exdulwicher

Formulae get adjusted all the time to take into account differences in gathering the data, new modelling, timeframes and all sorts of other factors to allow accurate comparisons. A lot of statistical methodology involves some built-in adjustment for (eg) small datasets, very large datasets, non-normal distributions and so on. You can also do large scale data transformations; so if one set of data follows a logarithmic curve but you want to use it alongside another set of linear data for example. It's like saying that something cost ?1000 in 1970 and then adjusting to inflation to show that today's price would be nearly ?16,000 (yes, that is correct, I just ran it through a calculator). It allows an accurate comparison that the person in the street can get their head around. The figures haven't been manipulated, they've been explained more clearly.

Alternatively, try reading the full report here: https://board.tfl.gov.uk/documents/s17060/Travel%20in%20London%2014%20Overview.pdf Page 3 & 4. Look at the whole paragraph, not the one section highlighted by people opposed to cycle lanes. Cycling illustrates this duality, with figure 2 showing data from limited cycle counters around central and inner London. The standout feature is the relative increase in weekend cycling ? typically doubling relative to pre-pandemic, although with large variation, emphasising the increase in ?leisure? cycling. Weekday cycling shows a different picture, typically close to pre-pandemic levels. However, this reflects a large-scale reduction in commuter cycling, in line with other modes, making this relative resilience especially noteworthy. Firstly, it's data from a limited number of cycle counters around central and inner London - they're the vertical digital things you can see alongside some (but certainly not all) of the CSHs, ticking up as cyclists pass. Weekday cycling reflects a large-scale reduction in commuter cycling, in line with other modes, making this relative resilience especially noteworthy Quite astonishingly, in the middle of a pandemic where people have been told to WFH, cycle commuting into a central London office is down. Who'd have thought it?! Same with those trains and buses running at 20% capacity... It's worth noting that cycle hire comment too: Excepting the strict lockdown periods, Santander Cycles (which mostly serve central and some parts of inner London) enjoyed record patronage during the pandemic and continues to see patronage above pre-pandemic levels. This is especially remarkable given overall reduced activity levels and demonstrates the utility of cycle hire for travel around central London under pandemic conditions. You can continue to cherry pick data and find certain sentences that back up what you want to hear but it's somewhat at odds with your continued call for data, data, data from everywhere. And as it mentions, it's data from cycle counters in central London, it's got nothing to do with Dulwich. All it really shows is that there's less weekday cycling in central London which given the office closures and other restrictions of Covid isn't really earth shattering news requiring the immediate removal of all cycle lanes. Added to which, the data since March 2020 is all over the place and will likely take another couple of years to even out.

https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/transport-politics/2021/12/cycle-lanes-dont-cause-congestion-but-theres-money-to-be-made-in-pretending-they-do As I mentioned previously. Journo clickbait. The Inrix report is here: https://inrix.com/scorecard/ - doesn't mention cycle lanes causing congestion. Peter Lees, the Operations Manager at Inrix put out a statement clarifying that the headlines had not accurately represented what the report said and actually went further quoting an unnamed journalist saying that the cycle lane comment would "get more readers". Same with the scooter thing. INJURIES! DEATH! = Clicks and comments = ad revenue. Journos don't care, they've got their headline and their readers. Facts come a distant second. There's a lot of money to be made in culture wars. The fact checkers are doing their work, correcting the narrative but no-one cares anymore. Opinions formed, people move on.

Did Kings go to the papers and say "please help us, we're overwhelmed with scooter injuries and maybe you can do something about it"? Or did some hack ask them "how many accidents from scooters?" and they've said "196 in 2020" and the hack has generated a clickbait title with the appropriate degree of wailing and gnashing of teeth? I strongly suspect the latter... As I said, there's no context at all.

Accident data is tricky to compile accurately since a lot of it relies on reports to emergency services and/or admission to hospital. A lot of what is out there is already split out into categories, eg workplace accidents, road accidents and so on. Couple that with the way they're reported and how some accidents are lumped together (slips, trips and falls for example does not immediately distinguish between tripping on a pavement slab or falling off a ladder). So finding an absolute highest cause of accidents is very difficult. H&S Regulation only really applies in the workplace - so the slips trips and falls cases get more complicated when you consider that a roofer falling off a ladder is a workplace injury but the pedestrian tripping over a pavement slab is not. The article from King's reckons 196 injuries in 2020 so the Government figures (483 injuries nationwide and 1 death) raises the question of reporting standards. Did Denmark Hill really treat 40% of ALL scooter injuries in 2020?! Seems high...? 196 is given as a number with no context as well. On it's own it seems high but how many scooters are in use, what mileage has been done (to give an injuries per mile scootered)? I suspect that will be very difficult to come by since private e-scooters are illegal on public roads. The legal private hire companies operating e-scooters claim that more than 165,000 trips have been made since the trials launched so (assuming their figures and the Government injury ones for a moment), 483 injuries out of 165,000 trips is about 0.3% of trips - seems pretty safe! If you factor in the illegal journeys as well, that % drops even further - however we're still left with the potential under-reporting since there's a discrepancy between what one London hospital reports and the nationwide figures from Government. There's also no context given to any other injuries that Kings treats - I suspect that 196 fractures from scooter accidents is a tiny proportion of the overall number of fractures that Kings treats per year. The 2020 road death figures show a drop because of Covid but there were: 1460 road deaths across the country (346 of those were pedestrians) 22,069 seriously injured Most years, deaths sits at around 1800 or so, about 5 deaths per day with about 30,000 seriously injured. Again, reporting methodology changes a bit but the numbers are adjusted to cope with statistical changes and external factors. Doesn't seem to stop drivers killing 5 people every day. The average cost per road traffic death is about ?2m by the way, made up of of vehicle and property damage, emergency services costs and insurance costs. If you'd like to complain about the costs to society, you're looking at the wrong target with scooters...

That was part of the reason although it was more relevant to the pavement widening schemes. LTNs were put in to prevent or mitigate the risk of a car-led recovery. The fear being that lots of people who used to travel on P/T would be afraid to do so because of crowded conditions and would instead make the journey by car which would lead to a vast and unmanageable increase in traffic everywhere. There's still the minor problem of a global climate catastrophe. You know, that thing caused by burning fossil fuels.

There's a few in the UK. Cardiff has had one for decades on the main road north of the city centre. Overhead gantry with red ❌ and green ⬇. During the changeover, the middle lane remains on ❌ in both directions for about 15 mins. Steep fines for driving in it under ❌ conditions. There's an awful lot that can be done with more intelligent traffic signalling. My pet bugbear is driving along at night, deserted roads and coming to a set of lights they go red. Stop, wait for maybe 2 mins while the opposite set go green (nothing there to go through), pedestrian phase goes green (no one around to cross) and then finally, your set goes green again. A few sensors and some basic AI would solve all of that. On the continent, a lot of quieter lights (junctions in small towns etc) go to a phase of flashing amber overnight. It basically means no-one has right of way, slow down, be careful etc and on quiet streets it works very well. If the system senses traffic overloading it, it'll revert to normal traffic light status. You can do similar with speeding. Drive to the law and you get a wave of green lights; if you speed between them the lights turn red forcing you to stop. Road design facilitating and rewarding good behaviour.

Points failure somewhere around Streatham this morning. Given that the line through North / East Dulwich comes in from either Caterham or Beckenham Junction, which area would you like Southern to listen to with regards their service? Because the line goes through Surrey, Bromley, Croydon, Lambeth and Southwark... It's nothing to do with the councils, it's between Southern, Network Rail and DfT and is largely dictated by the realities of staff shortages due to isolation / Covid. It's not solely a Southern issue either; rail services nationally have been cut for the same reasons. It'll come back to normal in time but right now it's a reaction to situations entirely beyond anyone's control.

They were already too full before that - pollution on EDG was already above legal limits and you cannot seriously say that there were never traffic jams before LTNs because there were. Routinely, day-to-day. Problem is, if you're engineering on a highways basis alone (without considering behaviour) then you will always end up with congestion somewhere no matter how much you try to keep vehicles moving. It's why tinkering with a junction here and a set of lights there is almost always doomed to failure. In terms of impacts though, you always see the worst of impacts once an active travel scheme goes in and before things improve. With a highways engineering scheme (like building a new bypass) you see the best of it when implemented before gradually, almost imperceptibly, things return to status quo as more people choose to drive (because it's easier, because "the roads are quieter" or because there is simply no other option been made available). Active travel scheme goes in - short term (and yes, 18-months is short term) disruption as everyone adapts - improvement New road goes in - short term (again, 18 months) improvements and people going "gosh, isn't it nice in the town now the bypass has been built?!" - regression to norm. Problem is that councillors are not experts in this and most councils and Governments are extremely reactive to short term news items without ever considering longer term impacts - for many of them they won't be here to see or be held accountable for anything long term. That's when it becomes purely a political football rather than an engineering plan.

Have you emailed Southwark? https://www.southwark.gov.uk/parking/guide-to-parking/dropped-kerbs-and-driveways?chapter=5 And if so, what was their response - simply "get a road safety audit" without any info as to what it is or where to apply for one or did it lead into a planning permission thing regarding driveways, access etc? You don't say what road you're on (which is fair enough) but if it's TfL controlled (ie a main road) it'll come under Section 278 for Highway works https://tfl.gov.uk/info-for/urban-planning-and-construction/transport-assessment-guide/highway-work and you can read TfL's info on what a RSA constitutes here: https://content.tfl.gov.uk/tfl-road-safety-audit-procedure-may-2014-sqa-0170.pdf If it's a residential street under council control, it's their planning officers. Might vary a bit depending on what it's to be used for. If it's to access a driveway in a car or if it's to allow disabled access (ie for a wheelchair) - turning circles, road markings, existing parking etc get considered as well as things like how busy the pavement is. Email Southwark - sorry I can't give anything more than that (and apologies if you've already done that - if so some more info on their response would be useful).

There's a bit of a catch-22 in that though - the busier the road the more likely it is to need repairs / resurfacing simply due to the wear and tear it's getting but the more difficult it is to do it due to the disruption (not just to traffic but to residents not being allowed to park there for a long time, maybe not having direct access to their house for a bit, noise etc). That's not EDG in particular, it's any major route. You end up in a cycle of patchwork repairs which are quick and easy to do without causing days/weeks of disruption. But they do have the downside of being very reactive - pothole appears, gest worse very quickly and then needs urgent patching but without addressing the underlying issues such as water ingress or subsidence that caused it in the first place. There are funding aspects to it as well. And yes, there's a long debate that you can have about the long-term costs of constantly doing minor repairs vs doing a large-scale job once...

Dog's Trust are worth a look: https://www.dogstrust.org.uk/rehoming/fostering/ They have lots of kennels all around the country - Uxbridge and Basildon are the nearest ones to SE London. Scroll down on that link and they cover off the basic questions. You'll have to go through a homecheck and a discussion as to what sort of dog you're after plus your experience so they can pair you with a suitable dog. If you're after a specific breed, it's worth a search on Facebook as there are a few breed-specific rescues. Generally, they try to get dogs adopted rather than fostered though as they're more volunteer run and don't have the time or resources that places like Battersea and other proper kennels have.

Much as I had to divide people up like this, it doesn't matter if you're pro or anti LTN, the issue is not really about owning a car. it's about where and when you choose to use it. Plenty of people are in a situation where they cannot just give their car up - maybe they're half way through a lease deal, maybe the car is so old that it's not worth anything to sell and it should just be kept until it falls apart... Many people genuinely do need a car for some journeys or circumstances. The problem is that the "anti" group have two answers: Pro LTN / own a car = you hypocrite! you give up your car first! Pro LTN / do not own a car = lefty hippy eco-warrior who can't possibly understand what life is like for those who NEED a car! It's not that simple - it's perfectly possible to own a car (and to need one occasionally) but choose not to use it to drive 500m to the school or half a mile to the gym. Being in favour of less traffic does not automatically mean "thou shalt never own or use a car again". Such polarised views aren't helpful to the debate. Besides which, modal shift takes time to come through - that person who currently owns a car may be using it less and less to the point where, a year or so down the line they will realise it gets so little use that it's more economically viable to just hire one when needed. https://findingspress.org/article/18200-the-impact-of-low-traffic-neighbourhoods-and-other-active-travel-interventions-on-vehicle-ownership-findings-from-the-outer-london-mini-holland-programme (I'm sure that naturally, the fact it was written by Anna Goodman and Rachel Aldred will drag out the naysayers - however there's a good summary here with numerous other links in it: https://www.rapidtransition.org/stories/making-streets-people-friendly-the-rise-of-car-free-communities/ )

https://globe.adsbexchange.com/ is good for tracking - unlike FlightRadar it covers most military stuff as well. Click on the icon, it shows you flightpath plus ID info.

You mean this one? https://eastdulwichgrove.com/content/uploads/2021/07/East-Dulwich-Grove__-LTN-Survey-Results-3.pdf The one that went along EDG and polled the residents there. 236 residential properties along there (quoted from the report itself), 127 responses so a 53% response rate. 84% of the responses were to reverse the LTNs, 84% of 127 people is 106 against. 106 out of 236 is 44%. Obviously there's no way of telling the opinion of the 47% who did not respond but you can't claim "80% of those polled". 236 properties were polled and responses received from about half of them. At absolute best (assuming a perfect survey which it wasn't) you could state that 44% of people in EDG are against the current traffic control measures. That's before you come to the questions asked which were (this is copied / pasted directly from the questionnaire): A) Make the present temporary road closures and timed camera restrictions permanent. B) Replace closed road junctions with timed camera enclosures around the school day start and finish, removing delays to emergency services. C) Reverse the schemes and return the roads to pre-closure with no restrictions. That is a *terrible* set of questions. especially B Replace closed road junctions with timed camera enclosures around the school day start and finish, removing delays to emergency services. That's a leading and biased question right there. It implies that there are delays to emergency services (without specifying what they are, how long they are and why they are directly attributable to LTNs rather than any other cause) and further implies that removing LTNs will fix the delays. The word "closure" is very misleading too. The roads aren't closed, you can access all of them with a vehicle. They are however filtered to prevent you driving through while still maintaining through access to bikes, scooters, wheelchairs, pedestrians... It's a terrible survey but once again OneDulwich have been very good at putting out the "80% of people are against LTNs" without specifying that it's 80% of 126 respondents to a biased survey of people on one road. You don't get to pick and choose data the way you are. You cannot blindly dismiss anything from TfL and Southwark Council (as well as numerous other related reports from the likes of Professor Aldred et al) as fixed, biased, out of date, not relevant to Dulwich, not from the location you want it from while simultaneously blindly accepting anything from OneDulwich. Same with the summary leaflet from Southwark Council where every dataset showing traffic reductions was questioned, rubbished and denied but where the one dataset showing an increase (EDG, 26%) was taken as gospel and widely quoted as proof that the LTN has FAILED and needs to be removed immediately. https://www.southwark.gov.uk/transport-and-roads/improving-our-streets/live-projects/dulwich-review I'm not saying that the council have been perfect in any of this but the level of conspiracy theory and confirmation bias now is at such a level that pretty much any suggestion from the council that things are broadly positive will be met in much the same way as Donald Trump met the news of his election defeat.

I'm not sure that even the most pro-LTN people are suggesting that LTNs are THE answer. They're not, they are ONE OF a suite of measures to reduce traffic. Some complementary - it's quite difficult to do X without doing Y in some areas of traffic design, some can be standalone and there's an element of needing stick and carrot as well. Is it equitable that the roads are too dangerous for kids to ride to school? Is it equitable that people who do not own cars find it difficult getting public transport because it's held up by private cars taking up proportionately vastly more road space than any other for of transit? Is it equitable that car owners get massively subsidised public space to leave their vehicles - space that then cannot be used for any other user? Is it equitable that car owners (in spite of the "I pay road tax, I pay fuel duty" argument) are vastly subsidised by the public purse - some of that subsidy in the form of addressing pollution-related issues? LTNs, broadly speaking, work pretty well and they're a cheap and easy thing to implement at short notice - they can also be cheaply and easily modified or removed at short notice. There's nothing special about Dulwich in terms of LTNs or traffic, the principles are exactly the same as anywhere else - you have to remove as much of the traffic as possible, you have to enable and empower active travel. If you don't remove the traffic, you can't push active travel unless you're also putting in segregated bike lanes because, much as there will always be a few folk who can tolerate riding in traffic, most people can't or won't. And a comprehensive network of bike lanes takes years to put in and also attracts just as much vitriol as LTNs. Same with all the other nice ideas like trams, extending the Tube line, changing every car to electric, autonomous cars... It's all stuff that won't happen before 2040, if at all. Extending the Santander Cycles scheme - that might come by about 2025 or so with a bit of luck. Pollution on a lot of London's roads has been above legal limits for years and you don't lower it by "spreading it around a bit". If you removed every LTN in the area tomorrow, the air pollution on EDG would still be above legal limits because it was well before the introduction of LTNs. Hardly "clean air for all". You can't start bleating about woodburners or buildings being worse - maybe they are in terms of air pollution but equally no-one has ever been run over by a speeding woodburner, nor is there a queue of them outside my house in the morning rush hour. You can argue semantics about cars being fine but PHVs and vans being not fine (?) but it's still splitting hairs. You just need less traffic. That addresses air and noise pollution, road danger and congestion all at once.

Re the train reductions, it's nothing to do with Government, TfL, Southwark or even the Train Operating Companies themselves who are simply reacting to a situation outside of anyone's control. So many staff are being pinged by the Covid app and told to isolate that there aren't enough staff to run the regular timetable. So there's no other choice than to reduce the timetable to something that can be effectively staffed. This isn't just Southern, most Train Operating Companies are in the same situation as well as a lot of bus companies. Disproportionately so because drivers/conductors travel large distances and come into close contact with a lot of people. Until Government comes up with something to say that double-vaccinated people don't need to isolate and can provide the enhanced testing to monitor it all, there's not much choice. But it's got nothing to do with the council and no-one wants to be cutting train services!

Well on the one hand there have been continued calls for more engagement and more consultation amid accusations that councillors are invisible / hiding / not listening and when that happens, you jump on it as a cynical desperate measure to drum up support... 🤷‍♂️ The original OHS plan had three phases of open consultation and included many comments from those streets: https://www.southwark.gov.uk/transport-and-roads/improving-our-streets/live-projects/our-healthy-streets/our-healthy-streets-dulwich OK, the original OHS plan was suspended but what is in place now isn't too dissimilar and it certainly shares the same overall aim. But you can't have it both ways - can't complain that there was no consultation and then that the consultation was extended or that only key people were allowed to voice an opinion. The thing is with a lot of the active travel and disability groups is they're very used to campaigning because for decades they've had to do so to get even the merest crumbs of infrastructure or recognition so generally they're geared up to respond to this sort of stuff pretty well. Individual residents who largely don't know or care what the council does so long as their bins are collected and they have a free parking space tend to be less interested in regular interactions with councils. Hence the door-to-door stuff which also picks up on people who may not have access to the internet. Personally I'd rate it as a good thing - I can imagine if there hadn't been any door-to-door, you'd probably complain about that too!

Government told councils to put in emergency schemes as a response to Covid and in order to prevent or at least mitigate a car-led recovery - even the current lot could forecast that a mass reduction in usage of public transport due to a mix of capacity issues (social distancing) and people being uncomfortable about returning to crowded environments would be a disaster if everyone started driving. However that instruction was given before there was any guidance or funding allocation in place. So when the backlash came from drivers, DfT sat there and let councils take the blame. Now however they're realising that by and large the schemes work and are popular (general rule across everything that's been put in is about 6 in favour for every one against albeit that the "against" tend to be far more vocal). So now DfT are complaining about councils removing schemes too hastily (fair enough, some councils have been an utter disgrace over this - notably Wandsworth and Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea) but they're also trying to take credit for it when it was councils taking most of the risk and doing most of the work. Not saying that the work was perfect but it was done with the best intentions and on limited guidance from Government while also able to be amended where required. As for hastily planned, most of it wasn't. Most councils have a variety of schemes on the back burner, awaiting funding or consultations or other planning stuff to align. A lot of the Dulwich stuff was an evolution on the existing Healthy Streets plan, modified to fit what was requested at the time.

You're allowed to discuss other options, even while a consultation is ongoing - in many ways it's actually more efficient because at the end of the consultation you can look at the results and have options to come back with. If majority is in favour of as is then there's not really much to do but if the majority is in favour of "a change" then you can quickly come back and say "we've heard your views that you don't like the current system so here are some changes proposed, what do you think?" Caveat that it's tied in with the data so if the data is broadly positive and the negativity is in a minority you still don't need to change anything because it's working. But it's always good to have a few back up options, perhaps based on specific feedback that's been picked out during the consultation. That's about right - couple of months to collate the results of the consultation, run some validity tests on the data, write it all up and present it to the council and for the council to then agree the next course of action based on the responses. I still think you're trying to find some kind of conspiracy where there isn't one to be honest. It's not unusual for a council to be discussing further traffic management options even during existing consultations, they're not being underhand or doing anything illegal.

Partly this is a manufactured culture war, a little bit of dead cat designed to inflame opinion a bit. Houses in DV itself for example are vastly more expensive than anything in Calton Avenue yet positioned right on the main road through the village. Even EDG has a huge range of housing from the large double-fronted properties towards RPH end to the much smaller flats and houses at the LL end so claiming that "EDG = poor people having pollution imposed on them" is demonstrably false. Plus you've got existing LTNs along Gilkes and the relatively modest houses in the cul-de-sacs of Great Spilmans and the back of EDG by Greendale. It's a very Daily Mail thing to do, judging people on the perceived value of their house and it doesn't help the debate. Part of it is that the wealthiest are the cause of the problem - they own more / bigger cars, they drive them more, they consume more. Make it more difficult for them to drive 500m to the school (having already established that school run is a major problem in the Dulwich area) and you have a huge gain without impacting "the poor people".

Opens from midday - something I discovered when I popped down to Evans Cycles on a hot day last week and thinking that an ice cream on the green would be lovely while I was out and about. Sadly, it was only 10.30am...

This ^^ Train companies nationwide are reducing services due to staff isolating. Ultimately you can either say you'll run 4 trains an hour and then cancel half of them (which is incredibly frustrating for all concerned) or you reduce the service intentionally which keeps reliability much higher. There may only be 2 trains an hour but at least they'll be there.

Pop a bid in to Southwark Council for some funding to create said rock opera and perform it in Dulwich Square. ;-)

But @Rockets, we've been here before about schools in the last 190+ pages. Schools all have travel plans (they're obliged to have them) - if you dig around enough on the school website you can usually find them, eg: https://www.jags.org.uk/admissions/transport , https://www.dulwichpreplondon.org/our-school/travel/ However, they can't mandate or police how people (both staff and students) travel to school and a lot of their influence ends at the school gates. It's all very well the school putting in a load of cycle parking but if the amount of traffic on the roads leads to all parents saying "oh it's too dangerous to walk or cycle" then you're not going to get anywhere. The council own and manage the roads (well, most of them, TfL have a hand in some of the major routes) so it's up to them to take measures to reduce the amount of vehicle traffic and increase the amount of active travel. Yes, there are complementary measures that schools, workplaces etc can take but the roads are not their responsibility. So we're back at LTNs as the one easy cheap way of doing that. Asking nicely if people wouldn't mind awfully driving a bit less doesn't work. Constant "share the road" campaigns have done absolutely nothing to increase either cycle safety or the number of people cycling. "Equitable solutions for all" (answers on a postcard as to what these actually are) don't exist because the road network is already massively unequal and unequitable, it's skewed very heavily towards the use, storage and flow of private motor vehicles. The implication that keeps being made is that by removing all LTNs and having the schools "do their bit" (which means what exactly?) we'll suddenly be at a utopian ideal of clean air for all and free flowing traffic and that's quite simply not possible. I have no idea either but you don't need to know the start point, end point, purpose and journey distance of every single car on the road. You're asking (once again) for data that is almost impossible to source with any accuracy without vast sums of money being spent and is actually not that useful anyway. The simple answer is that there are too many cars doing too many short journeys and we need urgent measures to curb that, not years more "consultation" and "research" (aka kicking the can down the road).