Better walking conditions on Lordship Lane

[Guest]

Southwark Council have commissioned national charity Living Streets to advise them how Lordship Lane (from Goose Green to the Library) could be improved for pedestrians.

In early discussions with shoppers, residents and retailers, certain issues have come up again and again:

*Narrow, cluttered pavements

*No safe crossing points between Iceland and Goose Green

*Crossing East Dulwich Grove is dangerous

*Possibility of pedestrianising part of North Cross Road for a proper Saturday market

*Improving crossing at the Goose Green roundabout.

What do you think are the key issues? If this is important to you, please post stuff here, but also try to come along to one of the two events we're running - the Saturday morning walkabout should interesting, if only in trying to find space on the footways for a group of us to stop and talk...

We are running two events - a meeting and a walk - to ask local people what they think. Posters are up in shops on Lordship Lane, but the details are:

A Meeting at Dulwich Grove United Reformed Church Hall (opposite Dulwich Hospital) at 7pm on Wednesday 31st January

A Walk on Lordship Lane, starting from the same venue at 11am on Saturday 3rd February.

If you would like to see improvememnts to your walking experience on Lordship Lane, please come along. You can contact me direct for more info on 01539 738610 (I know this isn't a London number, but I am a proper south east London boy, and shopped on Lordship Lane every Saturday for ten years until recently).

[Joe likes dinner]

Can extra pressure also be put on the manager / landlord of HSBC to sort out their drains which, even on the dryest of days covers both the pavement and my soon-to-be high-collared pink, White Stuff cotton pullover in stinksome rooftop effluent!

I have been sure to make a point of it every time I go in, but seems to be of little avail!

Has anyone else had any response / joy in getting this matter seen to?

[Ko]

Pedestranised Northcross Rd market would be fantastic.

Lordship Lane would be better if:

- there was less rubbish

- more trees were planted especially between the police station and library

- need crossing by Somerfield

- trees keep being removed - fair enough if it is because the pavement is too really too narrow but trees should be replaced somewhere else along Lordship Lane. There was a drive by one of the councillors to get more tress on LL a year or so ago but that has been cancelled out by the number of trees that have gone missing recently!

- REALLY IMPORTANT: The roads leading off Lordship Lane and used as connections to other main roads should be better lighted: eg Whateley Road and Northcross Road are the main roads used to connect LL to Barry Road and the large residential area there (eg Friern, Landells, Upland, Underhiill Roads). You need to feel safe walking home from LL at night and in the winter but as soon as you come off LL the lighting is appalling.

[beatnic]

There definitely needs to be a crossing in the stretch by Somerfield.

And how about people drive a little slower?

[Quaywe]

- More trees

- Traffic lights (with ped crossing) at juntion of ED Grove and Lordship Lane. This will also allow better access for the #37 bus to get in and out of that road as it's a tight turn.

- Spruce up the footpaths with cobblestones like (or similar to) the one's that have gone down in NorthCross Rd. That should include the pavement area's that are actually owned (but not used) by retailers. Some of the walking surface outside some of these shops is appalling and the owners don't give a hoot about it unless they actually use the space. This is especially obvious at the south end of the town centre from the shoe shop down the the tyre shop (where Moxon's is about to open).

- Get rid of the phone boxes outside Somerfields. Honestly, who uses them any more? If they do get used then move them to the nearest side street so they don't block pedestrian access in one of the busier parts of LL.

[greynolds]

Completely agree with most points being made. Wouldn't it be fabulous to have the whole pavement from Goose Green r/a to the library smooth as an ice rink (but not as slippery!) instaed of the moon surface it sometimes currently resembles. Lots more trees too please.

[Guest]

Lots of good ideas. Thanks a lot.

Responses (in no particular order):

*You people have an insatiable demand for street trees! I'm trying to get to the bottom of the removal of recently planted trees, with the council's tree officer. I'm also trying to find out if he needs help/funding for the proper removal of mature trees, instead of leaving socking great three foot stumps.

*Lighting on side road approaches - this is cracking stuff. What I need is for locals to identify just which side roads are the most important pedestrian connector routes. The obvious reaction is to say "All of them", but if any of this is going to happen (and I'm certainly not promising!), then prioritisation helps to get the process started.

*Curtilages. That's the name for the bit of shopfront pavement owned by the retailers. We'll certainly be suggesting Southwark Council start working to educate retailers so they understand that, if their curtilage is not used for a proper shopfront display, it's worth MUCH more to their business if it is treated like the footway proper, instead of built around with rinky-dink walls that do nothing but get in everyone's way.

*Phone boxes. These are a big problem everywhere. When telecoms were deregulated, private companies put their own boxes on footways, but then went bust when we all got mobiles. Now no-one will take responsibility for the expensive job of removing them. Kensington High Street has had a brilliant world-class pedestrian 'makeover', but they've still got the scuzzy old phone boxes...

*Crossing outside Somerfield. EVERYONE wants this (including the Somerfield manager) - apart from the retailers opposite, who promise they'll lie down in front of bulldozers to protect their shopfront parking. Somerfield generates 17,000 shopping trips a week. The manager guesses 80% arrive by bus or on foot (I reckon it's more like 90%+). If I had a shop opposite that sort of footfall, I'd be falling over myself for a crossing to bring them my way. Nearly all the retailers on this part of Lordship Lane want a crossing, but none of them want it outside their own shop!

Please keep your comments coming.

Paul

[Keef]

Completely agree about the lighting on Whateley Road! My parents live there, and it's bloody dark, especially for someone who's sight isn't the best in the first place!

[greynolds]

Yes, I agree Whateley Road is far too dim at night, especially as its a key access road to Crystal Palace/Barry Road, and I should know I live there. More lighting please!

[TJS]

Lighting on Grove Vale, from the station to lordship lane could be better and clearer, the west side of the road hardly seems to have any and the one that are there are yellow and give a pretty poor light.

[Guest]

So, that's better lighting on Whateley Road and between the station and the roundabout. Anywhere else?

The yellow lighting (low pressure sodium light) is a disgrace - Living Streets is lobbying to get it banned, as it is particularly poor for pedestrians. For car drivers needing to see the big metal box coming in the opposite direction, low pressure sodium light is fine. But for pedestrians who need to see much more detail - the expression on an approaching pedestrian's face can tell us a lot about whether their intentions are good or not - it's next to useless. And as for car drivers who should be looking out for pedestrians crossing the road, yellow light is not much good either.

[beth]

Every time I cross East Dulwich Grove (the road that lead to Dulwich Community Hospital) where it connects with Lordship Lane, I feel as though I am taking my life into mine and my childs hands!! It is an extremely dangerous crossing - with cars turning in from several directions, often very fast. An accident is going to happen very, very soon. If nothing else happens but this, I will be happy. But I agree with everything else as well particularly the need more crossings up Lordship Lane.

[Guest]

Dear Paul

I agree with everything that has been said here so far. I live at the other end of Lordship Lane and the pavements here are so uneven that as Greynolds said it can be like walking on the moon. The road markings are also faded to the point of invisibility, which I thought was illegal. The local shop owners all park vehicles on the pavements outside their shops, whether there is a hard standing or not, and have really damaged the pavements as a result. Every time it rains there are puddles everywhere, both on the pavements and in the gutters. Some of these are supposed to have been repaired recently, but the work was not done properly. The shopowners from the Barcelona tapas bar down wanted the hard-standings in front of their shops repaired; Southwark Council came along and proposed a design, to be paid for by the shopowners, which would have involved putting bollards in front of each parking space. Unsurprisingly the shopowners refused because the spaces are so tight the bollards would have caused constant accidents. Instead of saying 'fair point' Southwark walked away and no-one has heard from them since.

The real problem here is the lack of imagination and refusal to use available powers endlessly demonstrated by Southwark, for instance they claim to have no money but can find money to pay your organsisation to do a job that their own staff should be doing. If Southwark would carry out regular inspections of this area they would know what the problems are - this is after all one of the reasons for paying the Community Charge. For example many of the illuminated bollards on the roads are damaged, filthy or both yet nothing has been done and no-one at Southwark appears to be responsible for keeping them in good repair. The small green on the corner of Friern Road has a set of chained fence posts around it, some of the chains have come down or are missing - again nothing has been done because no-one from Southwark ever looks around the area.

What really annoys me is that on those rare occasions when works have been carried out on Lordship Lane the work has been clearly sub-standard yet someone at the Council still signed it off as satisfactory and spent public money on it. The sense of priority is hopelessly skewed. Mind you getting any work done here at all is a miracle; the residents of Borough and Peckham seem not to have this problem which I have thought for a long time amounts to unlawfully discriminating between groups of residents in terms of provision of works and services.

I also cannot understand why it is that the Environmental Services department appears to have no idea of what its statutory powers are, both where they have the direct ability to act and where they can require a member of the public to carry out works, if they would pay more attention to statute law and keep a proper register of the powers available to them, and where they can obtain funding from (eg. the Mayor, the Dept of Communities & Local Govt, the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, the Government Office for London, the London Development Agency etc.), many of the chronic environmental problems here would not exist.

I promise this rant will end shortly, on the subject of lights the ones we have here are hopeless and they make it very difficult for me to get to sleep. I have a blind and a set of lined curtains on my bedroom window to keep the light out, but after dark there is an orange glow throughout the flat from the streetlights. The city of Verona replaced all of its streetlights and replaced them with white lights, all of which were designed so that the light was focussed downwards instead of upwards and outwards. It would be great if something similar could be done here.

[Guest]

Amelie, you feel Lordship Lane's pedestrian preoblems stem from Southwark Council's lack of imagination and a refusal to use available powers. The heart of the problem is that, as a nation, we have undervalued the public realm, and still don't spend enough on it. I would love to be made redundant by every council in the country employing someone to do what I do (or rather, I'd hope to be one of the people employed to do this).

Our failure as a society to value walking and the quality of public space has resulted in the poor condition of so many streets, not just Lordship Lane -

"In contrast to the changes made to every town and city to ease motor transport, walking has been made ever more unpleasant. Pedestrians have been treated with contempt. In a myriad of ways when we walk we are treated with less respect than when we drive. Engineers and economists have even considered our time less valuable when they assess new projects.?

?Walking in Towns and Cities? - Environment, Transport and Regional Affairs Select Committee, May 2001

Countrywide, the inadequate budgets allocated to the needs of those on foot usually reside with a council's Transport team. That's partly why so many 'pedestrian' schemes are primarily about traffic management. Trying to get some traffic engineers to understand that encouraging walking will improve public health, reduce street crime and fear of crime, increase community cohesion and the vitality of local shops is not easy - often, walking is only considered as an antidote to traffic problems.

Southwark Council's decision to employ Living Streets indicates that they are AHEAD of the game when it comes to improving streets for people. Most councils simply don't consider their walking populace as important enough, even to ask us to ask them properly what is wrong!

On a more positive note - I've just finished a Community Street Audit in Sydenham. This was for Lewisham Council, as a small part of a ?140,000 project simply to work up a bid to Transport for London (TfL) for improvements to the centre of Sydenham. The ?140,000 came from TfL, based on a simple idea originating with The Sydenham Society. Lewisham Council tweaked it a bit and put it to TfL. That Community Street Audit is now helping Lewisham Council to bid for a seven figure sum from Transport for London for major pedestrian improvements in central Sydenham - why shouldn't Lordship Lane have the same? More to the point, if Sydenham gets loads of improvements, and Lordship Lane doesn't, perhaps people from ED will be going to Sydenham for their shopping, rather than vice versa as at present...

Paul Holdsworth

[spanish-archer]

Is it not also possible to install some sort of anti-Jehova Witness device to the residential streets off LL, to be activated on weekend mornings?

[Keef]

Southwark are a 3 star council (somehow!!!), so they have got plenty of money!!!

[James]

My experience of Southwark Planning department is that they are a bunch of work-shy slackers who don't bother to reply to messages or emails. Despite the fact that ED is a relatively prosperous area, many streets look shabby, dirty and neglected. Where is all the money we pay in taxes going!!!?

[Huguenot]

Council tax spend information in this document http://www.southwark.gov.uk/Uploads/FILE_12912.pdf

[Guest]

Paul

I am sorry but I don't accept that Southwark is ahead of the game, I work in the City of London and I have seen what can be done for pedestrians with relatively small amounts of money. I would like to know if all the comments which have been posted on this particular thread and the one that was started about the Environmental Services department are going to be shown to the Chief Executive at Southwark, if not they should be. The fact that they don't pay attention was amply demonstrated this morning, despite several days' warning from The Met Office about imminent snow not one of the roads nor any of the pavements had been gritted. Trying to walk DOWNHILL to the bus stop this morning was really fun - not!

[Guest]

Amelie

Southwark (along with a number of other inner London Councils) ARE ahead of the game - outside London, things are even worse (with a few notable exceptions).

The City of London is in a league of its own, with very special taxpayers, and with relatively large amounts of money to spend.

[Ko]

paul holdsworth Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

>

> On a more positive note - I've just finished a

> Community Street Audit in Sydenham. This was for

> Lewisham Council, as a small part of a ?140,000

> project simply to work up a bid to Transport for

> London (TfL) for improvements to the centre of

> Sydenham. The ?140,000 came from TfL, based on a

> simple idea originating with The Sydenham Society.

> Lewisham Council tweaked it a bit and put it to

> TfL. That Community Street Audit is now helping

> Lewisham Council to bid for a seven figure sum

> from Transport for London for major pedestrian

> improvements in central Sydenham - why shouldn't

> Lordship Lane have the same? More to the point,

> if Sydenham gets loads of improvements, and

> Lordship Lane doesn't, perhaps people from ED will

> be going to Sydenham for their shopping, rather

> than vice versa as at present...

>

> Paul Holdsworth

Paul- I've repied under the thread "East Dulwich Icons" re the roundabout. If losing the roundabout could mean getting money from Tfl,then I think it coud be worth it unless people relly would like to keep the roundabout.

[Ko]

Hi Amelie

Sorry to hear about your problems trying to sleep with the orange glow from the street lamps. You say you have blinds and lined curtains - do they have black out lining? If your blinds have black out lining, this should block out 99% of the light and if you also have curtains with black out lining then no light or orange glow should come through at all. Just a suggestion as we also have a street lamp outside our bedroom window.

You can get good black out blinds from John Lewis for under ?20. You can also buy black out lining from many curatins shops for about ?15 for a pair and you just hook then to the back of your curtains with curtain hooks (no stitching required!). We had the same problem as the lined curtains we originally bought were no good as the lining was not black out lining.

[Guest]

Please look at the "East Dulwich Icons" thread to see what Ko is talking about. Replacing the Goose Green roundabout with a crossing could make an awful lot of difference - but I've heard that when this was suggested in the 1990's there was uproar.

Amelie, Ko's right about blackout lining - we got our curtains lined with it when a neighbour decided it was a good idea to illuminate our bedroom with a 500 watt 'security' light. And blackout lining is not black - ours was cream coloured - I think it has a plasticised inner facing that blocks all the light.

[Guest]

Dear Ko and Paul

Thank you for your suggestion, you will be relieved to know that I do have black-out lining (in cream) on my curtains.

[Quaywe]

I've got a nice house but not yet bought curtains, so I'm using blankets. :(