wulfhound

On the cycling side, a few rumours and proposals but nothing concrete. The Dockless operators tend to wind down over the winter, likely we'll see them trying again in the spring but things move so fast in that world it's hard to say who/what/where (my money's on Uber Jump though). Public-transport wise - increased frequency on the Overground. Looks like from 8 to 10 trains per hour on the Forest Hill branch and from 4 to 6 on the Denmark Hill branch, for a grand total of 20 an hour through the middle (including the New Cross branch). Might be a while though - the Overground's timetable has to be fitted around National Rail, which makes it a more complex exercise than it might seem. https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/blog/2019/08/17/more-frequent-trains-and-a-new-station-for-the-london-overground And the Bakerloo extension (if/when it happens - a long way off, this one), although it won't benefit us directly and somewhat duplicates the Jubilee extension, it will provide another set of connections in to town. Should be less crowded from New Cross Gate than the Jubilee is from Canada Water. I've heard nothing at all on buses. Sadiq "son of a bus driver" Khan could have done so much more here in terms of increasing frequencies and filling in gaps in coverage, but it seems like the fares freeze & withdrawal of central Government funding has left TfL too short on cash to do very much.

They consulted on building a crossing there a few months ago, but not sure if they're actually going to build it or if they're waiting to get some financial contribution from the redevelopment of the old Harvester site.

Mid-way compromise is a power-assist pedal bike. Means you can ride a heavier and more comfortable bike with full mudguards for the winter, without being a slog to haul it over distances. Pros: - Good for the environment and your fitness - the level of exertion is about equivalent to walking, but you go 5x as fast. - Quiet (unlike petrol engined scooters) - Great safety record - Inexpensive to run - no insurance etc. - No compulsory training - No need to fill up on fuel, ever - charge the battery pack at home or work from normal mains socket - Can bring it home on the train (and the "surface" Tube lines, overground etc.) if it's late and rainy and you've had a few drinks - Power assist means you can run with full mudguards, panniers and waterproof gear and not get sweaty or wet - Can use all the cut-throughs, cycle lanes, cycle early starts, parks, paths etc. which are closed to scooters Cons: - High initial purchase price for a good spec model, ?1000 is the minimum for something that will last although prices are coming down all the time - Relatively low top speed, the power assist cuts out at 15mph, as such it's much less comfortable than a 125 if you need to mix with traffic on a 30mph road - Maybe not as comfortable as a scooter - Can be heavy, but for security reasons (see above, high purchase price) you want to store it indoors or in a bike shed. This can be a problem if you need to take it home via a station that doesn't have lifts, or if your workplace has no arrangements for bike storage.

Have you considered electric assist? Even relatively mild gradients will be demanding for most people on one of these with kids/shopping in the front. Not impossible but enough to put people off. Electric assist makes them usable by a much wider audience and for bigger loads. For what it's worth they have a great safety record, even in London. I've ridden two-wheelers a few times, they are more stable than a normal bike because of the low centre of gravity. You seem them everywhere in the City these days, DHL and the like have found them to be more efficient than vans for last-mile deliveries of small packages in the centre of town. Think it may be best to go hyper-local, focus on a small area with the most demand. A walk of much more than 5 minutes to collect the bike (and again after returning it) and you won't persuade anyone to switch from their car. Perhaps talk to one of the primary schools - lots of potential takers within a short walk.

Kew has been over-marketed and is, nowadays, often overcrowded as a result. It's a huge site but the problem isn't really kids per se, it's just too many people full stop. There are lots of nice parks which are almost deserted or at least have plenty of space, but people would rather go somewhere that the activities are obvious - even if you have to queue for half an hour and pay an arm and a leg to get in. I'd bet that in any day at Kew there are more people from Tooting, Wimbledon, Streatham, Mitcham etc. than on any of those suburbs' respective Commons. (As to Dulwich's common.. it's mostly a golf course. You won't have a problem with crowds there but what a grossly wasteful use of inner London land. Nothing against golf, but go play it in Suffolk or Scotland or somewhere. And then we wonder why the parks are crowded).

rahrahrah - yes they do, have seen them around the area recently although not in any great numbers yet.

Boroughs have to contribute to the cost of the Santander scheme and Southwark have largely chosen not to. They did have Ofo dockless bikes for a bit but the company withdrew after large scale theft and vandalism. I'm not sure the Santander bikes would do well south of Peckham or so - they're disproportionately heavy and struggle on anything resembling a hill. The cycle superhighway that was originally supposed to run via East Dulwich to Penge was of very low quality - little more than stripes of paint along Lordship Lane and across the top of Dog Kennel Hill. A far cry from what's been built in the last couple of years, but hard to see how they could install something of that standard along LL without a massive outcry over lost parking etc.

"However, I have also had cyclists kick the side of my car and others bang the roof as they passed me, for no other reason than I was in a car." Given the number of cars on the road, if those cyclists actually exist, they'd have very sore hands by the time they got where they were going. (And probably sore everything else.. do that to the wrong person around here and you'd end up getting very badly hurt). Did you get caught up in the middle of a Critical Mass ride or something? There are certainly some aggro people on bikes (more so in West London.. Chelsea Embankment is really bad for some reason), but in general physical exercise and fresh air will chill people out a bit. Driving in London can be immensely frustrating if you're trying to get someplace quicker - on a bike (unless a power assisted or very expensive model) you're mostly limited by your own ability to make it go fast. It's much easier to be the Big Man behind the wheel of a 4x4 or white van than on a push bike.. not saying people won't try it on, but they're much more easily brought down to size.

+1 @mrwb, a few plain clothes police on unmarked bikes would soon put paid to this. Sydenham Hill.. I'd agree if they put a protected cycle lane in (and it's not like they're short of space to do so). Preferably the flat-kerb type like at Crystal Palace roundabout, not the wands which are admittedly somewhat unsightly en masse. Where general traffic and bikes mix due to lack of a proper cycle lane, 20 is sensible and necessary.

"If they really wanted to improve the health of the area then they would close some streets off to traffic in order to create cycle routes into town, invest in secure cycle parking at all tube stations, invest in local public transport. But they won't." Given that Healthy Streets seems to be a brainchild of Will Norman (the Mayor's Walking & Cycling Commissioner), you would at least hope.. Investing in local public transport is challenging since (without wishing to make this political) Central Government removed all of TfL's grant. With Crossrail delayed, TfL are strapped for cash. Ideally you'd want two other routes to complement the P4 - one running roughly SE-NW (i.e. Sydenham/Herne Hill) and another SW-NE i.e. West Norwood to Peckham. Failing that you just need a LOT more P4s to connect up with existing routes running north and south of the Village.

Think you've answered your own question there ZT.. life's losers who channel their resentment at the world through the sole of their right foot. Boy racer cars mostly on finance nowadays - bring on an interest rate rise!

Lack of enforcement seems to me to be the issue.. so much downright sloppy driving (speeding >10mph above limit, failing to indicate, mobile phone use, failing to stop for red lights or zebra crossings, failure to observe banned turns and No Entry signs etc.) which points to a bad attitude towards safe road use in general. A few traffic police would go a long way, but I'm not holding my breath.

Eldon is 2 way from Moorgate to the Wilson St corner. Then Sun Street & there's a cycle cut-through Appold Street to Curtain Road. A lot of the one ways around there have a bike contra-flow but not sure about the one way bit on Eldon.

Interesting superhans - I always found Walworth Road dicey - you'd either get stuck behind buses, or have to take risks overtaking them. (Bishopsgate is the same). Portland Street is much improved with the new cycle lane up to New Kent Road; it's busy but there are more bikes than cars a lot of the time. When you get to Bank, turn left (north) towards Moorgate instead of heading towards Liverpool Street. Then right at Eldon Street (first set of traffic lights after Moorgate tube) and you're nearly there. There's a back way up Wood Street that's quieter than Moorgate, but if you're OK with Walworth Road then a couple of hundred metres of Moorgate isn't going to bother you.

Go for a liveable neighbourhood / bus gate / modal filter if you can, to cut out the cut through. Most traffic calming doesn't work because through traffic inherently doesn't want to be calmed. The council put in speed humps, the anti-social brigade buy big Range Rovers that can cruise over the top of them.

It's a long term plan, for sure. I wonder with regard to the Streatham Common and Brockley interchanges, whether the same might work at the likes of Tulse Hill and Penge.

On the way home tonight they had the northbound lane shut and a contra-flow temporary traffic light in place. If it's still there in the morning (as I suspect it will be) you'll want to allow extra time. Looked like utility works of some sort.

@VerryBerry - sorry if I'm being dim, what have the parking charges got to do with the play area?

.. or walk to Denmark Hill and get the 468 (in a year or two, the child ought to be able to take the bus independently, depending on what the walk is like at the other end), or walk ten minutes to ED and get the train from there.

... and to bring this back full circle, what this comes down to is that people will cut their cloth to fit their means. This has two key implications: 1) That when those means are changed by external factors, people will - quite reasonably - get upset about it. If you've planned your life around a 20-minute car journey to school, and all of a sudden that 20 becomes 30, it's fair enough that you'll feel put out.. but: 2) That people, generally, will do what's easy. Very few are so environmentally worthy that they'll put themselves out to walk and cycle everywhere, if it's much slower and more dangerous than the alternative. Which in turn leads to the conclusion that if you want to change peoples' behaviour, and their decisions around how to organise their lives, you have to change what's easy - but it's reasonable to expect that that will lead to inconvenience and unhappiness in the short term, as people who are used to doing things a certain way are forced to adjust. Cue cries of "social engineering" from those who lean to the Classical Liberal end of the political spectrum. Newsflash: all engineering is social. Nobody describes Tinder or the M25 as social engineering, despite the massive implications for society. I've personally got no problem with the authorities taking it upon themselves to undertake this kind of project, as long as there's a modicum of democratic accountability. One thing puzzles me though.. zooming out a little, one of the following must be true: 1) It's too easy to drive short trips (of say 3 miles and under), and it should be made more difficult in order to discourage such trips. 2) It's too difficult to drive short trips, and it should be made easier (by, for example, widening the South Circular, building new ones, opening e.g. Green Dale up to motor traffic, reopening the Dulwich Park road, increasing urban speed limits to 40mph). 3) The status quo in which we find ourselves is somehow, per Goldilocks, just right. Now, should someone here argue for 2), from the point of view of economic growth, social mobility or some such, I'd vehemently disagree, but I'd at least recognise the consistency of their position. It's reasonable to want different outcomes and argue for them. If you want to live in a world where economic wealth and efficiency matters more than air quality, say, that's a legitimate point of view - just not one I agree with. And yet almost nobody is making that argument. And while I'd strongly disagree with 2), I think it's at least more plausible than 3), which seems to enjoy wide support, yet on closer examination just seems somehow... unlikely.

Grove Lane was shut due to a serious RTC, much traffic will have diverted via EDG.

Roadworks on Gipsy Hill and Palace playing a home game kicking off right after evening rush hour certainly can't have helped. Croxted Road, South Croxted Road and all the alternatives were at a standstill southbound yesterday.

As others have posted - the jams are more down to roadworks on Grove Lane and Denmark Hill than anything else, also that the traffic signals haven't been re-timed and can't be until sat navs have been updated. I also wonder whether the Salvation Army might be persuaded to open up pedestrian access from Harfield Gardens to Glebelands Close to give children a less polluted route to school, or whether that's considered too much of a crime risk.

TTW - you may have better luck going via Bank/Moorgate (i.e. left at the top of London Bridge instead of right). Gracechurch Street & Bishopsgate on two wheels is awful. Even though the Bank way is longer, there's about half as many sets of traffic lights and fewer buses to get stuck behind - so it takes about the same time.

Depending on exactly where you're starting from - aim for Burgess Park via either Camberwell Grove / Edmund Street, Lyndhurst Way / Chandler Way, or Rye Lane / Surrey Canal Path. Then through the park to the Portland Street / Albany Road junction. Up Portland Street and follow the Elephant cycle bypass anti-clockwise (Rodney Road and then the cycle track along the New Kent Road, cross at Meadow Row). From there you can choose: - London Bridge up to Bank, then Moorgate. Fastest but busiest. - CS7 Southwark Bridge Road to Southwark Bridge, then back streets to Bank. Fairly direct, protected cycle lane some of the way, but still a lot of big trucks on the approach to Southwark bridge. - Blackfriars Bridge via St George's Circus, the least direct but a protected cycle path all the way. If you go via London or Southwark Bridge, basically you want to end up on Moorgate just south of the station (there is a back way around the Barbican but it's fiddly - once Crossrail is finished you'll be able to cycle from Coleman Street to Moorfields, but that's not possible at the moment. Turn right at Finsbury Square and you're pretty much there. Via Blackfriars it's a longer haul back East - stay on the cycleway as far as Smithfield Market, turn right and follow the back streets north of the Barbican, or take Chiswell Street if you want to go a bit quicker. I tend to go the Southwark Bridge way as the Blackfriars detour is too long.