Rockets

Mal, is there anything wrong in admitting that I don't like cyclists who of ignore the rules of the road and are inconsiderate to others? I don't like car drivers who do the same. I don't like scooter riders who do the same or lorry drivers or bus drivers..... Obey the rules, be considerate to others and we can all get on swimmingly. But many, on every side, don't. And it is perfectly reasonable to take issue with those people. So don't try and pigeon-hole us as somehow anti cyclist - it's a weak and fundamentally flawed narrative that probably highlights your own prejudice more than ours.

The council were forced to do some monitoring on Underhill, published one set of results as an addendum to one of their reports (which concluded that traffic was lower on Underhill and Barry Road than before the pandemic) but it looks like that was it. It does seem ludicrous that little monitoring is being done on streets east of Lordship Lane which are soaking up much of the displacement. Also not sure how the council and it's pro-LTN supporters can claim area-wide traffic is down when there is no areawide monitoring.

Also remember the council never followed through on their commitment to monitor Underhill Road and Barry Road, both of which are major LTN displacement routes, with Underhill taking a lot of additional traffic as it tries to cut round congestion on Lordship Lane at the Grove Tavern junction.

They know what is happening but are wilfully standing by and letting it get worse - it's criminal. They have dug themselves a huge hole and are digging it deeper and deeper. Interesting to see what is happening in areas like Tower Hamlets, London Fields and Haringey where people power is starting to make councils rethink their flawed LTN policies.

Unless you live on East Dulwich Grove of course (the increases there are catastrophic and as a direct consequence of the closures)...and remember we were promised the LTNs would reduce traffic for all across the area and that objective has clearly not been achieved. And each time they update the dashboard it gets worse with more roads turning orange and red.....

Come on, they need to tell us which council representative/s it was that abused TFL staff.....looks like they are trying to sweep it under the carpet...these are elected officials representing constituents and are behaving awfully. https://southwarknews.co.uk/news/transport/tfl-staff-left-upset-and-in-tears-by-abusive-southwark-council-staff-in-meeting-about-dulwich-village-ltn/

Looks like Andy single-handedly got the disruption removed.....only a week after they went in.....ahem....

Absolute chaos again today and knock-on effect being felt all across the area as people try to find a way around it. Let's see whether anyone bothers to work on it today because, despite claims it will be completed tomorrow, the Thames Water website still says: Current activity status: Our technicians are due to investigate the reported leak on Lordship Lane and will be there shortly. If a repair is needed we'll get this planned in as quickly as possible. Work reference number: 31874354 Has anyone seen or heard from the local councillors on this?

It gets worse, apparently the temporary lights failed and it's been utter chaos....

Zero progress - still a hole and no sign of anyone from Thames Water. The update on their website says (as it has for the last 3 days): Our technicians are due to investigate the reported leak on Lordship Lane and will be there shortly. If a repair is needed we'll get this planned in as quickly as possible. What on earth are they playing at?

And therein lies the issue - people don't leave their private bikes in the middle of pavements for a days at a time until they use them next but people using hires bikes can and do - because that is the business model - you leave it where you want because the plan is that someone else will use it and move it to the next place and so it repeats.... It means the business model is built on the ability to leave the bikes where you want/need.

It was even more chaotic this morning as the contra-flow they have put in has effectively closed the A205 and the impact is being felt all over South East London with complete gridlock as far back as Catford with people trying to find ways around the works. Perhaps more worrying is I called Thames Water about it this morning to see how long it is likely to take and they have no details on their system about it - they thought it was the metering works!

Given the way e-scooters are just dumped all over the place I suspect that the operators aren't too keen to punish the riders. I was in Rome recently and they have awful problems with e-scooters (the streets in the centre of Rome are just littered with them) and are actively trying to resolve many of the issues that we are seeing here - hopefully TFL and councils don't repeat many of the mistakes others have made. https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/rome-scooter-problems/index.html

Wow...if this is correct this is the most damning evidence we have seen...but probably validates what a lot of us have been saying for a long time about the real impact of LTNs.... More evidence is emerging that LTNs are not cutting traffic – one of the main reasons for imposing them. According to an investigation by the Times, Department for Transport (DfT) figures show that vehicle miles driven rose by an average of 11.4% in the ten inner London boroughs that introduced LTNs in 2020. By contrast, in the two inner London boroughs that didn’t introduce LTNs, vehicle miles driven rose by an average of only 8.9%. (In Southwark, which has ten LTNs, vehicle miles driven rose by 13% between 2020 and 2021.)

It is a joke - Thames Water seem incapable of fixing the issues on that stretch and they seem to have problems with alarming regularity. I appreciate these are emergency works so do not need integrated or forward-planning but the impact they are having on congestion levels along huge parts of the A205 is not acceptable. It seems to be happening every couple of weeks - is anyone trying to hold Thames Water to account? I walked down East Dulwich Grove earlier and the traffic was queuing from the Dulwich Village junction back beyond Melbourne Grove towards Lordship Lane and I suspect that is linked to these issues on the A205.

Malumbu - your nirvana doesn't exist I am afraid so, in the meantime, we should probably avoid measures that don't actually make the problem worse by increaseing congestion and pollution so maybe a time for a rethink on LTNs as they seem to be roundly failing. In addition to the One Dulwich update I would suggest people also complain about the abuse and bullying of TFL staff by council representatives/councillors - it needs to be made a matter of public record, investigated and action taken against those who were responsible for it and we need to hear from the council on what steps are being taken to ensure TFL staff can work without being abused and reduced to tears - it's utterly uncalled for.

Those works have been causing chaos on the A205 as nothing can get down Lordship Lane (due to the temporary lights) - it's causing gridlock affecting Sydenham Hill, Forest Hill and as far back as Tulse Hill in the other direction.

We are reaping what we sowed in that regard - I was amazed at the number of people who, despite their opposition to what councillors were doing locally with LTNs etc, voted Labour to stick it to Boris et al - needless to say they are now moaning about what Labour councillors are doing at a local level with the latest raft of LTN idiocy and I am reminding them they are a partial cause of the problem - now we have idiots running us at a national level and idiots running us at a local level! It is clear though that the only witch-hunt has been waged by Labour councillors on TFL staff and let's hope someone holds them to account and I hope that even the most ardent pro-LTN supporter can see that Labour councillor behaviour has crossed a line and has been utterly unacceptable - I would expect this from Tories not from Labour.

It is very weird isn't it as the Turney Road one is accurate - is this another deliberate "oversight" by the council - you would have thought they would have been being very careful in that regard given the previous oversights in relation to LTNs?! This is a very misleading representation of the changes being suggested and, at best, reeks of a lack of care and professionalism on the part of the council, at worst looks like a deliberate attempt to manipulate the consultation. I am perhaps more concerned by the extension of the deadline - do we know why it has been extended? If you remember the last time a deadline was extended it was done so so the council could send people around knocking on doors to pressgang people into responding as the initial responses didn't support the outcome they wanted. Should we presume that the results are not to the council's liking again this time and they need more time to create a more positive outcome for them? It sounds like a lot of people in the area are very much against the closure of Turney Road (and it appears about 80% of the residents on the affected part of Turney Road itself)?

And this from Cllr Rose is telling too.... I’m having to push back on the TfL report and defend the scheme again, it’s important that we don’t end up back to square one in the public debate over Dulwich and keeping the junction closure permanent, so any insights and support from your enquiries would be much appreciated. In other words - fix your report for us. It's clear councillors have been exerting a huge amount of pressure on TFL and the fact that Will Norman had to intervene speaks volumes. Also the fact that councillors are no longer allowed to reach out direct to TFL demonstrates where the problem stems from and it's clear the councillors (in their enthusiasm to maintain the - everything is great with the Dulwich LTNs narrative) have created huge problems and seem to have been bullying TFL staff to the point where they have been reduced to tears. But none of this can come as a surprise to anyone who has seen how the council and councillors have treated residents with utter contempt from the day this all started and this is just the icing on the cake and reflective of people who are never held to account for their actions. Our councillors should be ashamed of themselves and I really hope there has been some disciplinary proceedings against the protagonists - but I doubt it.

Wow, just wow......this does not paint a good picture of our councillors and the way they treat other people (in this case TFL....abusing and reducing TFL staff to tears....). It shows how bad things have got that Will Norman had to intervene and TFL has told local councillors not to engage directly with them....I wonder if Kieron Williams will take any action against those involved - I very much doubt it given his track record with the likes of Leo Pollack? Given what we have seen from our Labour councillors during the LTN fiasco nothing comes as any surprise anymore and Labour councillors appear to be trying to bully their way to the resolution they want. A reminder that it was Cllr Leeming who accidentally sent the report (that he was trying to get redacted before publication) to residents - it looks like Will Norman is trying to remind Cllr Rose that it was Leeming's mistake that was the trigger for this and the abuse of TFL staff is completely unwarranted. This thread is really quite shocking and we deserve to hear a response from Cllr Rose and any of those councillors involved.

Malumbu, we are thinking wider that’s why many of us are posing the questions the pro-lobby often choose to overlook! ;-) I think it is clear scooters are not replacing car journeys but walking and public transport and therefore there are minimal climate change benefits - in fact their impact may be detrimental - those battery packs alone that they have to replace constantly will have a significant negative environmental impact. Greenwashing is the act of falsely upping your environmental credentials - i.e. councils able to say we are supporting green initiatives like e-scooters to promote active travel.

The big question will be what types of journeys are these replacing - I very much doubt they are car journeys so if they are either walking or public transport then there will likely be a negative environmental impact by their use. I suspect councils are using these for a bit of greenwashing but don't properly understand the long-term impact in terms of environmental (both climate change and littering etc - every European city has a big littering problem with them dumped all over the place and the same debate is raging in most of them - are they actually worth it?).

I think you will find the complaints are because the council was supposed to be consulting local people on what they wanted to be in the square and yet they have gone ahead and started amending the square before the consultation has started properly. They are also complaining because the consultation offers people two versions of the same option, both of which incorporate the measures they have already started installing....they complain because the council has seemingly decided what happens with the square after engaging only with self-interest groups and are retrospectively engaging with wider groups as a tick boxing exercise to validate the plans they are installing. That is not what they promised us would happen. That is why people are angry. They have lied to us - again. P.S. Oh and whilst the materials may be cheap I am sure the installation of the children's TV set seats did not come cheaply.

If that is the case it does beg the question why have they been installed and at what cost. The council seems to be happy to fritter money on follies such as this whilst at the same time bemoan a lack of funding for essential services etc. Local sentiment seems to be very much that these additions are laughable and the council has lost all sense of reality when it comes to this junction. Many of our neighbours are so angry with the way the current consultation is being run as they realise the council gives no consideration to the views of those who dare voice an opinion other than the one they hold. The fact they are wasting money adding these items at the beginning of yet another corrupt consultation process just feels like them flicking the v's at many of their constituents.