LTN: Our Healthy Streets - Dulwich: Phase 3

[Spartacus]

That's possibly true for petrol and diesel engines

But where's the similar graphic for electric and hybrid cars ?

Also the deaths and injuries stats are for pedestrians, cyclists and vehicle occupants , not just pedestrians so whilst still frightening it's a little misleading when used in this way

[redpost]

Full electric cars are between 70-90% efficient - but that's from the plug (charger) to the road.

You may want to go further and include transmission losses (powerstation to charger) of around 10% and then the power station.

I think a combined cycle gas fired plant is around 60% efficient. If your electricity comes from wind/solar then these can be considered 100% efficient.

The driving cycle matters greatly for hybrids and EV's, since they recover (charge the battery) energy from braking.

As for hybrids, somewhere between non-hybrid and EV efficiency. But depends on the type of hybrid. Some can't propel the car by motor alone, they assist by recovering energy from braking and expending it to help the combustion engine reducing fuel consumption this way (mild hybrids i think??)

[malumbu]

Other things to consider, weight of car, size of engine and ancillaries. The near universal adoption of air conditioning together with heavier cars in the 00s put back some gains in efficiency (particularly with more diesels) and then then greater sales of SUV (and now cross) vehicles put back a general improving in fuel efficiency. If you drive a hot hatch from 40 years ago it is so light (half the weight of some cars now) it feels like it will disintegrate on collision. Reducing the weight and power of cars would help, in particular for predominantly urban areas would be beneficial.

Manufacturers have to meet average CO2 targets set by that pesky EU intervening in our national affairs (there is of course an opportunity to set even more ambitious targets for the UK - we shall see!) - manufacturers produce more frugal cars to meet this - and for those who traditionally didn't produce cars they achieve it, for example, with a special range (Merc and smart cars), but then generally still try to sell you the lifestyle that you need to be in a SUV/cross.

This is back to what you drive, how you drive (most of us could up our fuel efficiency by 10% by better anticipation and lighter touch acceleration and braking) and how often you drive. As regards to electric cars my experience of a Leaf was you drove at a gentle speed smiling and waving at people. The Tessla was just stupid driving it around West London near the dealer. That does seem like a vanity purchase but noticing them all the time. Conventional hybrids pretty stupid too - should have been discouraged but we have manufacturing interests in the UK.

A final point is utility. We embed a fair amount of carbon in producing the thing, and then it lies idle for 95% of the time. I'll seriously be looking at car clubs in the near future. When I really need a car.

The view above is from my own knowledge and experience. But do read this article - car mag not a group of tree huggers. An extract includes: 'But there's no getting away from the fact the UK new-car fleet average CO2 rose for a third consecutive year in 2019 ? up 2.7% to 127.9g/km. It makes the industry's goal of averaging 95g/km by next year a seemingly impossible mission. ' https://www.carmagazine.co.uk/car-news/industry-news/co2-emissions-limits-europe/#:~:text=European%20Union%20legislators%20have%20introduced,many%20countries%2C%20including%20the%20UK.

[Metallic]

Bus gates eh? As overheard in the Council offices where parking fines come in: Kerching.

[legalalien]

Yep. Plenty of people going through the Townley Road one when I walked past this morning. And another different warning sign (pic attached), which probably isn?t particularly effective foe those who don?t know the name of East Dulwich Grove. Spoke to a friend who lives in Lewisham last night, he said in the first couple of weeks they didn?t impose fines but just sent warning notices. So maybe that?s a thing?

[Metallic]

legalalien Wrote:

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> Yep. Plenty of people going through the Townley

> Road one when I walked past this morning. And

> another different warning sign (pic attached),

> which probably isn?t particularly effective foe

> those who don?t know the name of East Dulwich

> Grove. Spoke to a friend who lives in Lewisham

> last night, he said in the first couple of weeks

> they didn?t impose fines but just sent warning

> notices. So maybe that?s a thing?

Someone I know in Burbage Road says there is a two week grace period. This is probably for the council to iron out the awful signage rather than to let people get used to the new rules.

[Rockets]

Lewisham gave out 8,000 warnings before hitting 47,000 with actual fines......

[Rockets]

Given the councils are now being, ahem, encouraged, to engage with local residents over all of these closures does anyone expect them to engage in an area wide consultation project or should we expect them to revert to type and poll only those people who live on the closed roads (as they have done time and time before?)?

Council: "Hello resident who lives on road now closed to through traffic (BTW I am the hero who closed the road for you, please vote for me). Are you happy that we closed your road for you and now your road is very quiet and you can park your car outside your house?".

Resident: "Yes".

Council: "Would you like us to remove said closure and allow traffic along your road again?"

Resident: "No"

Council: "We thought you would say that. Thank you for your input."

[exdulwicher]

You're VERY cynical this morning Rockets!

Yes, normal format is a 2-week grace period where letters get sent out saying something along the lines of "doing this after [date] will result in a fine."

Question (really for exdulwicher who seems likely to know) - is it me, or is there an awfully high percentage of estimated data in those data sheets? I'm not a statistician so don't really know what I'm looking at, but there seems like a lot more estimated data than actual count data happening (I was just looking at the Southwark one). Is that the case do you think?

Depends on how the data was gathered and by who. Older data is usually less reliable as the tech back before about 2000 wasn't really up to today's standards so getting an absolute direct comparison is difficult. It's still pretty sound and you can extrapolate a lot but it's like comparing anything across big timelines.

Cars on the road as a comparison - cars 20-30 years ago were far smaller, lighter etc so as malumbu mentions above, the increases in engine efficiency have been wiped out by increases in weight and tech. You can still count numbers of cars and its still valid as a direct comparison but when it comes to roads and the space occupied, you also need to look at the size/weight of the vehicle and that's changed significantly (an increase of about 25% on average). So 1000 cars now occupy 25% more space than 1000 cars 20 years ago even though all other factors remain unchanged.

Some data is derived from other data so measuring Parameter A will give you a good indication of what Parameter B would be without actually going out and measuring it. Pollution and traffic is one example - if you measure traffic and have the flow rates you can make a reasonable estimate of pollution without putting a monitoring station in (they're expensive and often prone to peaks and troughs caused by external factors like temperature, wind and other non-vehicle pollution - it irons out over long periods but for short term monitoring, they're not brilliant)

More recently, mobile phone and satnav data has given much clearer pictures of routing and use of streets, Strava does the same for active travel, Uber has a map of travel times which is based on millions of anonymised journeys. There's been a few studies on using crowd-sourced data - this one specifically mentions the issues of where the data is gathered and in comparing results.

https://findingspress.org/article/5115-comparing-google-maps-and-uber-movement-travel-time-data

Bringing it all together is a challenge and DIRECT comparisons aren't easy but the general trendlines are pretty consistent across various data sources. Combinations of them will give something that is called an estimate but which is actually pretty solid.

Same way that the word Theory is used to describe evolution, the Big Bang and so on. It doesn't mean it's wrong or a wild guess - it means that not all aspects of it are fully understood or they're open to further study but the underlying principles are basically all there.

[Nigello]

Malumbu - I am not a petrol head (or battery head?) at all, not having driven for more than twenty years, so how come hybrids are not all that good for the environment?

[legalalien]

That makes sense. Completely unrelated, does anyone know if there?s a process for asking to have now redundant road signs removed? A lot are going up at present and it?s getting quite confusing because there are so many different signs. There are loads on Calton Road, I?m sure the ?new? zebra crossing and ?changed priorities ahead? signs could come down (although the last one always makes me laugh as it?s very near the new one indicating that the road is now a dead end!

[Rockets]

Ex- yes in a very cynical mood right now - been burnt too many times by this council and their manipulative ways!!! ;-) I can see how they might start to skew things their way already....maybe that's not cynicism but realism...the council don't have a very good track record when it comes to transparency....;-)

[Abe_froeman]

legalalien, I've asked James McAsh on his thread about removing / replacing the now incorrect sign to Dulwich at the junction of East Dulwich Road and Peckham Rye that would lead people to drive unnecessarily through Goose Green ward (this one

) and he said "I will look into this."

[dulwichfolk]

Wouldn?t all the signs to Dulwich ?Village? (from the south) have to changed to highlight at certain times there is no entry?

Sure tfl can?t wait to do this on the the south circular for this temporary measure...

[Metallic]

The pro groups are tweeting like mad with not even a passing thought for the many sad stories being reported of people not able to get to daily chemo, blue badge holders not able to get to doctors and hospitals - unless even though they are unwell or actually very, very ill, having to sit in a displaced traffic jam to get where they need to get. Incidentally some of these pro groups don't allow you to post on their twitter feeds, thereby blocking any feedback (for them, read negativity and and for us, reality) that might be pertinent.

[exdulwicher]

The anti-groups are doing exactly the same Metallic, you can't pretend that there's one side of saintly people who would do no wrong and one side of militant liars.

It's been badly managed, allowed to descend into a Brexit-style "I'm right, you're wrong" / "we won, you lost".

One of the anti-groups supplied a template email to Grant Shapps and at the very bottom was a clause that they would "vet" all submissions - essentially to weed out all the positive comments.

As was mentioned a page or two back, Lambeth have done very well generally - they've managed the narrative well enough to largely kill off a lot of the fake news although they obviously can't reach the Daily Mail hatchet jobs.

[Rockets]

There is certainly a wave of pro-LTN propoganda being pushed at the moment - there must be the realisation that the pressure is mounting so they have to push some of the usual hyperbole....

Very interesting twitter thread via that I found via LittleNinja in Lewisham sums up quite accurately what seems to be happening:

There is an inner circle of Pro-LTN lobbyists who are fanning the flames of the LTNs are good rhetoric.

I also enjoyed this spat between the FT's Travel writer and The Guardian's Peter Walker.

Perhaps of most interest was when someone else waded in and suggested Peter is hardly objective and challenged him on why he appeared at Southwark's Dec 2019 Environmental Scrutiny Meeting (see page 10 of the minutes below).

http://moderngov.southwark.gov.uk/documents/g6464/Printed%20minutes%20Wednesday%2004-Dec-2019%2019.00%20Environment%20Scrutiny%20Commission.pdf?T=1

Peter, in the twitter thread admits he was invited to talk by a Southwark councillor because he is a "resident". I wonder which councillor invited him. Funny how the council only seems to invite "residents" to meetings who happen to be pro-closure lobbyists and very supportive of the council's agenda. Said person then writes an utterly biased article in the Guardian and our local councillors then retweet it basically saying...look we are right.

Everything is so dangerously incestuous within the council and its echo chamber - there is no balance at all. At a time when we have Cllrs like Cllr McAsh trying to divide and conquer by refusing to engage with people who don't live in their ward, at a time when all councillors are refusing to engage in any dialogue with anyone who dares question these closures, at a time when the council refuses any sort of public consultation you can see why many residents in the area are questioning who their council is actually representing.

[Earl Aelfheah]

Metallic Wrote:

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

> The pro groups are tweeting like mad with not even

> a passing thought for the many sad stories being

> reported of people not able to get to daily chemo,

> blue badge holders not able to get to doctors and

> hospitals - unless even though they are unwell or

> actually very, very ill, having to sit in a

> displaced traffic jam to get where they need to

> get. Incidentally some of these pro groups don't

> allow you to post on their twitter feeds, thereby

> blocking any feedback (for them, read negativity

> and and for us, reality) that might be pertinent.

It's not that people don't care about 'sad stories', it's just that it clearly is possible to drive places. The idea that the roads are no longer usable because of a few LTNs is objectively absurd.

[Earl Aelfheah]

The 'social justice' argument, is being massively over played by those against low traffic neighbourhoods. The least affluent are much less likely to own a car and to rely on walking or cycling. The idea that the denizens of Dulwich should be able to drive their SUVs through every side street as a way of 'protecting' the less affluent, rings pretty hollow to me.

I can't help feeling that in the majority of cases, those who are against creating some spaces where cars dominate a little less, are mainly concerned about the personal inconvenience of not being able to drive where they like.

[JohnL]

Rockets Wrote:

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

> There is certainly a wave of pro-LTN propoganda

> being pushed at the moment - there must be the

> realisation that the pressure is mounting so they

> have to push some of the usual hyperbole....

We pledged to reduce carbon emissions etc. etc. and now Biden is going to hold us to it.

Do you notice "Build Back Better" isn't just a British or US slogan - it's everywhere across the globe. Either it was to good a slogan to discard or there is a global plan (as there should be)

[malumbu]

Nigello Wrote:

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

> Malumbu - I am not a petrol head (or battery head?) at all, not having driven for more than twenty years, so how come hybrids are not all that good for the environment?

Hybrids were only a stepping stone to zero emission, the technology for the conventional ones - Prius being the good example - is now quite dated, and in terms of CO2 emissions there are some conventional cars that are just as good. The UK is a big manufacturing base for Toyota that may have influenced previous government's position.

Plug in hybrids (PHEV) are a better option if you do most of your driving around town, as long as they are regularly charged. Up the motorway may have higher CO2 emissions as they are heavier than conventional cars and have a small electric only range. Purchase price is also an issue. The Mitsubishi Outlander remains the most popular PHEV - but as much of this is business use will often run on conventional fuel and there is some evidence that many owners can't be rrrssed to plug them in costing both the environment and their employers (essentially very cheap to run on electric only, particularly with subsidised charging). The PHEV I most liked was the Transit van, because it felt like a Transit van. On charge points I like the Southwark ones on the lamp posts, up the road our lamp posts are not roadside.

I used petrol head as a facetious term, in the same way as tree hugger, bit of banter, bit self deprecatory. It is not intended as an insult but others may use it this way. My favourite battery hugger is Kryten aka Robert Llewellyn. Link to his channel on his passion https://fullycharged.show/

Good to see more balance on this thread, I'll avoid my subtle as a sledgehammer approach. Remember 80% of cyclists also have a driving license. Shame that 80% of drivers don't also cycle.

[Nigello]

I hadn't even seen you had used the phrase, petrol-head, it was just my way of using a phrase most people know.

Also, I heard on Today that you may well be able to "fill up your tank" of green leccy for ?3.50. Great - but what about the congestion aspect if you have cheap fuel?

[redpost]

I thought hybrids were good for city driving as they recover energy from braking?

If a conventional car is as fuel efficient as a hybrid, then surely the hybrid needs updating with a better engine?

I would consider plugin hybrids a dead end until charging points are ubiquitous ie. on every lamppost. As you say, most people won't bother charging them unless they need to.

An interesting point is that the motor industry is gearing up for 'mild hybrids' by upgrading the electrical systems from 12v to 48v and by only assisting the combustion engine. All the normal electrics and the hybrid motor/regen brakes will hang off one 48v bus reducing costs. You'll get approx 80% of the advantages of a full hybrid for a lot less cost (much smaller batt, much smaller motor, unified electrics).

[redpost]

The solution will be road pricing.

At the moment you pay a fixed cost for your car each year and a variable cost for the fuel from which you can drive on a heavily congested urban road or a scarcely used country lane. The cost to drive on one should obviously be quite a lot more than the other.

Nigello Wrote:

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

> I hadn't even seen you had used the phrase,

> petrol-head, it was just my way of using a phrase

> most people know.

> Also, I heard on Today that you may well be able

> to "fill up your tank" of green leccy for ?3.50.

> Great - but what about the congestion aspect if

> you have cheap fuel?

[Metallic]

rahrahrah Wrote:

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

> Metallic Wrote:

> --------------------------------------------------

> -----

> > The pro groups are tweeting like mad with not

> even

> > a passing thought for the many sad stories

> being

> > reported of people not able to get to daily

> chemo,

> > blue badge holders not able to get to doctors

> and

> > hospitals - unless even though they are unwell

> or

> > actually very, very ill, having to sit in a

> > displaced traffic jam to get where they need to

> > get. Incidentally some of these pro groups

> don't

> > allow you to post on their twitter feeds,

> thereby

> > blocking any feedback (for them, read

> negativity

> > and and for us, reality) that might be

> pertinent.

>

>

> It's not that people don't care about 'sad

> stories', it's just that it clearly is possible to

> drive places. The idea that the roads are no

> longer usable because of a few LTNs is objectively

> absurd.

No it is not absurd. To take 45-50 minutes to make a journey that until last month would take 10 minutes, when you have a very ill person to look after, is commoner than you think.

That's the trouble with pro-LTN folk, they largely lack empathy for the older or sicker people in OUR community - many of them don't even live in the Ward affected.