Bobby P

Well done on the petition reaching its century. https://www.change.org/p/southwark-council-no-barrier-for-melbourne-grove It's great that people are signing up to a common sense approach. The more the merrier.

Here's the correct link to the online petition https://www.change.org/p/southwark-council-no-barrier-for-melbourne-grove All those wanting a commonsense approach to the issue should certainly sign now. (Well done to those who have organised this prior to the next DCC meeting.) hopskip Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > rch Wrote: > -------------------------------------------------- > ----- > > We've now got 84 signatures on the No Barrier > > online petition and roughly the same amount > again > > on the paper version of the petition.

Removed due to defamatory comment - Admin

What does the closure letter say, vesti? No one I know has received one, which begs the usual question as to process and how the Council can allow this to happen - starting in one week's time - without any consultation. Frankly this is pretty low behaviour on behalf of whoever has arrogantly organised it, and it doesn't take a genius to imagine who that is. If the instigator of this nonsense would like to speak up for themselves, this would be a very good time. And, by the way, what does James Barber have to say about this?

What on earth are "play streets"? Closing our favourite rat run on busy Saturdays? Woodward, are we to understand from your post that the 'Block Melbourne Campaign' has sneakily arranged a "trial" blockage/closure on three Saturdays starting next week (coincidentally up to Ashbourne/Tell, where they want their barrier) using this scheme? I've lived here a long time and never seen the road blocked for something like this, especially not in the middle of a busy Saturday. And no, we have NOT been consulted, so presumably this won't go ahead. If it does the Council has some major complaints coming.

Well I welcome James' revised view on the barrier, and hope that evidence-based policy making prevails rather than the other way round. I disagree with James' very telling mantra above that "doing nothing wouldn't be an acceptable answer" - unfortunately this mission statement by many a politician tends to cause more harm than good. Where there aren't discernible problems beyond the base level of statistical noise (and the fact that "accidents happen" no matter what you do), the need to interfere with a grand gesture and thus create other problems which didn't exist before is a pathology I have little sympathy with, and which our elected representatives suffer from in abundance. I actually witnessed one of the two accidents listed at junction of Ashbourne/Melbourne last year, which involved a motorcycle and car. Not an issue of speeding, more an emergence from junction not seeing the bike. As others have noted, plenty of local roads, with and without barriers, have had considerably more accidents than Melbourne.

Penguin68 Wrote: > I tend now to see at the least a hidden > agenda or two here. Car ownership (and worse, > actually using cars) is seen by some as wholly > anti-social, and anything which can punish car > users, or can milk them of cash, is seen as fair > game. Getting the turkeys to vote for Christmas by > 'offering' them some better deal (private roads, > parking in 'their' roads restricted to them - > deals which will rebound horribly) is all > part-and-parcel of this approach. I could not agree more. Speaking as a cyclist, pedestrian AND motorist, I find it a little bewildering that a proportion of residents are so prone to fall for it each time such a "carrot" is dangled, until the arguments are aired and won anew.

The petition wording makes a lot of sense to me: I have just signed it. Anyone who would like to push for more common sense approach to this issue should do likewise, I think. The link is: https://www.change.org/p/southwark-council-no-barrier-for-melbourne-grove?source_location=petitions_share_skip

Yes, richard. You got there first, more succinctly than me! Would be nice if we got an answer based on actual critical thinking and practical example rather than wishy washy obfuscation.

James says: "On the evidence I've seen and my experience along Melbourne Grove (southern section) I believe speeding is an issue and if possible we should make sufficient changes to resolve this. The option to close one end is appealing as it would be the cheapest and have the most impact resolving this." James, while the evidence from the traffic surveys which we can read for ourselves thanks to dedicated people on this forum really doesn't back up the existence of a speeding problem, I would still like you to explain in simple terms why a barrier at one end of the road "would have the most impact resolving" alleged speeding. It may or may not reduce the amount of traffic, but cars would be prone to drive just as fast along the road as before, and likely even faster if there are less vehicles coming in the opposite direction and give them pause on the narrow section (or if many parking spaces/parked cars are removed by yellow lines around junctions, as RCH has mentioned). Cars will simply continue to drive down the road and then exit up Ashbourne or Chesterfield, but why would they suddenly be driving more slowly? What is my expensively educated brain missing here? (I actually think the removal of multiple parking spaces around all the junctions, as per RCH's and @Woodwarde's post above, is of even greater concern than the barrier: to restrict parking on Melbourne, and other roads, to such a large extent conveniently paves the way towards another attempt to force through the CPZ that both James and the Council are on record as hoping to install.)

Jenny, that's good detailed analysis. I assume Southwark has to adhere strictly to procedure on these kind of cases, so it's important to know what was and was not presented to the Council.

"@bobby p - we'll have to agree to disagree. You're working from the built-in assumption that all those journeys are necessary, that people have "no alternative" to sitting in jams. I'm approaching it (as a ZipCar-driver, ex car owner, parent of young kids) from the point of view that maybe a quarter of those car journeys could reasonably be walked, a quarter cycled, and a quarter made by public transport - given sufficient motiviation to do so. Certainly that seems to be the experience in (equally Tube-less) Hackney, where car ownership & use is in free fall." I am mainly a cyclist and pedestrian (though do still own a car). My point really is that it doesn't matter to the argument whether people's journeys are in your view "necessary" - and, people being people, each individual will have a different view on what is "necessary". Nonetheless those journeys do happen. For myself, I will use a car for some journeys (major grocery shops to Lidl etc), and it really doesn't matter whether it is my own car or a Zipcar such as you use, it will still have to sit in the same dense traffic if we as a community choose to bottleneck more roads and push all North/South traffic onto Lordship alone. That's the logic I'm trying to get across.

With regard to comments on displacement of traffic if roads such as Melbourne are blocked off, I offer only this: I believe it is more socially and environmentally desirable that in a place like London (not built for the volume of traffic it currently has) that more than one route remains open, even if that means there are "rat runs" in certain configurations. Forcing all the flow to travel through one artery by blockage of all the others tends to lead to the death of the patient. If in this case, Lordship Lane becomes the only route N/S that people can pragmatically use, it ultimately degrades quality of life and air for all, not to mention the inconvenience of sitting in a time-sucking traffic jam that has been created by blocking all the other routes one could take to make the same journey. I strongly believe allowing people alternative routes is the lesser of two evils. I happened to be strolling down Melbourne at different times in today's lovely weather, for instance, and barely encountered a car, the same story I find on weekdays and for the last 12 years of residence. As some have pointed out from their analysis of the traffic surveys, the road can often be completely quiet for a minute or two at a time with that volume, and never suffers congestion. If keeping alternative routes open eases traffic snarls elsewhere by spreading the inevitable London burden of traffic to manageable levels across different roads, I welcome it.

It was Councillor Kirby, edhistory.

Interesting, DominickHide. The personal site you link to sheds some light on how this all came about and developed very quickly. (For those of us who only found out this week, it's intriguing). What I took away from reading the site is that someone who was genuinely enjoying his new abode in ED, and posting about it, then started to have discussions about traffic calming measures with various people, leading to an embryonic campaign for better speed bumps. The last post on the site, from May 12th, is about a local councillor coming round to his house to discuss traffic calming, specifically full width speed bumps. So it seems to be after that that the road blockage idea has been suggested, whether by the Councillor ("something must be done") or the resident. So what seemed to start relatively innocently has mutated only since April 12th into the barrier proposal that is massively more disruptive to many more people, hence our objections. Perhaps this resident would in fact be satisfied with what until a month or two ago he himself seemed on his website to want and be arguing for, i.e. better speed humps. That probably wouldn't be so controversial, provided it didn't lose parking spaces.

There was one crash recently (which I witnessed) at the corner of Ashbourne/Melbourne, involving a motorbike, but nothing to do with speeding, rather a turning car not seeing the bike. Nothing in the proposals to block the road would stop these kind of incidents from happening, and it's disingenuous and misleading to suggest otherwise. And if - as James B says - there have been incidents at the East Dulwich Grove and Lordship Lane junctions (very likely), then closing the road will merely displaces such occasional incidents to junctions at other alternative routes (which will also be busier). It's pseudo-science and misuse of statistics to suggest otherwise. People should apply some critical thinking and basic logic.

sedm I think is correct, and I presume any unbiased research will support the obvious argument that blocking off alternative routes causes greater congestion and bottlenecking on those routes that remain open. In this case Lordship Lane/Grove Vale would suffer, and probably roads like Ashbourne which connect Melbourne to Lordship would be a lot busier too, if cars could not proceed along Melbourne to Grove Vale.

Traffic calming is not the same as traffic blocking. Many might support the former, not so many the latter.

Cllr James B. coming out in favour doesn't surprise me, after his vocal support for a CPZ and stated anti-car predilection: but he graciously accepted defeat in the final popular vote on the CPZ, so perhaps history will repeat itself :) As others have noted, James' comment about the temporary closure of Melbourne at the Grove Vale end is a straw man argument, since Tell Grove remained open and gave continued access to Grove Vale. Putting any proposed barrier between Tell and Ashbourne Groves would be a very different kettle of fish, so displacement would be different and I believe greater. James in his comment says: "Clearly something needs to be done". It's this which I dispute the most: it is a pathology which more often than not leads to pointless wastes of money and unnecessary interference, and rarely to actually improving quality of life. And it's one which most politicians suffer from. I imagine, for instance, that there are roads all over London which COULD be turned into cul-de-sacs, and in a car-free utopia maybe London could be redesigned that way: but how anyone can rationally look at those police survey figures on either the density or the speed of traffic on Melbourne and find them exceptional or problematic is baffling. I look at the road I've lived on for years, and really can't see the "clear" problem, about which "something" must so definitively be done. And, finally, on a separate issue, while I agree with comments not to get personal regarding the instigation of this petition, I would only say it is an odd thing - if one enjoys the tranquility of living in a cul-de-sac - to move house to a very different type of residential road and immediately attempt to change it into the type of road one just left. Odd. Again, I suppose, some things just need to be done...

There really is no justification, as per d.b. or richard tudor's comments, for any change on Melbourne that I can see. And yes, it really does seem that one new resident has come in with an agenda which really doesn't chime with many long-term residents' views. All the stuff about monitoring traffic speeds (wasn't this already done?) or indeed spending ?10k on research, smacks of policy-based evidence-making, i.e. trying to find any problem, however minor, simply to justify the whim of having a barrier in the first place.

Indeed it will, richard tudor. :) I hope James will comment on this or the other thread soon.

Yes, makes sense for this proposed road barrier in Melbourne Grove to have its own title. To summarise... Am opposed currently here to anything so drastic as the proposed barrier near between Ashbourne and Tell Grove - for all the reasons in the other thread, mainly that: a) it wouldn't reduce traffic speeds, if that's a concern, on the rest of the road (though the police survey doesn't show alarming speeds really in my opinion, with most cars driving under 20mph)- there are other ways to reduce speeds if people want that. b) it would cause traffic displacement, pushing traffic instead onto the most congested part of Lordship Lane, and up Ashbourne, which would surely mean more pollution and more noise for those who live in that immediate vicinity. c) it would lose parking space on Melbourne Grove, with several car spaces being lost around the barrier, if it were erected. d) it would make it pretty inconvenient for those of us that do, from time to time, want to drive anywhere points North as we would have to instead drive all the way up Ashbourne, and along the most crowded bit of Lordship and Grove Vale. Anyhow, it will be interesting to hear the a range of views once people get wind of the proposal for a barrier that some residents are putting forward to the local Councillors at today's meeting.

LalKJ, I'm certainly not suggesting that you who want this are approaching it in an underhand way. Having been quite active at the time of the CPZ consultation, I do however note that some councillors have agendas to promote CPZ use and that things like barriers, reduced parking spaces resulting and displaced congestion rather play into their agenda. I'm not also sure how you define a "requisite majority" for your petition. I've found many of my neighbours didn't know or didn't agree to barrier proposals, and I don't know how you quantify the number of responses you have compared to number of interested stakeholders who need to be consulted. (This was an issue in the CPZ debate, as the Council in their consultation only asked some roads their views, but not the ones where parking overflow would be displaced to, and this issue came up in the vote against which we won). I unfortunately can't be at the meeting today, but I trust we will get a full chance to have our say at a later date, as this has all been rather suddenly sprung upon some of us, and presumably a much larger community will need to be officially consulted if this is to be investigated further. If it's true that a previous move to block Melbourne was thrown out before over traffic displacement concerns (per rch's post above), then why do people think the outcome would be any different this time?

@Woodwarde, yes, not sure if the traffic stats for term and holiday times have been measured or differentiated officially (probably not). You are probably correct there will be a difference in holiday time, though not sure Melbourne is particularly affected. The question is really whether anything meaningful would be worth doing to prevent parents using their cars, and I very much doubt it. As rch says above, in general, car use and ownership will have increased as the area has gentrified. Especially without the tube, and with poor lateral East/West public transport routes in South London, ED residents that use cars have more use for them still than many others in London. Apart from cycling, I use bus and train, which can be OK if going to certain places, but are pretty poor - or very slow - for other journeys, even a common one into the West End - and for travelling round the Zone 2 laterally, there's not a lot of options (37 is semi useful). So I don't see car usage in the area declining much in the short/medium term. We don't even have the Boris bikes here.

I'm glad to see I'm not the only one who wasn't aware of this petition/delegation, and not the only one to have serious concerns about its knock-on effects. I only heard about it in the last couple of days via a neighbour who had been approached by the originator of the campaign knocking on their door to argue their case and get their petition signed. I can't fault the organiser(s) for their persistence, given their objectives, in going door to door to get signatures. I do, though, question the whole rationale behind Melbourne becoming a cul-de-sac. Some thoughts on the comments above, particularly from rch: I'm very interested to hear that this is not the first campaign to block the road, and that the first one failed because of the displacement concerns I raised above. (And thanks for corroborating the loss of parking places to any barrier, as a practical issue, rch). If rch's summary is correct, the police traffic survey information also bears out what I note from my own observations as a long-term resident: that actually the average speed is 19mph. Again, I fail to see how a barrier near Ashbourne changes the speeds of vehicles further down the road. And finally, rch's suggestions for other measures (if there actually is any speed problem) seem a lot more sensible and practical than a barrier, but have not been welcomed by the petitioners. Why, I wonder? From what my neighbour told me of the petitioning, it does seem that the campaign instigator, who moved very recently to Melbourne from a street where residents got a road barrier installed, is pushing to instigate the same roadblock idea here, in my opinion irrespective of its need or practicality. Of course, anyone certainly has a right to try, but why one would move to an obvious rat-run and immediately campaign to change it rather than moving to a quiet cul-de-sac, I don't know. Altering one's new home is one thing, one's whole new road is another. But whatever the background to this petition, I'm much more interested in hearing some convincing rational arguments FOR a barrier, especially with regard to car speeds, because I haven't yet seen any here beyond "it will reduce traffic", which really just means "displace traffic" - not a good option. For any who are opposed to this, it will be instructive to hear the actual "pro" arguments at the DCC meeting tonight where the petition is apparently going to be submitted to Councillors (7pm Christ Church, Barry Road).