys not fed up with the fact that every street is lined with cars on both sides - have you become immune to their presence or do you see them all as some sort of contemporary street art? I hope that each of you have written a strongly worded letter to each of the local schools in Dulwich (private and state) to insist that they STRONGLY discourage any child being driven to school and that they need to put in rules to stop parents driving their children to school I hope that each of you are campaigning for the congestion charge in our area - hopefully not long now after the ULEZ has been implemented. I hope that each of you are campaigning for an increased number of cycle lanes - especially one from Lordship Lane to Herne Hill. I don't buy the 'public transport is not good enough' line. I've lived in 15 countries around the world over the last 50 years and the public transport we have here in London is amongst the best. Here alone in Dulwich we have buses to each of the main rail terminals, buses to tube stations, a train line directly into one of the major UK train terminals. If my 80 year old parents can cycle here in London then a damn sight more of the rest of you can and should. The problem is pure and simply that there are too many cars and now is the time to redress the balance in favour of other means of transport - be that walking, cycling, scooters, taxis, Ubers and buses. ps @Alice - Pink is persuasive
  9. @Spartacus - yes, but the effect of the bad ones is shockingly disproportionate. Just because everyone loves a good hyperbolic statistic: Globally: 1. There are 1.35 million road deaths every year 2. Road deaths are the eighth highest cause of death for people of all ages 3. Road deaths are the number one killer of those between the ages of 5-29. 4. Pedestrians, cyclists and motorcyclists make up more than half of all road deaths (these road users are collectively known as vulnerable road users). (https://www.brake.org.uk/get-involved/take-action/mybrake/knowledge-centre/global-road-safety)
  10. @CPR Dave - are you taking the p**s or actually being serious?! "Cyclists are most often the biggest menace". I can assure the reason I don't let my young children play in front of our house is the likely threat of being killed by a driver... ...not a cyclist. So, I guess, if you ignore: 1. The pollution that cars cause (I think there is another thread about 250 pages long about this - so best not go into detail here), 2. The fact that they kill c2000 people in the UK per year 3. The fact that they injure c150,000 people in the UK per year 4. The fact that every single road is given over them to park along on both sides - when did you last see a road without cars? 5. The traffic queues that they cause. Apart from that I guess bikes are the biggest menace!!! Bangs head repeatedly on desk :-)
  11. @Heartblock - I'm all over this too (your bike lane suggestion). It's a great idea - why don't you start an on-line petition - I'm sure you'll get a lot of support and I'll certainly sign it straight away. A dedicated cycle lane (without parked cars) from Lordship lane, along EDG (all the way to Herne Hill) and also along the short stretch of Townley onto Calton Avenue and into the village is something that I'm sure will attract huge support. I think it should certainly need to be both ways to make it fully effective. Do you know who is the right councillor for these streets? I think also a letter to our MP would also be a good idea. I wrote to her, the traffic department and also James McAsh about 12 months ago for this, but you're right - it needs a really concerted effort from multiple people. I've never had any response back on the bike locker I requested for our road - a good prompt to chase up on it.
  12. Hey Heartblock, I think you?ve misjudged my note. My point is that I believe we need to do something about the volume of polluting traffic on EDG and an effective way to do this (and certainly more than posting here) is if we come together collectively and protest directly to the drivers who are causing the pollution so that they think about whether their journey is indeed necessary and more important than our children lungs. Are you in? Of course if work precludes doing this at 8am in the morning then let?s work out a time which is better for us both.
  13. Heartblock. The problem that you are highlighting on EDG is an increase in pollution. As someone who cycles along EDG from Lordship Lane at least twice a day I concur that the pollution from diesel cars and vans is unpleasant so I hope you are looking forward to the ULEZ in October as much as I am. I would prefer you to please focus on the root cause of the pollution which is the traffic caused by the car and van drivers rather than the LTNs which actually serve to reduce the volume of traffic and hence the pollution. I can only speak from my perspective which is that the LTNs have encouraged my family and I to stop driving and cycle instead. I no longer drive my children anywhere as it is now safe for them to cycle. I am sure that you share my anger that it has taken this long for the powers-that-be to redress the balance of the increase in traffic over the last 20 years in favour of non-polluting traffic. We need to focus on stopping people driving so much. I have offered before, but if you would like to we could team up and start protesting along EDG each week about the unnecessary car journeys. Perhaps every week morning when the school run is on? We could also club together to buy a banner and ask Alleyns if we could put it up outside their school on the railings? Thoughts?
  14. Erm - what about the 176 bus, quick walk/scoot along Greendale to Charter (or even the 37 bus) and there are some lovely cafes to sit in nearby and wait rather than have your kids sit in a car? You may have seen a couple of other threads about reducing traffic in East Dulwich :-) :-)
  15. Agreed @Northernmonkey - the cycling routes in East Dulwich, whilst not perfect, have improved amazingly since the LTNs. My children can now cycle safely along Melbourne Grove (North and South) through to Oglander and then onto Rye Lane and along the old canal into Waterloo - it's a great quiet route in case anyone doesn't know it. And going the other way, they can now cycle safely along Melbourne Grove Hillsborough, Townley, Calton, through the village, Turney, Burbage and then to Herne Hill. Like Heartblock, I would love to see a proper cycle lane throughout the length of EDG from Lordship Lane to Herne Hill. It would mean taking out quite a chunk of space for car parking which I suspect could meet quite some opposition from those who live on EDG and nearby streets which would have to accommodate the displaced parking. But clearly there is the demand for this as per Heartblock's observations of people being forced to cycle on the pavements and middle of the road. Does anyone know how to support the EDG Cycle lane proposal/investigation?
  16. @sidhu - great post! Thank you for taking the time to articulate your views so clearly. Big thumbs up from me
  17. I really don?t like the personal nature that this tread takes - Raebern is more than allowed to have his/her views as are all of you, but everyone who has written today, please re-read what you?ve written and consider whether your posts are well balanced and likely to result in a positive discussion or whether you just want to live in your own echo chamber. It?s absolutely fine for other people to have different views than you. Personally, I think that rockets, heartblock et al. are completely misguided and cannot see the bigger picture - and I do wonder why you chaps spend your time as keyboard warriors rather than getting out there with signs to ask people to turn off their engines whilst they queue along EDG. Oh and my view is that the queues along EDG have not changed over the last 5 years and this is coming from someone who cycles along the road twice a day. Why are you people not angry at the car drivers making unnecessary car journeys and actually producing the pollution rather than a labour council trying finally to unwind the relentless invasion of our communities by cars over the last 30years. Thank the lord that we?ve got the ULEZ and probably the congestion charge coming in soon. I am very supportive of the LTNs and my perception is seeing the significant switch to cycling that I have seen. I am thrilled that I have sold my car and made the commitment to either cycling, using a car club or public transport when I need to travel. This is because of the LTNs that I have done this. Anyway, I?m going to leave you chaps to your echo chamber so you can continue in the same vein making the same point ad infinitum, only pausing to shout down people with views that are different to yours. But in the meantime, before I flounce off - can I please ask you to write to your councillors and MPs to ask them to support the removal of the parking on EDG and replace it with a segregated cycle lane (assuming you can find the time between your endless posts!)
  18. Well said Raeburn. As ever, I am sure that everyone on this chat wants the same thing which is a significant reduction in car usage. I?m thrilled to be living somewhere that has a council that is doing an awful lot to reach these aims. I don?t think anyone can deny that there has been a significant uptake in cycling over the last few months. Yes, I think we can all be critical of how we have all allowed the normalisation of travelling by cars over the last 20years but finally we seem to be waking up to the fact that there is a better way to live in a city. And I?m thrilled about that. My personal view is that the LTNs are a step on this journey to reshape how we live and rebalance the prioritisation away from cars which has insidiously become the norm over the last 30years that I?ve lived here. From a micro planning perspective, I would love to see the removal of parking along EDG and a segregated cycle lane from lordship lane to Herne Hill to give a good E-W corridor for people to cycle rather than drive.
  19. Would it not be a better idea for people protesting against the LTNs to focus their attention on: 1. Protesting against the additional 110,080,000km driven per year on roads just in Southwark in the 6 years between 2013 and 2019 which is when we have published statistics. I'm not great with numbers, but 110 million kilometres is a long way! and then when you've finished protesting about this increase in traffic, which brought the total to 843,200,000 million KM in 2019 in Southwark alone (and folks - note that is just Southwark) then please 2. Please protest about drivers who sit idle in the traffic jams they've made choking up the lungs of the their fellow Southwark residents. Maybe everyone who has posted on this thread would be willing to offer a couple of hours of their time each week to stand on East Dulwich Grove and hold a placard asking people to turn off their engines. This would be an effective way to make a difference. If anyone wants to PM me, I will start this rota - and I'm happy to take the first shift. I just cannot fathom why we're all protesting against the wrong thing here people. I have not seen a dissenting voice from anyone who wants to reduce traffic (unless I've missed some posts from people saying that they want to see more car journeys and more pollution - apologies if I have). That means that we need to work together to reduce car journeys and get people out of their cars and if one tool to do this is by making it more attractive to cycle then this is a good thing. At my childrens' school, there used to be 1 or 2 bikes in the playground 1 year ago - now there are over a hundred every day. Whether you like it or not, the LTNs are making a difference in how people travel. If you want to do something positive to reduce traffic on EDG, Underhill Road, Croxted Road etc then please PM me and let's start positively protesting.
  20. Hi Chick (somehow it seems wrong writing that! :-) ), I think the point is not to tax more but to tax differently. So if you use your car once every month then you should pay less than someone who uses it every day. Thereby, you can actually drive peoples' behaviour by making them pay more for consuming/polluting more. This is why the congestion charge has been successful - "Sure you can drive in central London and pollute the air we breathe, but you need to pay for the privilege to do so". We've completely stopped driving and now just use public transport and cycle in our family because we couldn't afford to keep our car once ULEZ comes in (it was diesel) so we sold it at the beginning of the year before it came worthless. I'm probably the only person on this thread keeping my fingers crossed that congestion charging is introduced across London, but I personally think that it's right that people pay for what they use/pollute.
  21. Foxy, Not sure that I agree with your comments - over the last 30 years of cycling, I've been fined as a cyclist on 2 occasions (admittedly I've also had points on my license twice as well!) As with everything in life, you get a wide range of people. Excellent and terrible car drivers, excellent and terrible cyclists. Not sure putting every category in a single amorphous bucket is really that helpful. I hope that if we met you'd think me as being a very responsible cyclist as I'm sure I'd find you a most well mannered, proficient driver :-). Happy Easter!
  22. Hi Foxy, Sadly, it seems that a lot of car drivers also don't need steering wheels as they drive along looking at 'their frigging mobile phones'. Of course no-one should be using a mobile phone at all when driving or cycling, but it's the car drivers who use their phones that worry me - a tonne of metal moving at 20-30MPH is going to cause a lot of damage when it hits something/someone. As a cyclist and occasional driver, I would welcome segregated lanes. I've been knocked off my bike from people opening their car doors on to me and also have been over the top of a car when it turned right across my path before. Hopefully all of the car tax I pay can be used to pay for them :-)
  23. @Rockets - several questions that you've asked me there. I'm happy to reply to them but I'm afraid that I'm not going to get into a back-and-forth type conversation with you as I have a young family and don't have the time (or inclination) to post frequently. However, if you'd like to PM me, perhaps we could agree to meet up and have a socially distanced walk to set the world to rights when things open up. Shipping and tax: I'm not aware of the statistics showing 1 cargo trip producing more pollution than all cars in a single country (and you've not given a timescale for the car pollution and the size of the country - (so if 1 nanosecond's car journey in The Vatican City , then you're probably right, and if 1 years worth of car journeys in the USA then I suspect you're probably wrong). But in essence yes - I believe that all pollution should be taxed in order to put a price on it and then be able to control it, be it global shipping or local cars. Public Transport I don't think that I acknowledged that public transport needs improving, please do not interpret my words and play them back to me as a 'truth'. I don't find that acceptable and I would ask you to please respect that. I can only speak for myself but I find public transport actually OK. Of course, it can always be improved. In the same way I would love to improve the volume of homework that my children do, but I accept that the volume that they do is acceptable! Having lived in a lot of different cities around the world, the public transport that we have in London and also in East Dulwich is better than any of the cities that I've lived in across Asia, South America, North America and Africa. The different types of transport that I use in order to avoid owning a car are: 1. Walking 2. Bus 3. Cycling 4. Uber 5. Train 6. Car club 7. Boris bikes/equivalent when they are available I would like to see more of all of these but please don't lose the fact of how lucky we are to have many different options of transport. Above all, I would like to see better car sharing rather than individual car ownership, but of course understand the difficulties in that. Above all, and of course I am biased as per my note above, I would like to see segregated bike lanes throughout our area to further tempt people out of their cars. I'd start by putting in a cycle lane along East Dulwich Grove from Lordship Lane to Herne Hill if I could be the mayor for a day. LTNs: My view (and again, I suspect different to your view - but that is OK for me to have a different view) is that LTNs are a positive change. It is the volume of unnecessary car journeys that need to change here and cars are the easiest way to get around hence if (and I say if) we want to reduce the volume of journeys then a barrier, financial or otherwise, needs to be put in place to deter car journeys. However, I find it intensely frustrating that we don't have a baseline measurement of pre and post traffic volumes albeit if pre LTN traffic was measured in a lockdown it would be meaningless. I travel along EDG 4 times a day and subjectively I see the traffic being better than I remember in the bad old days when I drove my children to school and used to sit in traffic along EDG. Likewise, I can see the opposing view that sees worse traffic volumes. In the same way I would love to see the variation in traffic along Lordship Lane over time. I remember bemoaning about the volume of traffic on the lane 15 years ago. In order to change something, you must measure it first. Means tested road pricing I like your proposal of means-tested road pricing, but I doubt the ability for it to be implemented efficiently and successfully, hence my comment that "no proposal will ever be perfect, but hopefully would be better than the status quo'. I appreciate that my response may well prompt further questions from you, but please don't be disappointed or draw any conclusions if I choose not to respond. I've not asked you questions in response so as to not make a demand on your time.
  24. Hi Penguin68 To your question of whether this is what I'm looking for, then yes. My personal desire is to see a lot less cars on the road (I ought to declare an interest that I am a keen cyclist and try and avoid car travel wherever possible) and specifically those that pollute more significantly. Therefore, differential taxation for those who pollute via a weighted congestion charge or ULEZ is in my opinion the best way to do this. I expect that we'll see the price and pollution thresholds for the ULEZ to be ratcheted over the coming years. I think that this is a good thing I'd be keen to understand what practical alternative you'd put in place (assuming that something needs to be done!) As to your question of wood burning stoves, I would put them in the category of things that probably should be banned in metropolitan areas, unless there is a real need for people to have them that I don't understand? I don't agree with your argument that taxing pollution leads to a concept that polluting is acceptable. I do agree that it is obviously easier for wealthy people to pay for the tax but if that results in 'the wealthy' being taxed more to provide better public transport then I am broadly in support of it. No proposal will ever be perfect, but hopefully would be better than the status quo, and it's a case of choosing the one that has the best impact over the others.
  25. Bring on the extension of the congestion charge as soon as we've got the ULEZ installed. Sure you can pollute the streets by driving if you want to, but you have to pay for it. Use the money raised to install cycle lanes and improve public transport. Thereby, the polluters pay for the damage that they are causing and they themselves tip the scales to more people using public transport and active travel.
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