Southwark-wide CPZ

[mr.chicken]

12 hours ago, Ella Menopee said:

Southwark took it down and won’t replace it as apparently one of the business owners on that stretch of road objects to it being reinstalled. 

If this is correct, it's a strong indication that business's opinions on whether or not parking restrictions will harm their business are divorced from reality.

The parklet space was about the size of one large SUV. It would often have a bike (noooo!!! lycra!!1!!! the horror!!!11one!1!1) or two chained up and a customer or two of one of the nearby coffee shops sitting there eating a pastry and drinking a coffee. That's now been replaced with one large SUV. It's almost always a huge SUV because of course it is. Oh and of course the SUV is parked there for a while, sometimes hours.

It's less pleasant and there's less seating so the coffee shops are now more often full.

I'm sure the one customer an hour arriving by SUV offsets all of that.

But it's good, right, if we despise the rich people who must be going there. Much better to have one rich person dump their Canyonero in the spot for an hour than actually spend some of the excess money they have in a local shop.

 

[Nigello]

17 hours ago, Kathleen Olander said:

That's spot on.  By the way anyone know what happened to the 'parklet' that sprung up overnight outside Romeo Jones in DV and then disappeared again a short while later?  

 

I was told by an employee of a DV business that a drunk driver slammed into it late one night, destroying it in part or wholly and it won’t be replaced - at a cost of 20k or so (according to this person). 

[malumbu]

Probably the same person that crashed into the phone box and cycle parking outside Lidl in Sydenham 

[[email protected]]

Don’t put your CPZ views on twitter - Big Brother at the Council doesn’t like it 

[mrwb]

For ULEZ complaint vehicles it's a £225 hit for every vehicle annually for the permit, £300 for non compliant. Just what everyone needs with the cost of living crisis and incipient recession. That's £225/300 that can't be spent elsewhere obviously...

My guess is the council probably either have to make huge cuts or run out of cash if they can't get this parking money in. Their expenses will have increased like every entity and the fines from the LTN and school street traps (expect the new ones on Adys road etc) will have dried up largely now.

 

 

[modernMajorGeneral]

Hi Everyone,

We set up a group to oppose the CPZ when the consultation started in our area a few months ago. We'd like to expand the group to include all of Southwark. If we join our voices together, we can surely make ourselves heard.

Visit opposethecpz.org and get in touch if you can get involved.

Cheers,

Richard.

[CPR Dave]

Good idea Richard.

The more coordinated and momentous the opposition, the more chance it will have of succeeding. Might be worth getting in touch with One Dulwich too to see if they have any pointers and pitfalls to avoid.

[Earl Aelfheah]

The Mayor is reported to support smart road pricing. This is great news - and will no doubt have the full support of One Dulwich and of course our very own @Rockets who said he was in favour of exactly this! If it does get rolled out in London, I look forward to their full throated support 🙂 

[Rockets]

On 15/07/2023 at 18:11, [email protected] said:

Don’t put your CPZ views on twitter - Big Brother at the Council doesn’t like it 

They aren't keen on any voices that don't validate their own narrative...it also helps them try to control the narrative as it stops people seeing any dissenting voices on their timeline. You can't manipulate consultations and then see your constituents telling you what they really think on your social channels!

 

23 minutes ago, Earl Aelfheah said:

The Mayor is reported to support smart road pricing. This is great news - and will no doubt have the full support of One Dulwich and of course our very own @Rockets who said he was in favour of exactly this! If it does get rolled out in London, I look forward to their full throated support 🙂 

Fully supportive of means-tested road pricing - the means-tested is an important part as only that can be considered fair to everyone but I have seen no talk of that. Interesting dynamic comes into play if road-pricing does come in in light of Cllr McAsh's "justice" mantra....

[Penguin68]

When I was working in this area (Road pricing) as part of a national plan it was always understood that road pricing would be a substitute for Vehicle Tax, and thus a tax on usage, not ownership. This will inevitably be in addition to that, which is an entirely different proposition. We may expect to see, as car owners in an area acknowledged as being relatively poorly served by public transport (poor PTAL score) to be charged for the miles we drive, the roads we park in, entering Central London (congestion Charge) and having old vehicles (ULEZ). AND charged through Road Tax for ownership. 

On a (not entirely different note) figures published today suggest that London (as regards CO2 emissions per capita) is the area which contributes least to anthropogenic global warming per capita in the UK (and almost half the per capita contribution of Northern Ireland, the worst contributor). Not that you'd have guessed that by the noises being made.

[Spartacus]

2 hours ago, Earl Aelfheah said:

The Mayor is reported to support smart road pricing. This is great news - and will no doubt have the full support of One Dulwich and of course our very own @Rockets who said he was in favour of exactly this! If it does get rolled out in London, I look forward to their full throated support 🙂 

Sadly it has been reported that the Mayor is in favour of this, not because it reduces car use or emissions, but due to anticipated falling revenues from the Ultra Low Emission Zone  once cars are ULEZ compliant.

Points a very sh!tty stick at the real reasons these schemes are introduced, revenue generation. 

[malumbu]

Road charging needs to be national, and as Penguin said, essentially this would replace Vehicle Excise Duty.  It's a shame we don't have greater leadership in out current government. From friends in various departments, including transport, it all seems to be don't rock the boat, and lets just see off the next 17 months till a new lot get in. Obviously the PM is still making announcements in other areas, generally without substance.

Whether you think it is a money making scheme or not, ULEZ gets many of the most polluting vehicles off the street.

 

[Rockets]

The CPZ consultation document is utterly beyond a joke - I just looked at it again. The council are treating residents like idiots - a lot of people on our road are really angry at the council (many of them were triggered by the document as they believe it is an afront to the democratic process and a step too far in the councils agenda pushing exercise). The local buzz seems to be that the council do not have a legitimate mandate to push this out and many are displaying some distinct voter remorse!

[alice]

Sham consultation. Meeting chaotic. McAsh reduced to Rose style time wasting. When pushed stated that the council has made the decision. No change possible. Many left. Pointless. 

[tiddles]

Yes, the bottom line is that southwark is broke and cannot maintain the roads. They are looking to use the revenue from the CPZ to fund repairs. 

They are not able to do anything about gardens being paved over to avoid the costs. 

I am keen to know how they think Teaches who travel to their place of work are meant to deal with this - ditto health care workers visiting patients. 

I plan to email the councillors directly for comments as tempers were running very high at the meeting and I think they were overwhelmed by the turnout and general feeling of residents. 

 

 

[alice]

If they were open and honest they might have got a better reception instead of wasting money on glossy happy people fake climate change brochure. 

Edited July 17, 2023 by alice
Sense

[Rockets]

This is probably why they, ahem, forgot to mention the CPZs during the local elections when they were setting out their plans and manifesto for their next term...glad to hear that they were overwhelmed by the turnout and the anger shown by residents...the only thing likely to change direction of this is if they think it might cost them their seat at the next local elections. I am not at all convinced they have a mandate for this and things could get very problematic for them.

 

Very interested to know why they have left East Dulwich out of this - I wonder if they thought they might get an easier ride of it in Dulwich Village and Dulwich Hill and were hoping for force East Dulwich to go for it after the others were installed given 68% of East Dulwich residents who responded rejected CPZs a few years ago. Unless McAsh is trying to protect his own political longevity.

[CPR Dave]

He's clearly riding two horses:

1. Still the one where he said he would only put CPZs in where residents asked for them (when his own Goose Green residents also turned up to meetings with tempers running high with an overwhelming turnout) but also ;
2. The new one where we have to put in CPZs regardless of resident consent for the sake of equity exclusively amongst residents of Southwark.

I guess he's thinking his clever trick will be to make Goose Green an island of free parking that is swamped with cars from Dulwich Hill and Dulwich Village parking on our streets so that he has the last laugh when the 68% go begging to him on their knees asking for a CPZ here, and he can pretend he never reneged on his original promise.

Edited July 17, 2023 by CPR Dave

[Ivvan]

20 minutes ago, alice said:

If they were open and honest they might have got a better reception instead of wasting money on glossy happy people fake climate change brochure. 

Totally agree.

19 minutes ago, Rockets said:

This is probably why they, ahem, forgot to mention the CPZs during the local elections when they were setting out their plans and manifesto for their next term...glad to hear that they were overwhelmed by the turnout and the anger shown by residents...the only thing likely to change direction of this is if they think it might cost them their seat at the next local elections. I am not at all convinced they have a mandate for this and things could get very problematic for them.

 

Very interested to know why they have left East Dulwich out of this - I wonder if they thought they might get an easier ride of it in Dulwich Village and Dulwich Hill and were hoping for force East Dulwich to go for it after the others were installed given 68% of East Dulwich residents who responded rejected CPZs a few years ago. Unless McAsh is trying to protect his own political longevity.

Totally agree

[tiddles]

I think if they were more honest they might get a better reception. Rather than claim we all responded to a consultation in 2019 where we all expressed concerns about XYZ, if they just said, "after 12 years of reduced budgets, we are broke, we need to find some money and we think people with cars can afford to pay something, there might be a slightly more receptive audience but this nonsense of  'you told us you were concerned' line makes us distrust them.  It was quite clear the people who turned up who were Southwark Employees were totally out of their depth and had no remit to respond to anything. Would like to add that they need to address public workers and health visitors...

[CPR Dave]

The thing is, they are not broke when it comes to roads. 

The last data published that I can find on their website showed the profits from parking going up every year by about £1m a year. 4/5 years ago the surplus was in excess of £7m. 

It's probably more like £12m a year now.  That money has to be put back into roads. They can't use it anywhere else. 

[Rockets]

Ha ha....would that be the 2019 Movement Plan where they interviewed 1,200 people (not a bad number considering nearly 308,000 people live in the borough ;-)) of which a large number were 9-15 year olds and another large chunk students in the north of the borough (of which 48% were not residents of Southwark)....where they covered a range of issues and we are not even sure they asked any direct questions about CPZs just determined that from the answers to the questions.....hmmmmmm...this is starting to look as flimsy as the WMD in Iraq dossier.....

2 minutes ago, CPR Dave said:

The thing is, they are not broke when it comes to roads. 

The last data published that I can find on their website showed the profits from parking going up every year by about £1m a year. 4/5 years ago the surplus was in excess of £7m. 

It's probably more like £12m a year now.  That money has to be put back into roads. They can't use it anywhere else. 

You're right - they're making a hefty packet on the fines for LTNs and that has to be invested in roads.....

[tiddles]

Have fired this off to Councillor Mc Nash - tho rather concerned it the above is true - then that means a local councillor has lied to me? 

 

 

James

thank you for attending this evening’s meeting regarding the above and trying to answer the many residents questions and concerns. You were put in a very difficult situation and I sympathise. However, you must understand that people genuinely feel that they have been dumped on from high above. There is no problem with pollution and parking in the many residential areas that the proposed CPZ is going to be installed. 

 

Rather than claim we all responded to a questionnaire in 2019, just say, - "after 12 years of underfunding, we cannot balance the books and we think people with cars can contribute", it might be accepted as a reality. 

 

HOWEVER you are going to kill the golden goose. Dulwich Village businesses have seen a clear 15% downturn in trade since the introduction of the LTNs, coupled with with a 30% increase in overheads — it looks grim. 

 

 

If you start to make it difficult for all the independent businesses on Lordship Lane/Forest hill road and elsewhere, to have passing trade, then you are going to destroy what is so special about this south london enclave. 

 

I am also very concerned about how the teachers who work in the many local schools are going to manage. I am hoping you are aware that the average Teacher Salary will not cover buying a house in East Dulwich - how are these essential workers going to manage? - I hope they will get in an exemption? 

 

Ditto health professionals making house calls to patients needing home health visits - please assure us that these will be assured free parking. I am sure that given the massive machinery put in place to manage this additional bureacracy this will be appropriately managed. 

 

I look forward to a response. 

Edited July 18, 2023 by tiddles

[alice]

On 15/07/2023 at 09:33, mr.chicken said:

If this is correct, it's a strong indication that business's opinions on whether or not parking restrictions will harm their business are divorced from reality.

The parklet space was about the size of one large SUV. It would often have a bike (noooo!!! lycra!!1!!! the horror!!!11one!1!1) or two chained up and a customer or two of one of the nearby coffee shops sitting there eating a pastry and drinking a coffee. That's now been replaced with one large SUV. It's almost always a huge SUV because of course it is. Oh and of course the SUV is parked there for a while, sometimes hours.

It's less pleasant and there's less seating so the coffee shops are now more often full.

I'm sure the one customer an hour arriving by SUV offsets all of that.

But it's good, right, if we despise the rich people who must be going there. Much better to have one rich person dump their Canyonero in the spot for an hour than actually spend some of the excess money they have in a local shop.

 

You seem to know a lot about that particular spot which would imply you also know what’s actually been happening there.  

[Rockets]

I don't know about anyone else but I was interested to see that you could submit your comments online without having to select your preference for the timing of the CPZs. I did this but put comments in the sections provided for them about how I was not supportive of the CPZs and how the council do not have a mandate for them and that not giving people a voice in opposing them via the consultation was shameful. I am hoping that if others follow suit and do not select a time preference then the number of respondents will be a lot higher than those who indicated a preference and we can force some difficult questions for the council to answer when they herald the success of the consultation.