Rockets

Sorry Earl, what's your point? Surely anyone from East Dulwich or Forest Hill, and parts of Crystal Palace, would be categorised as Southwark and Lewisham residents when responding? I am saying there's a significant weight of evidence that the consultation was manipulated by people who were neither a Southwark or Lewisham resident - and the data supports that suggestion. The weight of non Southwark or Lewisham residents responding to the consultation swung it to "supports" the changes and thus gave the mandate to the council to roll them out.

I think Earl is being rude....

Well I think I have Earl - the fact that the highest number of supportive responses in the consultation (by a country mile) came from people who lived in neither Southwark or Lewisham does indeed suggest that something unusual was going on. If it is not the lobbying efforts of LCC and Southwark Cyclists to their membership perhaps you can share your conclusion as to how that happened? I mean it is a little odd is it not - I mean it's sitting there in black and white?

So @march46 do you have the consultation docs - if so please do share them as they have moved and are no longer where I orginally read them and I did not download them? @Earl Aelfheah you accused me of not doing any research when clearly I had - not at all sure how that is not a good faith debate.

Because it relies on police reports on accidents and only get added when the attached form is filled out - so it is only indicative of the accidents attended by police who then fill out the form, or accidents where people submit the attached form to the police. It was one of the challenges with the death of a woman in Wiltshire who was hit by a cyclist as the police refused to launch an accident investigation because they said, incorrectly and they have since changed their policy, that they would not investigate because "it did not involve a motor vehicle". It you get hit by a bike and have an injury (unless of course it is a death or a very serious injury) it is very unlikely the police will attend. So you cannot use that dataset as definitive proof of how many cycle vs pedestrian accidents are happening - which is exactly how you have been using it. This is why so many people, myself included, have been calling for proper data to monitor how much of a problem this has become. stats19.pdf

@Earl Aelfheah be nice - you have to per the forum rules. I think you owe me an apology because I very much did do my research - back in January 24 and I remember reading the council's document and it did say that the refuge was being removed to facilitate the advance cycle box/lane. The consultation pdf has been moved - has anyone got it? https://consultations.southwark.gov.uk/environment-leisure/dulwich-village-phase-3-design/supporting_documents/Red Post Hill Junction Consultation Plan.pdf @march46 you seem to have a hotline to the council - do you have it?

No, it's the manipulation of the consultation process which is the concern - that is pretty clear from the title of the thread is it not? I am glad to see First Mate and I have no vested interest clouding our decision-making process when it comes to posts on this forum. Anyone else happy to play their hand....come of folks it's only fair......;-)

March46 - did they remove the plan for the cycle lanes at the revised junction then because that was the catalyst for the original works proposals was it not? Can you post the link to the latest plans, do you know why the council changed the plans because the original said the refuge was being removed to accommodate a cycle lane - it was discussed at length on the forum?

Is this not the works to remove the pedestrian refuge to accommodate new cycle lanes? Does seem ridiculous that these works are happening at the same time as the A205/Lordship Lane works - Dulwich is becoming encircled, entrapped and gridlocked by works involving weeks of disruption all at the same time.

Thanks FM - It’s the same police reported STATS19 dataset used by the DfT that is used by CrashMap - there’s clearly only one dataset and it’s the one the police supply to TFL, DfT etc so includes accidents that result in injury or death reported by the police that complies to STATS19 criteria. So it’s by no way definitive and shouldn’t be used to compare the number of accidents involving cars and bikes because the dataset collection is skewed to motorised vehicles.

I did witness by far the best example of strange cycling behaviour at the weekend at Dulwich Square. A woman was cycling down Calton with sprogs following her on bikes and as she approached the area before the shops she let out a blood curdling scream to alert a group of pedestrians crossing at the bit that clearly should actually be a pedestrian crossing of her imminent entrance to the chicane. There was zero chance of any collision and the looks the group of pedestrians gave to this lady were hilarious and suitably dismissive - I watched said lady and her cycling offspring and I turned to my wife and said...."Is she, is she, is she, is she going to stop at the red light......No, I knew it!" Of course she didn't and luckily for the pedestrians crossing under the green light for pedestrians they stopped in time and she didn't feel a blood-curdling scream was necessary.

Earl can you share the link - you've shared so many resources to justify your narrative that I have lost track of which one you are actually referring to....?

"Unsubstantiated bobbins"..."ill-informed guff" .allegedly....the actual data seems to tell a different story.....and why did Southwark categorise those 34 responses as "Not resident of Sydenham Hill or surrounding road" - surely it should have been "not Southwark or Lewisham resident"? You're not answering the question Snowy - perhaps we all should declare whether we are a member of LCC/Southwark Cyclists/Council employee/council consultant/any affiliation to the council/member of the Labour/Tory/Lib Dem party/have any involvement in any of the local pro- or anti-LTN lobby groups/OneDulwich/DulwichRoads etc etc etc.... I can say no to all of those. How about anyone else? Come on all, declare your interests..... Ex- it's good to be back....;-) It's clear some have really missed me and it is so good to have such warm embraces from so many...;-) Yes I do know how consultations work and they can clearly be manipulated so does there need to be a rethink on how they are run - consultations are supposed to be a way for local residents to have a voice on activities that directly impact them every day yet how can it be that people who don't live in the borough or neighbouring borough can sway the consultation one way or another - because this is what has happened on Sydenham Hill - and the voting distribution is oddly skewed towards support. Now, of course, even if the consultation had not gone in the council's favour they would probably have said "tough we're doing it anyway" but this process seems to have been manipulated by the lobbying efforts of activist lobby groups. And yes I did support the initial consultation plans but my issue is whether the consultation process was manipulated (which the results certainly suggest they were) and whether this is a trend seen across other consultations too - slowing traffic is very important but the monstrosity Southwark have created on Sydenham Hill is a poor reflection on transport planners everywhere only matched by the non-council abomination that is Hunts Lip Road which reminds me of the DMZ between North and South Korea! Remember when Southwark tried a system of having codes printed on consultation flyers that you had to enter to respond - they dropped that pretty quickly, I do wonder why they did not continue with that and conclude that they knew that without manipulation they would never get a mandate for these things from local residents. Covid Emergency TMOs gave them the initial out they needed to by-pass rigorous consultation and once those expired they had to find a way to gerrymander support for their proposals.

Ok then, to which dataset are you referring then? Please send the link and I will have a look. You have been referencing CrashMap on here though haven't you?

I think we are seeing this all over London and the response from pro-cycle lobby is so predictable - build more infrastructure. Meanwhile bikes sales are plummeting and cycling still only accounts for a tiny proportion of all London daily journeys and isn't growing any faster than it has for the last 20 years (despite the Covid bump and the millions spent on infrastrucutre) and the vast majority of those cycle journeys are actually cycle delivery drivers and Lime bike cyclists doing journeys under a mile which they could easily walk. But Earl, did the council get their cycle lobby mates to influence the consultation - that's the discussion of this thread. It does seem likely to me that without the intervention of Southwark Cyclists and the London Cycle Campaign that the council would not have got a mandate to make the changes and I wonder how many other consultations have been influenced in the council's favour by council friendly activist groups - how else do you explain the high number of non Southwark and Lewisham residents showing an interest in a scheme so far from where they live? Perhaps Malumbu can tell us how they found out about the consultation as I think they said they responded to it. They do not live in Southwark so I am sure they did not get a flyer through the door about it.

I have - I was just wondering whether you were prepared to share the background on how the stats are collated because the data shared by CrashMap is based on very specific information shared by the police with the DfT isn't it? You seem to be using CrashMap as the definitive bar by which you judge how frequent cycle vs pedestrian accidents are and how you compare that to motor vehicle accidents but it is not a straight-forward as that is it? I am correct in assuming the data to which you refer here is CrashMap/DfT?

Snowy, yup you're right - invariably the person who retaliates get punished not the person who threw the first punch! Lessons learned and all that - and certainly I will be stickler for obeying the rules to the letter now - also acutely aware that there are probably some who will go out of their way to try to get people banned to silence dissenting voices in the debate!! Probably good advice to everyone else to follow the rules for fear suspensions etc get issued to them.

So the link to Crash Map you shared? Perhaps then you might finally answer the question on how that data is collected - what triggers the data on Crash Map - or should I say how does the DfT collate the data as Crash Map aggregates that - what is the trigger for the DfT to add it to the database - is it a police report, an ambulance report, insurance, self-reporting, eye witness - do you know?

That is has anything to do with ULEZ expansion - so why is it in a press release extolling the virtues of ULEX expansion. But the press release does not does it - therein lies the issue - the press release is not a reflection of fact. That bullet has no place being there - it has nothing to do with the ULEZ expansion and the report to which the press release is taken makes that very clear. Before an organisation the size of the Mayor's office puts out an email there will be an internal reviews process (which will include the Mayor's office). It will also include their legal department who will, usually, challenge the claims made in said press release to ensure they pass the threshold for the claim to be made in the release - it's the due diligence process to protect the organisation from making claims that are not true or cannot be substantiated. The press release is misleading and it doesn't matter if the detail is in the report. The press release bullet 4 is making a claim that is incorrect has nothing to do with ULEZ expansion - it has no business being on the press release and is incredibly misleading. The press release is making a claim that is not true.

To what data do you refer? I thought the main issue was that these are not categorised/collated unless police are called to the incident - and the vast majority of cycle incidents are not sufficiently serious to warrant police presence. Is anyone collating a definitive list of cycle vs pedestrian incidents - I know hospitals are seeing a lot of Lime bike induced accidents (many of which are caused to the rider by the bikes themselves) which may well lead to better monitoring to see how widespread the issue is - the same happened with e-scooters which ultimately led to changes in the approach to e-scooters?

I got suspended for calling someone out for using the death of an engineer as a personal jibe. I should of learnt a lesson from some sage advice a rugby coach once gave me - it's not the player who throws the first punch that gets yellow-carded it's the player who retaliates. I think admin deemed me repeating my accusation against said poster for using the death of someone as a personal jibe as too much - fair enough - admin sets the rules....I did plead my innocence but got no response so I served my time (for a crime I didn't commit!!! ;-))

The road is often gridlocked due to cars now being able to park thus reducing the whole road to one lane for both directions buses are often getting stuck - and if a cyclist happens to use the cycle lane the council throws a party for them when they reach the other end....such is the rarity of such an event. That whole road is now a festering relic to the whole botched active travel experiment- the very best visual reminder of the ludicrous approach taken by our council as they waste tax payers money to satiate the demands of the cycle lobby.

I have a lot of catching up to do and am clearly the catalyst for lively debate, although viewing from a far during my suspension you were all doing fine without me! 😉

It's good to be back after my one-month forum suspension - still pleading my innocence on that one but I have served my time and am free again! 😉 Anyway, glad to see that nothing has changed since I have been away and it is good to be back and going to be on my very best behaviour so as to not incur the wrath of admin as they have told me I am on my second strike and have one left (I am sure my forum foes will be rubbing their hands in glee excitedly awaiting the slightest indiscretion to press the report button again and go running to teacher! ;-)). Per the other thread I thought it would be good to start a thread to throw some light on the way the council is conducting consultations and how there seems to be a concerted effort by cycle activist groups to influence local transport decisions - especially during Covid and how our council seem to be using the results from those consultations as justification for spending huge amounts of tax payers money on building cycle infrastructure. I was wondering whether the same tactic was being used for the Peckham works currently being considered because when that one was first mooted in 2020 the council prioritised the responses from the cycle lobby over that of the emergency services. Anyway, a consultation on the biggest cycling infrastructure white elephant on Sydenham Hill was started back in 2020. The council put flyers through the doors of 900+ local residents and the likes of LCC and Southwark Cyclists alerted their members to the consultation. The council had 123 respondents and used the responses from those 123 respondents (55 supporting the measures, 29 supporting the measures with changes and 36 not supporting the measures) as justification for the decision to proceed. The results are here and are taken from the attached report: What is interesting is the large number of non Southwark or Lewisham residents who responded (bizarrely, or perhaps deliberately misleadingly, categorised as Not resident of Sydenham Hill or surrounding road) and how the overwhelming majority of them supported the measures when the distribution of respondents from Southwark and Lewisham are far more evenly distributed across all options. Also when you look at the responses to some of the questions for a consultation on 20mph a lot of the most popular responses were about "Provide Cycle lanes" or "Provide Segregated Cycle Lanes". Maybe it is a co-incidence but it does look like non Southwark or Lewisham residents have influenced the consultation and gave the council the "mandate" they needed to move forward - which they duly did and then spent a huge amount of money on adding cycle infrastructure at huge cost that hardly anyone ever uses - the cost per cycle journey must be extortionate. I do also wonder whether building a cycle lane may have helped the council circumvent consultation rules given the powers that were given to them around active travel during Covid. The challenge is of course that it is hard to limit consultations to a certain number of streets (unless of course you are the council trying to shoehorn a single street CPZ in) but it does look as if the council, and those who support the council's ideological agenda, are tilting the playing field to create an unfair advantage to get their plans through and this, often, comes to the detriment of the very people they are supposed to be representing. I wonder if this trend is repeated across other consultations where the council has been victorious (of course, when things don't go their way they tell us that consultations are not referendum's and then make an executive decision to proceed anyway as they know what's best for us) or whether this was just a statistical one-off. Sydenham Hill summary report V3 (6).pdf Consultation-response-Southwark-Sydenham-Hill-20-mph-Mar-2020 (1).pdf

You don't but the problems for the cycle manufacturing industry were that they believed the nonsense being pedalled by the likes of Will Norman that there was going to be a seismic shift in cycling post-Covid which has just not materialised (except for Lime bike and delivery cyclist increases) despite the huge amount of money invested in cycling infrastructure. To be fair they don't have the best of track records....remember when Will Norman had to intervene after Southwark Councillors reduced TFL staff to tears after TFL dared to publish a report that said congestion at the Croxted Road junction with Norwood Road was being caused by displacement from the Dulwich Village LTNs..... Be nice.....the forum rules require it! 😉