Rockets

@malumbu what many people, quite rightly, question is whether these activist researchers can be considered impartial. So it's not necessarily because people don't like the results but that the use of public money to get researchers who have publicly lobbied for such measures to mark TFL and the Mayor's Office's homework on such measures seems a little incestuous and a clear conflict of interest. Surely even you can acknowledge that? Then if one of the main authors of said reports is caught behaving in a very non-impartial way by ripping down anti-LTN posters in her local newsagent then it's validating people's concerns - if she can act in such a way (you have to admit it is very odd behaviour) there is no way people can be expected to believe that her personal bias will not be reflected in her research. If it happened in any other walk of life you'd probably be calling it out as a clear conflict of interest - but you are happy to turn a blind-eye based on your own ideology.

But you have to agree that the large percentage of this body of research in relation to the London interventions have been authored by, amongst others, someone who used to work at LCC and another who, in a personal capacity, has been part of a local action group lobbying for a new LTN within a borough for which she has written reports and also has, in a personal capacity, torn tears down anti-LTN posters? That's not smearing their character - that's stating facts which would lead some to question whether they are truly impartial. If I was commissioning someone to research interventions impartially and they referred to those interventions as "innovative" I would probably ask whether they were the right person to do a totally impartial report. Do you not also think that the fact that TFL/the Mayor's office killed one of the reports they commissioned this team to do because it did not show what they were hoping is further proof of the game being played here? Again, you are putting the word "interfered/interfering" into my mouth. Stop it please - that is actually the deflection here. Selective plucking is not interfering.

Give me £1.5m and I will give it a crack but clearly given my position as someone who has voiced strong anti-LTN views I am not sure anyone would consider it impartial….oh, but hang on…..;-)

I think the moral of this story is: "hell hath no fury like a politician scorned"

Hurrah, at last....please, please, please stop doing it! No, not tin foil hat stuff but it is how it is presented that matters. And you know this better than anyone as you fell for the council "majority support for Dulwich Village LTN" and repeated it here as some sort of proof. That stat was misleading propaganda as the real stat on support (or not in this case) was buried in the report and nowhere near the council infographic or correspondence on it - the use of that stat shows just how biased councils and others are when the desperately want the public to believe something. You have to admit if they had put the 80% of people don't support the measures the mood board of their report would have been very, very different. A bit like activist research, it's often what doesn't make the editors cuts that is most telling. I dunno, maybe, for instance, anyone who has been doing research on the basis of the £1.5m awarded to University of Westminster, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), Cambridge University or Imperial College London to research LTNs who may have had roles within cycle lobby or other activist groups... I mean when they got the funding for the "impartial" research Dr Aldred referred to LTN interventions as "innovative" and it's clear what the focus of their conclusions in the reports were going to be before the research had actually started..... Talking about the funding and new research, Professor Aldred said: “It is exciting to be able to study these innovative but under-researched interventions in much more depth than has previously been possible. For instance, we will extend our previous research by examining not just impacts on overall levels of walking and cycling, but also any changes in who walks and cycles, for instance gender balance. This award also means that we can look in detail at local people’s experiences, and how these experiences may change over time. Another focus will be examining changes over time in congestion levels on boundary roads and in the experiences of residents living on boundary roads, areas where more research is needed.”

And what's the old saying about "if you can't do the time, don't do the crime". Maybe she should have thought of the potential consequences before acting the way she did. And this is the point why it became such a big story - because it was a "gotcha" - a "man bites dog story" - something that you would not expect from an supposedly impartial academic. The reason lots of media publications covered it - and it wasn't just the Mail (in fact, not surprisingly, the only publication that didn't seem to cover it was the Guardian) was because of exactly that - it was a good story for clicks. Ha ha, and are you honestly telling us if you had some gotcha on One Dulwich you wouldn't be amplifying it.....honestly....I believe you, millions would not... And I remind you, you took annoyance when I pointed out the awards the Dulwich Society transport committee sub committee chair had won for active travel campaigning.....all in the public domain yet you tried to claim it was an "outing". What must really grate is that people still talk about these things and you haven't been able to douse the flames....in fact, there are new fires appearing everywhere...that must really hurt.

One wonders if he would have defected if he had, ahem, held on to the leadership of Southwark and whether he felt that "Labour are no longer the vehicle for social justice" during his leadership election........my how quickly things change in the thoughts of a politician 😉 I think this sums things up quite nicely: A senior Southwark Labour spokesperson hit back: “Local residents can draw their own conclusions about Cllr McAsh’s swift move from Labour leadership hopeful to the Green Party, after he didn’t get his own way. While he’s thinking about his own career, Southwark Labour are delivering for residents.” One wonders if he will stand as a Green candidate in Goose Green.

@Earl Aelfheah again, and not for the first time, you are misrepresenting what was actually said and trying to put words into people's mouth - you really need to stop it. I refer to them as activist researchers - which is exactly what they are. Their work is funded by organisations keen to mark their own homework and those researchers have a long history of being part of the active travel cycle lobby - one of them was even caught tearing down an anti-LTN poster in her local shop. They are part of the active travel lobby machine and look, they have been caught shelving reports that did not meet the narrative that those funding their work wanted published. That is the very definition of activist research. Yup half a decade of the council, local authorities and the active travel lobby treating local residents with utter contempt, bending the rules and trying to impose nonsensical interventions to appease a tiny minority. The big issue for you is this is not going away - that more and more people are realising how underhand the council and local authorities have been - look at what better awareness has done; Streatham Wells LTNs, West Dulwich LTNs, Rydeale LTN and then look at some of the questions the London Assembly have been asking of TFL about impacts on buses. The worm is turning and it because people refuse to be bullied into silence - that they feel the need to stand up to those in power and challenge their ludicrous plans. All that is happening is what many on here predict would happen, despite folks like you telling them it wouldn't, whist calling them a load of names. Power to the People!

Postal deliveries are coming under scrutiny too https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cm2xy9x27mvo

Oh dear.....clearly little point debating this with you. Bottom-line is congestion in London is getting worse every year and it has an economic impact and it seems there is a growing awareness that congestion is getting worse as more and more of the public highway is given over to cycle infrastructure - cycling accounts for around 3 and 4% of all journeys made in London - since 2019 this has grown by about 1% - good progress of course but no-one has, to this point, looked at the wider cost. TFL and the Mayor have got to start, pragmatically, looking at whether the balance of change is correct and if it is achieving the goals and at what cost. Traffic planning in London has, for years, been skewed to cycling and this has often been at the cost of public transport options like buses - which are a far more efficient way of moving large numbers of people around London but congestion is impacting passenger numbers as journeys take longer and longer and TFL is cutting large swathes of the bus network because it can longer afford to provide the service. This is something everyone needs to be concerned about. Councils are not approaching their roll-out of interventions with any sort of joined-up thinking so they often make things worse rather than better - case in point the madness of the Ryedale proposal and this current Peckham Rye plan.

No these figures are caused by congestion I have never blamed that solely on LTNs - please at least try to be accurate and not put words into my mouth. Now are LTNs and other active travel interventions contributing to increased congestion - undoubtedly and seemingly to an extent that is causing the London Assembly some concern due to, amongst other things, the impact it is having on buses. London congestion continues to get worse on a backdrop of declining vehicles on the roads so clearly something else is going on and it is having a massive economic and environmental impact. You cant sugarcoat it anymore - the interventions are not working and there needs to be a fundamental rethink. Trying to throw in ludicrous programmes like Ryedale and Peckham Rye, both of which clearly impact more people negatively than they benefit, shows just how out of control the active travel obsessives, and the lobby groups they call friends, are within local councils.

This thread is brilliant! I am glad it has a happy ending. The reference to the Punto keys reminds of the days of when you could "jiggle a lock" with a similar car key and I speak from painful memory as a kid I managed to lock the keys in our car whilst on a camping holiday in Spain. My mum and dad didn't speak much Spanish and much hilarity ensued (post event) as they tried to communicate to the driver of a similar make and model of car as to why they had flagged him down and were trying to get him to lend them the key from his ignition!

And the longer this goes on, the more the council's underhand tactics come to light and sheds new light on what was happening when they started these programmes - validating what many of us were saying at the time and one intervention at a time engages more people across the area in the debate - look at the number of people from the Ryedale area posting on here and now from Peckham Rye. This is the beauty of local discussion forums like this - they allow people to communicate who would probably never do so without it! This is why so many who support the council are so desperate to try and make people move on - they probably realise there are skeletons buried under every LTN in the area (figuratively of course) and are trying to protect their beloved council - as we have been saying for years councillors, councils and politicians of all political persuasion absolutely hate accountability.

@Earl Aelfheah can you show us any research where said activist researchers were not involved......? If one of the famed authors is passionate enough to tear down anti-LTN posters in their local newsagents I think everyone is well within their rights to question the impartiality of their output as an "impartial" author on (vested-interest) funded research into the effectiveness of LTNs....if the boot was on the other foot I very much suspect you would have an issue with it. That's a bit rich coming from you don't you think...you are more than happy to insist something must be true because the council tells you it is so.....I mean they got you hook, link and sinker with the "majority support" for the Dulwich Village LTNs in their consultation summary documents didn't they....#justsayin 😉

@DulvilleRes oh deary me....I have not ducked any question and I have told you one million times before...I have nothing to do with One Dulwich nor have any affiliation to any lobby group or political party. I do not think they are funded by some shadowy cabal - but you, clearly do, yet other than making mealy-mouthed accusations against others you have presented zero evidence to back this up. Zero. So maybe it is time that you go and do some "citizen journalism" yourself and come to everyone with something substantive to backup your claims. Because at the moment it looks like nothing more than a poorly thought out, poorly executed desperate distraction technique which you whole-heartedly wish to be true. I remind you that it was you who seemed to take great offence that someone made public (using publically available information and information publicised by the person concerned themselves on their own social channels) that an award winning active travel lobbyist had been appointed to an influential position within the Dulwich Society on transport issues - why was that exactly? My personal view is that you just don't like what I post as it doesn't align with your own ideological, political and active travel views so you try to attack me in the vain hope of trying to silence me. Fair enough - that's you're prerogative (and this seems to be the go-to position in the active travel lobby playbook on how to try to deal with dissenting voices) but that probably says far more about you than it does me and, as I have said a million times before I have nothing to hide. As I have said before you seem to be a Dulwich Village resident so perhaps you can try to contribute to the debate positively by telling us if you believe congestion is better or worse since the LTNs went in on Dulwich Village? A yes/no answer will suffice,. Yey...it took a while but almost there.....do you think the heavy congestion is better or worse then pre-LTNs? Only, I suspect, when the council does research that it didn't commission an active travel activist researcher to produce! 😉 The growing issue for councils is that if, in time, people discover they did have information that these interventions were not working and they were selective in the information they decided to share in infographics etc then they could be in big, big trouble both politically and legally.