exdulwicher

Back in about 2016 there was a rewrite of the Traffic Signs Regulations and General Directives (it's not exactly a fascinating read, I warn you now...) that required certain signs - things like "New Road Layout Ahead" or "Changed Priorities Ahead" - to have a yellow sticker on the back with a note that they were temporary signs and they should be removed by [date]. And to have a contact number for the council on there. So any of those can easily be reported. IN theory, councils are supposed to have a record of this stuff but in practice, most no longer have the resources to manage small scale highways assets effectively. Thanks, austerity.

There's a fundamental misunderstanding as to what a consultation is. The question is not "should be do X, yes or no?" The question is "we are doing X [because - state reasons], do you want version 1 or version 2?". That's perfectly normal and legal and above board and if you think about it, I bet we all do the same in day-to-day life. You don't say to your young kids "what do you want for dinner?" because that's too open-ended and can result in impossible requests. You present two options that you can actually deliver. Pizza or lasagne (for example). You might then get a bit more creative with pizza toppings but you're essentially offering two options that you have in the house (or can quickly order), it's not going to result in an impossible request that you can't deliver. Nor does it easily allow for the option of not having dinner. We are having a meal, here are your options. The council have done the same. We are putting some minor restrictions on traffic because [road danger, pollution, congestion, parking etc], should we do it via this method or that? Now in theory, everyone wants less road danger, pollution and congestion (much the same as everyone wants dinner), the mystery is how it generates such howls of outrage given the wealth of evidence that says LTNs, School Streets, pedestrianisation, more walking and cycling, less vehicle use etc are all good things. I mean you're basically complaining that the council are making the area a bit nicer.

Well it was only open to adult free males - no women, children or slaves allowed to have a say. So I'm not entirely sure that's the best argument in favour...

There have been Judicial Reviews done on many (if not most) of these schemes including one brought against Southwark by One Dulwich. Up until now, they've all been thrown out in their entirety and even this one only scraped by on one of the three counts. Besides, as explained, it does not automatically render the scheme unlawful. It examines the process, not the outcome.

Over the course of about 10 years there were at least 4 consultations on Dulwich Square which finally ended with the only design that could actually meet the original brief. One of the early reports (2016? 2017?) gave 3 options: what the council went with something about multiple roundabouts which I think actually referenced a scheme in Poynton (a village near Manchester which, again after extensive back and forth, finally installed (sorry, "imposed"...) a weird double roundabout system which, depending on your point of view is either a brilliantly innovative success or a total disaster - absolute proof that you will NEVER achieve any sort of consensus). a couple of other vague half-way-house type options In 2018, after all of that consultation, a bunch of re-prioritisation, new road markings, some buildouts etc went in - a scheme which failed all of TfL's route guidance but which apparently satisfied some of the NIMBY issues. Back to the drawing board for yet more consultations, in 2019 there were 3 phases of consultations over about 18 months which then ran up against Covid and the change of plans anyway but did allow Southwark (and numerous other councils around the country) to rapidly deliver on Streetspace plans which all had live feedback consultation. Out of Covid and in 2021 there was yet more consultation, the scheme finally made permanent but with watered-down aspects to appease the Onesies. Then it was council elections - remember that, where the Tory boy standing on a specific "rip out the LTNs on Day 1" was going to annihilate the "Socialist Labour Clowncil", send them running for the hills? Just remind me how that went will you? Cos it was hilarious. And then miraculously, he turned up an a council meeting, this time as the "spokesperson for One Dulwich" - well I never. Claiming to "represent the community" And he got his arse handed to him on a plate when it was pointed out that the actual community representative was - gosh - the elected councillor, not him. More hilarity. That should have been the end of it but Southwark then embarked on another 18 months of consultation around final design which One Dulwich did everything possible to disrupt and water down before finally, there's a completed scheme. So yes - you have been endlessly consulted. Repeated extra consultations. You cannot argue that you have not been consulted. You can get upset that the majority did not agree with you but not about the consultation.

The council were voted in on a manifesto. That means they've been given tacit support for at least the broad brush promises made in that manifesto, they should not then need to seek yes/no answers to everything they do. Consultations are a tricky one. Done well, they can engage and bring the community along on a journey. Done badly, they're a major source of distrust, anger and misunderstanding. Part of it is down to the questions you ask. Asking people who are not policy experts questions such as "what would you like to see?" is painful - people don't know that or they can't imagine that. Steve Jobs famously said that he never asked the customers what they wanted because most people don't know. If he'd have asked people what they wanted before they invented the iPhone, the answer would have been "a phone with a longer cord". If he'd have asked people what they wanted before they invented the iPod, the answer would have been "a Walkman with longer battery life". They're pointless questions that can only ever give worthless answers. And when you don't deliver a Walkman with longer battery life, people go "what is this, I didn't ask for this" and get angry and frustrated that they've wasted their time on engagement but not been given the solution they wanted - even though an iPod is a vast improvement on a Walkman with longer battery life. And what the council should be doing is designing the borough equivalent of an iPod.

They're turtle-y different. 😉 They hibernate, burying themselves under mud or at the bottom of the pond. There have been regular sightings in there (and in Dulwich Park) for years and terrapins can live for 15-20 years in the wild, 30+ years in captivity. They are however an invasive species - whether or not the RSPCA or a local wildlife charity would come out to try and trap / remove them is another matter.

Judicial Review challenges the process - not the outcome or the result. The one aspect of it that was upheld was that the consultation was flawed and that only came about because the anti-group submitted a 53-page dossier outside of the normal consultation route and Lambeth have been unable to show that they took it into account - even though everything in it was bollocks. It doesn't make the LTN unlawful nor does it allow the fines to be recovered.

That's right Rockets "it's a bit less desirable / more difficult doing roadworks in December" absolutely translates to "thou shalt only do roadworks in June". 🙄

Well it does, you need to dig the road up to widen the pavement... It's not just the tarmac setting though, there's a host of related issues. More chance of bad weather delaying the work (which means it lasts longer, costs more and causes more disruption and we all know how much Rockets hates disruption...). Shorter working days because of less daylight so either you bring in lights and generators or the work just takes more days, either of which means more cost, more disruption. If you have to do it then fair enough - emergency stuff will always need fixing there and then - but if you can avoid it then it makes sense to do it when it needs less resource and less chance of bad weather causing delays. Added to which, as I said, tarmac doesn't set / cure as well when it's cold and wet.

No, it's a popular myth though. Doing roadworks over winter is quite challenging, the (usually) wet / cold conditions mean that tarmac doesn't set properly. Fine if you have to do emergency stuff (although you usually need to come back and re-do it later) but winter is also the time that roads degrade the most. Freeze / thaw cycles, salt and grit etc mean there's always a load of remedial work to be done as soon as it's drier and marginally warmer. Hence a load more roadworks appear in March and everyone predictably goes "ooh, they're using the last of the budget..." 🙄 And because so many people have heard it so often, it's the one "fact" they remember. Much like how everyone knows that a swan can break your arm yet no-one actually suffers from swan-induced arm breaks. Funding comes from a number of sources, it's not always ring-fenced or time-constrained, there's no one pot which must be spent by 31st March.

So according to you, Southwark Council have limited resources all being spent on Dulwich Square; meanwhile on the gas works thread, Rockets is complaining that Southwark Council have so much surplus that they have to rush out and spend it all in March. Is it too much to ask for some sort of consistent narrative around all this? Schrodinger clearly worked at Southwark Council where they simultaneously have so much money they can do "non-essential" work but not enough money to fill a pothole.

Please define "non-essential". Why are they not needed (according to Rockets) but needed according to TfL / Southwark? The A205 works have been on the cards for years. Prevented by Covid initially, then by TfL's financial situation post-Covid, then by some unforeseen landowner / access issues. So these apparently non-essential works have been planned for years, it's not something that Southwark / TfL have gone "we're bored and have a million quid to spend, what can we dig up today?" You cannot go around claiming that something is non-essential. You don't know that at all. Neither do I to be fair although at least I'm not going round claiming it. And regarding the phasing of works, I assume you're thoroughly up to date on the council's pipeline of schemes, prioritisation principles, workforce availability (and the tender / procurement process and timelines), supply chain limitations, related nearby works (both highways and other general building works), scheduled community events (probably not relevant to the pavement outside ED station but very much a concern if you're going to do work outside somewhere like Dulwich or Brockwell Park...), funding availability... By all means ask the council though. Do post their reply up here.

I said nothing of the sort Rockets, stop trying to put words in my mouth. You could of course just ask Southwark Council - in fact their finances must be available on their website, why don't you go and have a look through that seeing as you're always saying how you "do your own research" and how much you love council data. Also the gas works will be paid for by the utilities company, not the council.

You could honestly make a conspiracy out of anything couldn't you?! That myth perpetuates because it's difficult doing roadworks over winter when it's cold and wet so once the weather improves a bit, they're out in force fixing winter defects so everyone goes "ooh they're using up the last of the budget..." 🙄 It's total nonsense.

There's a limit to how much coordination can be done though. Some of the works will have been planned a long time in advance. Some of them will be reactive and therefore urgent. And there's a strong argument that a relatively shorter period of higher disruption is better than massively prolonged lower disruption.

Well A205 is TfL and that's been on the cards to do for years, there have been safety concerns around that junction for a long time. "non-essential" - excellent, I'm glad that you can determine how essential these are. Can you share the Rocket's Scale of Essentiality? I assume it's based on all manner of calculations such as government funding, road safety, traffic management, contractor availability, weather, school holidays, neighbouring work times, complementary utility works and the council pipeline of schemes? Radical thought but you could have a look on their website or you could contact your councillor. And what would you do with that info? Demand that they come along personally and stop all disruption immediately? Like it or not, there will always be disruption of one sort or another - assuming of course that you want functional roads and utilities, they need maintaining. You've been given the necessary info around when and where it'll be, there is an element of personal responsibility now for you to minimise that disruption to yourself. Maybe think about re-routing your journey or re-timing it or perhaps going by a different mode of transport? I was given some info that central London might be really quite busy today so rather than try and get the bus into town or go for a bike ride along The Mall, I made other plans. Somehow managing not to post my outrage about this undemocratic infringement on my personal liberty on here.

Your handy guide to all roadworks and road closures: https://one.network/

Surprising though this info may be to you, utility companies have to pay to access the road and to undertake repairs - it's called a Lane Rental Scheme - and they can be fined for exceeding the allowed duration. No-one is going out to deliberately cause as much disruption as possible or to make the work last as long as possible. The fact that they've publicised this work and explained what is going to happen and when is an indication that, wildly unfair though this may be to your personal liberty, you might wish to look at your own options for minimising disruption. You now know it's going to happen so you could sit in traffic and scream about how Southwark Council / the utilities companies set out every day with the sole aim of causing as much outrage to Penguin68 as possible or you could maybe think "I might not drive down this road today cos I know it'll be slower due to the roadworks, I might drive that way around instead".

Taxation pays for many many things in life, that doesn't entitle anyone to unlimited free access to them. I suspect the loss of gas (or worse, the existing main leaking and going BANG!) would be a considerably greater loss of utility...

There's quite a strong push for that to happen as a complementary part to the Oxford Street works. The success of outside dining during / after Covid is credited with keeping a number of the establishments there trading in the first place - and then it was all taken away again. https://www.timeout.com/london/news/soho-could-bring-back-its-pedestrianised-street-dining-zones-this-summer-041225 Well really, PEOPLE should be prioritised, no matter their mode of transport to actually get to Oxford Street or Soho or wherever. I mean, that's kind of how shopping centres operate. You travel to the shopping centre (via whatever mode of transport you choose) and then you actually get to go shopping in a traffic free environment. Now imagine that along Oxford Street.

At the risk of getting extremely technical, free-flowing traffic basically applies to motorways when you start to introduce number of vehicles per lane per mile, average speeds, distance between vehicles and so on - the whole point of residential and "shopping" streets is that you'll only ever have "free flow" in the middle of the night when there's sod all around. In fact you can argue that such streets should not have "free flow" at all since that would imply everyone was just driving straight through; no stopping, no parking, no "just waiting for my friend off the train", no loading, no pulling out or turning in, no waiting to overtake a bus, no stopping for a pedestrian to cross the road, no traffic lights.... Trying to claim that you should have "free flow" along LL is ridiculous - you *might* get some semblance of free-flow by driving down it at 2am and being lucky with the lights. And trying to blame lack of free flow on a slightly wider pavement is even more of a non-starter.

They occasionally have Penny Farthing races, exhibitions, demo days etc at Herne Hill Velodrome, there's at least a couple of people fairly locally who can occasionally be seen riding around on one. Stopping - you just sort of step off the back of it. As a general rule, to ride one of them you have to be pretty experienced anyway - to my mind someone on a PF is less of an issue than pretty much any other cyclist cos at least you know they're never going to be caning down a hill or jumping off a kerb or skidding to a stop outside the shops.

Is it expensive? I mean, I've not bothered to look at the costs but you haven't published any costs or compared it to other works so it sounds like an opinion. Feel free to correct me if you have actually got a list of costs and comparisons. Also, most transport costs are funded from a range of sources. DfT, TfL, special one-off awards from Treasury (usually for the really high cost stuff like a motorway junction), council funds, Section 106 funds from local developers, sometimes Network Rail if if involves work to a station as well... Two things - just because you don't know of any requests does not mean there haven't been any. You could ask the council for the reasoning behind this scheme and if there have indeed been campaigns / requests for such work... And also, councils do not have to wait until someone asks them in order to plan, develop and deliver a scheme. Crashmap shows a couple of dozen and they're only the reported ones with injuries, not near misses / no injuries / injuries so slight they're not reported. I think this is the point where Wikipedia would add "citation needed".

There are a couple of legal loopholes that can be exploited - basically developers put forward their case and proposal and then magically "discover" that they've overpaid for the land, that if they actually build the proposed affordable homes that their profit margin will drop below an acceptable level and in some cases that it doesn't "fit" - so if you're building 40 luxury homes, well the new owners won't want paupers living next door will they now! The consequence is that there are very few affordable new homes being built which, paradoxically, drives the prices of them ever higher. Really the only way they get built is to have them on greenfield sites out of the way but that then demands that the owners require a car to get anywhere or do anything - which is a very significant extra cost of living that many of the people buying these affordable new homes can't umm...afford. Gets brought up in a lot of transport matters - in an ideal world, you'd build on brownfield sites near to existing services (such as here) but that puts the price of the land up because it's more desirable, more convenient etc. And that makes affordable homes non-viable - in the exact place they're needed most. Pretty terrible planning system really, the Government have needed to get a grip on this for decades but house-ownership and house prices have become a very significant part of the UK economy.