Urgent: Help Reopen Closed Melbourne Grove and adjacent roads

[ed_pete]

Re EDG and a cycle lane. Southwark have implemented a two-way cycle lane on a length of Trafalgar Avenue which is a major north-south route from the Old Kent Road to Peckham used by several buses.

The road has been narrowed to facilitate this but admittedly there was no street parking available to be removed.

https://www.southwark.gov.uk/assets/attach/11172/Cycleway-35-Bermondsey-to-Peckham-notice-dated-12-Dec-2019-.pdf

[alex_b]

heartblock Wrote:

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> EDG is a Resedential road that has schools and a

> health centre and a high percentage of cyclists

> and pedestrians.

But it is designated as an A road (A2214) which makes it categorically different from the roads that are being closed.

[Rockets]

bels123 Wrote:

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> This thread is becoming a repeat of the Our

> Healthy Streets one

It isn't (are you trying to lobby to get Admin to lock this one too! ;-)) - DKHB wanted proof of one of the claims Slarti b had made. I am sure when DKHB acknowledges the fact that the claim is absolutely 100% correct then the thread can get back on track!!! ;-)

It also goes to illustrate why many of us feel we can't trust the council when it comes to these matters and this impacts the Melbourne Grove closures as they are all interlinked.

[FairTgirl]

There are clearly many people on here who are already expert at finding what monitoring data does exists. Searches for traffic and air pollution data on Tfl and Southwark sites for East Dulwich is not revealing alot.

Does anyone know of the most recent data that covers East Dulwich? Not the DV area as there is clearly quite alot for that area, and doesn't seem to reveal much for ED, unless there is a report that covers DV and good parts of ED as well?

[slarti b]

You can try teh Soutwark Maps Page at https://geo.southwark.gov.uk/connect/analyst/mobile/#/main it is slow, not very intuitive and has only partial information but better than nothing.

In "Map COnfiguration" box on top right Select "Soutwark Highways" and you can then select eg NO2 or traffic counts to see on map. Not a lot of NO2 counts in East Dulwich, except for a cluster round Goosed Green Primary School.

Southwark seem to make it as difficult as possible to get access to underlying data, from my experience this is becuase they dont want people querying their own messaging or spin.

You can also try TfL and DoT, they have a much better "open data" policy and you can see the undelying data, assumptions, locations etc without havoing to put in an FoI request as you do with Southwark :-(

TfL and DoT will generally cover only roads for which they are responsible. Sorry I donty have time to give you links but try googling, eg TfL air quality monitoring. or try https://data.london.gov.uk/

There is also the Kings Air Quality study https://www.londonair.org.uk/LondonAir/Default.aspx This, I think, extrapolates from fixed readings (TfL montoring sites?) to provide estimates across whole of London. However, the actual monitoring sites are pretty spreadh out with none in Southwark SOuth of Camberwell New Road.

Hope this helps

Several edits to add stuff I keep remembering!

[FairTgirl]

Thank you so much.

slarti b Wrote:

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> You can try teh Soutwark Maps Page at

> https://geo.southwark.gov.uk/connect/analyst/mobil

> e/#/main it is slow, not very intuitive and has

> only partial information but better than nothing.

>

>

> In "Map COnfiguration" box on top right Select

> "Soutwark Highways" and you can then select eg NO2

> or traffic counts to see on map. Not a lot of NO2

> counts in East Dulwich, except for a cluster round

> Goosed Green Primary School.

>

> Southwark seem to make it as difficult as possible

> to get access to underlying data, from my

> experience this is becuase they dont want people

> querying their own messaging or spin.

>

> You can also try TfL and DoT, they have a much

> better "open data" policy and you can see the

> undelying data, assumptions, locations etc without

> havoing to put in an FoI request as you do with

> Southwark :-(

> TfL and DoT will generally cover only roads for

> which they are responsible. Sorry I donty have

> time to give you links but try googling, eg TfL

> air quality monitoring. or try

> https://data.london.gov.uk/

>

> There is also the Kings Air Quality study

> https://www.londonair.org.uk/LondonAir/Default.asp

> x This, I think, extrapolates from fixed readings

> (TfL montoring sites?) to provide estimates across

> whole of London. However, the actual monitoring

> sites are pretty spreadh out with none in

> Southwark SOuth of Camberwell New Road.

>

> Hope this helps

>

> Several edits to add stuff I keep remembering!

[Abe_froeman]

Would be interesting to see the last several months data from those monitors near GG school

[mikeb]

[wrong thread]

[Rockets]

I may have missed this and apologies if it was posted elsewhere but the councillor responsible for these decisions posted on here twitter feed that in the week of Sept 21st she was planning to meet with traders from Melbourne Grove. Did that meeting take place and anyone know what was discussed?

[FairTgirl]

Hi, yes the meeting did happen.

The councillors who had not been involved in the process were shocked by the businesses experiences and the total lack of information or discussion with them. We are now aware of least three separate occassion the councillors involved met or canvassed opionion with residents - even showing them plans for the road closure - and not once spoke to businesses.

We have seen the background papers related to the East Dulwich closures and they have omitted the businesses from the Melbourne Grove north as if they don't exist. They were not included as Stakeholders despite there being at least 13 businesses and taking up a stretch of at least 1/3 of the length of the road.

They have not been mentioned in a Community Impact statement - again as if they don't exist.

This looks incredibly bad.

Again the same with road closures at junctions of Derwent and Elsie on Grove Vale and removal of customer parking there - no mention of all Grove Vale businesses or impact.

What was it Grant Shapps said about not consulting with appropriate interest groups who will be impacted, including businesses?

The closures have been in for more than 4 weeks now, businesses saw an immediate drop off and are really struggling now. As well as closing the road they removed more than 1/3 of customer parking at the same time on Melbourne Grove.

Anyone who agrees this is not right, fair or just needs to lodge their objections to the road closures

https://forms.southwark.gov.uk/ShowForm.asp?fm_fid=1081

quoting reference ?TMO2021-EXP10_LSP E Dulwich?.

Please note that if you wish to object to the scheme you must state the grounds on which your objection is made.

And email and Tweet Grant Shapps here as well as all local councillors at the top of this thread

[email protected] and Twitter @grantshapps

Sign our petition to Re-open The Roads here: https://www.change.org/p/helen-hayes-help-us-to-stop-the-road-closures-in-east-dulwich?utm_content=cl_sharecopy_24177815_en-GB%3A1&recruited_by_id=99cb3070-eeab-11ea-842f-6bf2fee0f1e3&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=copylink&utm_campaign=psf_combo_share_initialto

or copy and paste chng.it/k62TTfZD2G

Sign Residents Against Local Road Closures Petition here: http://moderngov.southwark.gov.uk/mgEPetitionDisplay.aspx?id=500000049

You can also voice your views here

Streetspace East Dulwich:https://eastdulwichstreetspace.commonplace.is/comments

[Rockets]

FairTgirl, did you get the sense those councillors who spoke to the shopkeepers were actually going to do anything about it? Or did you sense they were just paying lip service? I do wonder if any councillors are allowed to have an opinion beyond the party line.

Unfortunately, the council e-petition that you link to has been closed by the council. No one knows why but the suspicion is the Cabinet Member for Positive Communication, Misinformation and Statistical Manipulation became aware of it and ordered it to be shut down!

Still the 2441 people who signed it know they at least tried to register their annoyance at the way the council has been behaving!

[flutterby]

Signed and sent.

Traffic and pollution in Dulwich Village is much worse than previously. As a pedestrian, plumes of smoke to contend with and drivers eager to get going are driving through amber/red lights.

If this is what the majority choose, fair enough, but let's have some discussion around it and the opportunity to have a say.

[tiddles]

I?m surprised the residents in dulwich village are not contacting the council - if I had that traffic jam and associated increased levels of pollution- I?d be a bit cheesed off

Also to add that apparently the businesses have had a distinct downturn in business

[Rockets]

tiddles Wrote:

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> I?m surprised the residents in dulwich village are

> not contacting the council - if I had that traffic

> jam and associated increased levels of pollution-

> I?d be a bit cheesed off

>

> Also to add that apparently the businesses have

> had a distinct downturn in business

I think they have been given a promise that the council will shut DV to through traffic at the roundabout. That's part of the phase 2 plans I think.

[FairTgirl]

Rockets Wrote:

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> FairTgirl, did you get the sense those councillors

> who spoke to the shopkeepers were actually going

> to do anything about it? Or did you sense they

> were just paying lip service? I do wonder if any

> councillors are allowed to have an opinion beyond

> the party line.

>

> Unfortunately, the council e-petition that you

> link to has been closed by the council. No one

> knows why but the suspicion is the Cabinet Member

> for Positive Communication, Misinformation and

> Statistical Manipulation became aware of it and

> ordered it to be shut down!

>

> Still the 2441 people who signed it know they at

> least tried to register their annoyance at the way

> the council has been behaving!

Curious, why would they shut it down? What might their issue have been?

Some councillors are definitely concerned and don't agree with all the changes, some are probably towing party line or have own agendas.

Businesses are still talking to them, they don't all appear to be as intent as past and some current councillors on making changes just because they can and because funding is there, we hope some more considered choices will be made.

[Rockets]

No-one seems to know why it has been closed. It could be because it passed the 500 signature threshold to get it debate by the council but it crossed the 5000 threshold a long time before it was closed.

It certainly looks as if someone from the council has gone in and manually closed it as it had been set to run until the end of December. I am sure someone will find out in due course.

I am glad that some councillors are now listening, it looks like the community pressure may be starting to have an impact.

[sand12]

This is getting ridiculous. Walked through both the Dulwich Village and Melbourne Grove closures this week. Much more pleasant and less chaotic to walk through and navigate. Noticed less noise and air pollution than last year. Both areas were used as East West rat runs for years. If your business relied on this I sympathize to an extent, but I also have to wonder why not invest in adapting to these changes as many others have in the past 9months? The greater London ULEZ is also coming into effect later next year which will impact on through traffic anyway, so this seems like a good time to make changes to no longer rely on customers parking at your doorstep.

[KidKruger]

I expect they have shut down the petition because it is a strong message which they don?t want to hear.

It also defeats the point of a petition which is to gauge concern.

[Abe_froeman]

We should start a new petition about the proposed changes to Peckham Rye that will also have a terrible impact on our community.

That one will have to run for three months and I am sure we could get 5.000 signature this time.

[macutd]

sand12 Wrote:

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> This is getting ridiculous. Walked through both

> the Dulwich Village and Melbourne Grove closures

> this week. Much more pleasant and less chaotic to

> walk through and navigate. Noticed less noise and

> air pollution than last year. Both areas were used

> as East West rat runs for years. If your business

> relied on this I sympathize to an extent, but I

> also have to wonder why not invest in adapting to

> these changes as many others have in the past

> 9months? The greater London ULEZ is also coming

> into effect later next year which will impact on

> through traffic anyway, so this seems like a good

> time to make changes to no longer rely on

> customers parking at your doorstep.

it's easy to like road closures It's the impact on the other roads. Congestion, pollution, delays and dangerous roads that we don't want.

[ED_moots]

I am not sure who would've recieved this by Cllr Mccash sent an email eerlier today trying to explain the closures. It's available on his blog at https://www.jamesmcash.com/blog/se22-councillors-low-traffic-neighbourhoods?ss_source=sscampaigns&ss_campaign_id=5f79e1048c4a19279407ee3b&ss_email_id=5f79e1a18a58b414e0b000da&ss_campaign_name=What%E2%80%99s+happening+to+East+Dulwich+roads%3F+&ss_campaign_sent_date=2020-10-04T14%3A52%3A48Z

He has invited comment on the link at the bottom which has an interactive map of the area and the locality of comments.

I suspect one issue with the credibility of a petition is you can't really tell if locally affected people are responding or whether it's people from much further away.

[KidKruger]

I think when you fill in the petition, you have to supply a postcode and house number, which I think would contain fraud?

[ab29]

I think it is all connected and you don't have to live locally to be affected by LTNs. If I work in Lewisham and my bus journey there is taking five times as long now because of the road closures the Lewisham council introduced then I'm affected (over 10 000 people signed a petition against the LTN scheme in Lewisham BTW).

[Rockets]

Cllr McAsh's comments are very telling and bravo for him sticking his head above the trench.

Needless to say there are some things that arise from his post.

1) Cllr McAsh is aware of the big issues that are being caused by the closures (particularly those in Dulwich Village) and the displacement issues impacting his constituents. What is, of course, most interesting is that Cllr McAsh was well aware of what was going to happen when the DV closures came in and it cannot have come as any surprise when, what many of us were predicting would happen did happen.

Remember, Cllr McAsh was lobbying for Melbourne Grove closure as part of OHS when it became clear that the DV OHS closure would displace traffic onto EDG. (https://twitter.com/mcash/status/1231554193275736065/photo/1). It didn't take a genius to work out that EDG was going to take the brunt of the displacement traffic from the DV closures.

2) The pro-lobby now can stand down from trying to convince everyone that everything is awesome (sorry Lego movie) and that these closures are not causing any issues. The closures are causing issues and even Cllr McAsh admits as much. Interesting though that he only highlights East Dulwich Grove and whilst I realise the problems on EDG are massive I cannot help but think that he is highlighting that road as he knows that when Dulwich Village gets closed at the roundabout those problems get moved somewhere else. Interesting he doesn't mentioned Lordship lane that will likely take another hit when DV gets closed northbound in the next phase of the closures.

3) Interesting that he reiterate this is a trial and that conclusions can only be reached when the dust settles but the problem with that is that the council is forging ahead with Phase 2/3 and 4 of the closures and creating more dust. Surely if Phase 1 is having such negative effects on his constituents would it not be sensible to hold off on Phases 2/3 and 4 until the dust has settled? Chasing the displacement, as the council is doing, isn't solving the issues it-s moving it elsewhere. Each councillor seems keen to move the problem off their ward.

4) His comment that Covid made it impossible to consult is, as we all know, utter nonsense. We should also remind ourselves that these measures were, supposedly, fast-tracked to support social distancing. See the survey he set-up to lobby constituents for closures: (https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSec3c3OCsSboVdTnBrOScgFUz6YjVpU1l7GTdYobFNKZCYdvw/viewform)

5) He says the council will seek feedback from the community. That will be interesting to see how they do that. If they follow their usual path they will only seek input from those people who live on the closed roads and discount input from anyone that doesn't. So the only fair and equitable way is to seek input from the wider East Dulwich community but the last time they did that 68% said they didn't want a CPZ but the council went ahead anyway.

6) What is urgently needed is a bi-directional dialogue between councillors and their constituents not one-side, one-directional updates such as Cllr McAsh has posted. If the council is so happy to pro-actively engage with and take input from Southwark cyclists then they should be doing the same with constituents. The council could very easily organise an online meeting to hear the concerns of their constituents but they chose not to.

Cllr McAsh's blog post:

The great Labour politician and founder of the NHS, Nye Bevan, once said ?The language of priorities is the religion of socialism?. His visionary politics led to the creation of the modern welfare state. His priority was to protect the most vulnerable from the excesses of capitalism.

As a councillor in East Dulwich, the priorities I find myself juggling are not so clear cut. Nowhere is this truer than in the ongoing - and seemingly endless - discussion about traffic management. Here, we need to balance a range of competing interests. Drivers and pedestrians. Residents on main roads and those on the side streets. The needs of our local economy, and the existential threat of climate change. It can be impossible to find a solution that everyone likes so we often settle on the least-worst.

This summer we faced a huge challenge. As the lockdown began to ease it became clear that a tiny fraction were using public transport: capacity had dropped and many wanted to avoid it. Meanwhile, more people were driving and more people were cycling.

Local authorities across the country faced the same two problems. How to make our roads safe for all types of road users? And how to keep emissions to a minimum? We all reached the same solution: to trial Low Traffic Neighbourhoods (LTN).

Low traffic neighbourhoods aim to do two things. First, they try to reduce emissions overall, by encouraging cycling and walking by making the road network safer and more pleasant. In addition, they try to segregate cars from cyclists as much as possible - making it safer for both groups. The ward I represent, Goose Green, has a small number of such measures on the streets around East Dulwich station: various roads which were cut-throughs are now cul-de-sacs, dramatically reducing their motor traffic. Although not in Goose Green, there have been similar - and potentially more significant - changes in Dulwich Village, which have had a knock-on effect in East Dulwich.

The goal - to be absolutely clear - is to reduce traffic overall, not simply to move it from one road to another. At the moment, it is hard to measure its success. For a start, we always anticipated a transitional period with higher traffic whilst everyone grows accustomed to the new layout. But more significantly, car-use is rising across London so it is a complex job to assess whether the roads would be better or worse without the new measures. If you?re in a warm room and wear a sweater to go outside, you may still be cooler than you were before but that does not mean the jumper did not warm you.

Since these measures were introduced, we councillors have been inundated with comments from residents. Opinion is split: many residents have written to us with tales of their children playing in the street, but others are concerned by increased traffic on nearby roads. We are particularly aware of the issues on East Dulwich Grove. Covid-19 made it impossible to consult as widely as we would like before implementation. So that?s why the measures are only a trial. When the dust settles we will look carefully at the data and seek feedback from the community. At that point the measures can be maintained, amended or removed entirely.

[Abe_froeman]

I agree with all of that rockets.

Is there anyway to see the arguments that Southwark Cyclists put forward and which the council have adopted?