LTN: Our Healthy Streets - Dulwich: Phase 3

[Metallic]

rahrahrah Wrote:

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> The planters have gone in today and look great.

> Now we need to get something done to make space

> for people in ED. Whilst I support the measures in

> the village, why Southwark have identified one of

> the most affluent and lowest density areas as the

> priority for creating more space for people is

> questionable. Let's see some work done over the

> border quickly please.

Simple answer, it is because everyone from West Dulwich, Crystal Palace, Forest Hill, you name it, who need to go nearby, use OUR roads, pollute OUR children, block OUR access. These measures are for social distancing for the thousands of children who access all the schools, not for the affluent people who live in the area.

[Rockets]

dulwichquine Wrote:

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> Just wondering why the council has closed the DV

> junction just as the schools are closing?! If

> deemed necessary to protect school children, why

> not do it for when schools re-open?

It's because they can fudge the figures - I guarantee you they will compare pre-Covid traffic levels to the next 3 months when they know there are no schools and some people are still working from home and claim the measures are a rip-roaring success. Cut to the late-Autumn when schools are back, the weather is dire and people are back at work and worried about public transport and it will be chaos.

As we have seen before you can't believe anything the council uses to justify their current cause-celebre and I suspect we can see what they are planning already for this project...

[thebestnameshavegone]

You need to start somewhere though.

And unfortunately, there is an air quality crisis in London, and there are too many car journeys.

Long consultations and hand-wringing aren't the way forward - better infrastructure comes from many, many small things over time with additive effect rather than massive initiatives that happen all at once.

So, you close some junctions, install some lanes, drop some kerbs, and you keep doing it. It's deeply unsexy in terms of what you actually have to do. And people will moan about it, as they do all over the world. And yes, people will be unhappy as it's the status quo being changed, and people are averse to the status quo changing.

What you have in this area particularly is highly-mobilised, university educated people who are very wedded to their cars, so not surprisingly, they are moaning about it loudly.

[mrwb]

These traffic problems will self solve in a few years as people leave. London's becoming a seriously unpleasant place to live. With all the traffic, crime and being charged endlessly for what was free before.

The ongoing Covid 19 situation and it's huge economic impact will be the catalyst.

Likely to see a long period of depopulate as last happened after the prior peak in 1939, that continued till it troughed in about 1990.

It's a cycle and current one already peaked.

[Rockets]

thebestnameshavegone Wrote:

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> You need to start somewhere though.

>

> And unfortunately, there is an air quality crisis

> in London, and there are too many car journeys.

>

> Long consultations and hand-wringing aren't the

> way forward - better infrastructure comes from

> many, many small things over time with additive

> effect rather than massive initiatives that happen

> all at once.

>

> So, you close some junctions, install some lanes,

> drop some kerbs, and you keep doing it. It's

> deeply unsexy in terms of what you actually have

> to do. And people will moan about it, as they do

> all over the world. And yes, people will be

> unhappy as it's the status quo being changed, and

> people are averse to the status quo changing.

>

> What you have in this area particularly is

> highly-mobilised, university educated people who

> are very wedded to their cars, so not

> surprisingly, they are moaning about it loudly.

Is being highly-mobilised and university educated something to be ashamed of? Should we overlook the concerns of that group to favour others? I think the approach taken by the council looks to many like something being driven by political ideology to attack the people in "leafy Dulwich" and when you look at the hap-hazard nature of their plans, the lack of any support for Lordship Lane you can see why this narrative gets significant resonance.

[slarti b]

thebestnameshavegone Wrote:

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> What you have in this area particularly is highly-mobilised, university educated people who are very wedded

> to their cars

Looking at travel to work stats (2011 census), which comprise most of the problems that OHS is trying to solve, the vast majority of those living in Dulwich Village ward do NOT travel by car to work, in fact only 12% do. This slighty higher than Soutwark as a whole (8%) but reflects SOuthwarks location at the edge of the Borough with inferior public transport. Remember that much of Dulwich has low PTAL scores.

Edit to add that Dulwich Village at 11.9% is very similar to East Dulwich with 11.5% so please stop this demonising of Dulwich Village.

And these Village Ward figures are much lower than surrounding boroughs such as Greenwich 18%, Bromley 27%, Lewisham 14%, Croydon 24%.

These figures are 9 years old, but I suspect this proportion will have decreased even more, if you have more recent stats I would be interested to see them.

[Earl Aelfheah]

The assessment went like this. A small but vocal group living on Melbourne Grove petitioned councillors to close their road. A small but vocal group living near the junction of duulwich village / Court lane lobbied the council to close their road. The council responded to the loudest voices, with little reference to the wider area and seemingly no strategic plan.

I actually support both schemes believe it or not, as I have come to realise that Southwark only progress through small tactical interventions and that?s better than nothing. But it?s far from how I would like this stuff to happen.

[tiddles]

Dulwich has been gridlocked all afternoon

[rupert james]

Unfortunately this seems to be the pattern everywhere in the borough regarding changes.

Areas that have attracted newbys decide this is what THEY want and small a group descend on the Cllrs and Southwark and the wider population has no idea these changes are taking place and more to the point the wider population have a living to earn and do not have the time to decide how the area should be at coffee mornings or social gatherings.

It is unfortunately how it is these days.

Most residents do not have a voice any more.

[tiddles]

I am stunned by the negative impact on the village - main roads jammed with cars taking the only route not that the obvious and more direct routes have been closed. I then came down east dulwich grove which was queuing back to tell grove ? Aha another route shut. I feel sorry for the shops (and the residents in the main roads) as they will have great difficulty getting to and from their houses by car. Crikey what a cock up (tho most of us spotted that beforehand)

[heartblock]

It?s great that those residents hit by austerity and poor transport links, working in shift patterns and mainly from the BAME community in Dulwich Village and Melbourne Grove now have less traffic and cleaner air...while us wealthy lot, living in small flats with no gardens on other streets have more traffic....hang on.....

I support healthier streets, cycle lanes etc. But..

[Rockets]

If you take a quick look at Google Maps you can see that the council appears to have created a ring of red stationery traffic around Dulwich - A205, Lordship Lane, ED Grove, Half Moon Lane and Croxted Road. It's early days of course but traffic does seem to be a lot heavier everywhere on the basis of these closures. Even Melbourne Grove is showing red - is it as chaotic as it seems?

[tiddles]

And bizarrely the air quality can only get worse in the village in particular? I sat at 3 light changes next to the primary school as cars could not go straight ahead so had to wait to turn left - which was gridlocked due to the increased level of traffic going that way.

utterly bonkers. plus the people living in woodwarde road and the closed off streets now have to undertake a massive loop simply to get through the village.

[EDguy89]

Rockets Wrote:

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> Even Melbourne

> Grove is showing red - is it as chaotic as it

> seems?

No it's not.

I live on Melbourne Grove and the impact of this barrier is already being noticed. Noticed in that there's significantly less cars going up and down the street. I took a look at google to see how it's being reported, but the all red/orange suggests it's bumper to bumper, when in actuallity the road is empty.

It's more likely that since it's inaccessible google just marks it red.

[rupert james]

How much has your house gone up now?

[Rockets]

I see the activists are hailing this all as a victory whilst pressuring the council for more! Ha ha, they'll never be happy! I particularly love the way CleanAirDulwich is trying to spin a complaint from This is Dulwich Village that the pollution levels have gone through the roof since the blockade was put in tries to spin it for more closures!

https://twitter.com/CleanAirDulwich/status/1277895431901589507?s=09

And there's more from MumsforLungs, Dulwich Safe Routes and so the list goes on and on - who are these people and why do they wield such power with the council?!

[sally buying]

I think Rupert james summed it up on the 17 page.

People with little else to worry about.

[rjsmall]

I ran along East Dulwich Grove and through the Village this afternoon about 5pm and it looked chaotic - the traffic was very heavy. If this is what it is like when a number of the schools are closed I can only imagine it would be worse when the schools go back in the autumn. As there are no dedicated bus lanes there isn't even an advantage to getting on a bus - it would be quicker to walk.

Idling car engines aren't exactly going to contribute to improving the air quality.

[EDguy89]

rupert james Wrote:

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> How much has your house gone up now?

I wouldn't know. I rent.

[thebestnameshavegone]

They're being asked to implement these measures *specifically* via the ETRO process, by both the Mayor, and the DfT, as a way to enable active travel as a response to coronavirus. This is an emergency, and the appropriate tools are being used.

[slarti b]

Rockets Wrote:

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> And there's more from MumsforLungs, Dulwich Safe Routes and so the list goes on and on - who are

> these people and why do they wield such power with the council?!

rarahrah, a support of the schemes but also a realist summed up the process very well in another post

The assessment went like this. A small but vocal group living on Melbourne Grove petitioned councillors to close their road. A small but vocal group living near the junction of duulwich village / Court lane lobbied the council to close their road. The council responded to the loudest voices, with little reference to the wider area and seemingly no strategic plan.

As we have seen before, the Councillors are happy to listen to activists rather their constituents. However, it seems to be even worse now and it doesn't help that politically, the Dulwich area is now a one-party state with no opposition councillors.

[tiddles]

cannot see what on earth these closures have to do with Covid? its a blanket excuse for any old cock up basically. I hope they measure the pollution levels very soon and compare with before.

[exdulwicher]

It's more likely that since it's inaccessible google just marks it red.

Takes a while for Google's algorithms to sort things out and occasionally they get it wrong.

A few years ago on the Dunwich Dynamo (night-time cycle ride from east London up to the Suffolk coast), Google Maps threw up a massive traffic jam on an A-road at about 3am.

Turned out it was hundreds of cyclists (all moving relatively slowly compared to normal traffic speed on that road) which caused Google to think it was a traffic jam.

Normally it's pretty good at working out modes of transport (which is why you can use anonymised / aggregated mobile phone data in traffic management studies) but with changes to road layouts, especially ones allowing pedestrians and cyclists to use large areas of main roads, it'll pick them up as lots of slow moving phones all together and assume that they're in cars and therefore a traffic jam. Again, give it a couple of weeks and the Maps thing sort of self-learns.

[slarti b]

thebestnameshavegone Wrote:

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> They're being asked to implement these measures "specifically* via the ETRO process, by both the

> Mayor, and the DfT, as a way to enable active travel as a response to coronavirus. This is an

> emergency, and the appropriate tools are being used.

It looks like they are using Coronavirus as an excuse to implement the OHS scheme through the back door without full consultation and scrutiny. Closing DV junction was inevitably going to lead to this chaos, even with schools not fully back and many people working from home.

So, if they continue teh OHS approach and start putting in road blocks at say Dulwich Village roundabout and Burbage then traffic in DV will be reduced but it will be displaced onto Lordship Lane, EDG, Croxted Road etc. I wonder what TfL will think of that? By the way remember that diverting traffic onto these "main roads" is one of the explicit aims of OHS though they refused to model the impact.

So, they will continue with a whack a mole approach with the self appointed activist groups pressing for more andf more ill considered, poorly thought through changes.

[slarti b]

tiddles Wrote:

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> utterly bonkers. plus the people living in woodwarde road and the closed off streets now have

> to undertake a massive loop simply to get through the village.

Presumably the next step will be to close off some of the other acess points, eg Townley\EDG, Townley\Lordhip Lane, Eynella Road, to deal with the inevitable consequences of the DV closure. And it will be difficult to have teh timed clsoures Southwark was proposing earlier so I suspect this could get much worse for those in area B.