exdulwicher

A lot of it is but it's a mixture of factors: 1) Short delivery times - retailers have for years sought to gain customers by offering express / next day and even same day delivery. The shorter the timeframe the more inefficient it is as the less likely it is to be able to fill a van. 2) Customers want / expect quick delivery which is a Catch-22 on the above. There are options on many online retailers where you can ask for your purchases to be delivered in the minimum number of parcels so instead of it being one delivery in 24hrs and a second in 48hrs, it'll be one in 48hrs which is obviously far more efficient. I've never seen any stats for how many customers take that option and I doubt retailers would give that info up without a fight. 3) Delivery companies are contracted to deliver the goods and the costs of running empty / half full are less than the fines they incur for failing to deliver on time. And that drives traffic because there are more vans doing multiple trips with the added downside that when you pull up in a residential street, there's usually nowhere to park and one van double parked, blocking or partially blocking a road, will cause congestion almost immediately. Rather ironically, LTNs can actually assist with that because there's less traffic within the LTN to actually get snarled up by a double parked van in the first place! With HGVs, empty running has sat around 1/3rd for the last 15+ years in spite of some advances in load-sharing and back-hauling. Vans etc in towns the figures vary wildly and of course some empty running is inevitable - once you've delivered all your parcels you go back to the depot and there isn't really much you can do to change that. As for your question about why there were 4 vans when one would have sufficed, it depends on the factors above, where each package was coming from, where to, the order-to-delivery timescale and the depot(s) used on its journey. Quite possible for one customer ordering several items from several companies to have multiple vans turning up, especially if each retailer has a contract with a different delivery company The Pedal-Me cargo bike company has some interesting info about logistics: https://cyclingindustry.news/pedalmes-data-snapshot-puts-beyond-doubt-cargo-bike-inner-city-efficiency/ Freight companies are notoriously hard to get any info out of at all as they're all operating on knife-edge margins and they're terrified that any of their data could find it's way to a competitor. This makes it very difficult for anyone to come in and offer logistical help to the whole sector. To make money, they have to work on delivery goals which is why they offer same-day delivery options to the retailers that contract them - it's a much easier sell than saying "we're far more efficient because we wait 2 days until we have one van full of goods to go to E.Dulwich therefore we can save you 24p per package".

OK, well building on that, what increase of cycle journeys along one street (in the example quoted here) would be sufficient for YOU personally to think that it had worked? Factor in the uncertainty of the whole situation at the moment and the steep decline in the use of P/T. Some of it has been massively impacted by the idiocy of Wandsworth and Lewisham in removing them before they'd had any chance of taking effect - neither of those boroughs are miraculously free-flowing, low-pollution utopia now, they're still solid with traffic, it's just *everywhere* rather than on main roads. You're right, they don't work in isolation which is why the oft-quoted Loughborough Junction scheme wasn't a success but tied into other areas, they're a well-known, well-researched part of the solution. There are exceptions to the isolation thing actually - Gilkes Crescent for example is an LTN that was put in place in the mid-90's and that was very successful right from implementation in removing a lot of the previous jams that used to occur on the Calton / Gilkes junction. Although obviously that's a very different model to Loughborough Junction, not directly comparable.

They're PART of the answer. There is no one answer, one silver bullet that solves everything. Electric vehicles are part of the solution, more walking and cycling (enabled by things like LTNs, more cycle lanes etc) is part of it, increases in cost of motoring (congestion charging, ULEZ, CPZ, fuel duty, road tolls - any combination/permutation of that), better public transport (sort of ignoring the minor pandemic thing at the moment which has absolutely destroyed both P/T usage and confidence) and so on. They're all PART of the solution but none of them are THE answer in themselves.

Rockets, I'm sorry but placing all this onto "the pro-closure lobby" is disingenuous at best if not a simple outright lie. The vandalism of planters, the cutting of traffic count cables, the mis-use of data (and related to that the shouting down of any data that they don't like by claiming it's old, biased, flawed, produced by a cycling group, written by a cyclist...) and the creation of "echo chamber" debating spaces (primarily Facebook where it's easy for anyone to set up a group and then post inflammatory content, banning anyone who disagrees), the willingness to jump on any article by the Daily Mail, the use of hyperbole and opinion over factual debate and even the occasional violent threats against councillors can all be pointed solely at the anti-LTN lobby. It's got to the point in some areas where trying to have a rational debate about LTNs is like trying to have a rational debate about Brexit. Fact-based issues get shouted down as Project Fear and there's an emotive "WE WON YOU LOST!" contingent of Leavers (not all of them certainly but a vocal minority) who refuse to listen and simply revert back to the hyperbole and opinion and mentions of the war. That's what a lot of the anti-LTN rhetoric comes across as and I'm not just referring to this forum or Dulwich, I've seen similar all over the UK. Splitting it into pro/anti is not helpful to any of this - you'll find that most people have a range of opinion that places them pro some measures, anti others, ambivalent about some. I think what is agreed by the vast majority of posters on here though is that as a general rule, something has to be done to curb the unacceptably high levels of traffic and that, coming out of a pandemic where public transport usage is at an all time low, it doesn't help anyone if we all revert to driving everywhere.

Partly that but partly because, with everyone staying off public transport, there was a very high risk that people who used to use P/T to get around would replace that journey by one in a private vehicle. And if everyone did that, the results would be catastrophic gridlock and pollution. There was an urgent need to promote active travel and build on the huge increases in cycling seen during the first lockdown which was primarily due to walking/cycling being one of the few things you could actually do coupled with the roads being far quieter and therefore far safer - tempting people who would like to cycle but were afraid of the traffic danger out on to the roads once more.

https://www.transporttimes.co.uk/news.php/If-nothing-is-done-this-pandemic-will-make-air-quality-worse-not-better-595 The publication of this report coincidentally ties in with the Ella Kissi- Debrah case linked to above.

I was thinking the same except that still relies on the homeowner getting out there at crack of dawn, tampering with his own milk/juice and then leaving it there for the culprit and while it might be entertaining it still leaves the poor soul in the same situation of having no milk! You can get very good tripwire burglar alarms too but again, you can't install/activate them the previous evening because the milkman will set them off when delivering. Otto2: is there any way the milkman can deliver your order to a neighbour's house or perhaps get some sort of lockable metal crate put there for the milkman to leave it in? Might be worth checking with neighbours too because if the thief is doing this to one house, chances are it's being done to a few.

It's dreadful everywhere. Pull up a Google Maps of London with the traffic layer enabled, everything is red. Not quite sure why yet unless everyone has taken this opportunity to go out for some Brexit stockpiling and before London moves into Tier 3 at midnight on Tuesday night/Wednesday morning. Desperate last rush.

There's this myth that "passing trade" is only motorists (as though everyone driving through Dulwich Village is randomly spotting Proud Sow Butchers or The Art Stationers and thinking "oh wow, I'll just park up and pop in for a steak here and some paintbrushes there!") Trade comes from people - that's kind of the basis of out of town shopping centres and pedestrianised high streets. How people get there is certainly a discussion point but basically, trade is people. If you make it more attractive for people to hang around the area then they'll stay longer and spend more. There are already several studies showing that cyclists and pedestrians spend more: https://tfl.gov.uk/info-for/media/press-releases/2018/november/getting-more-people-walking-and-cycling-could-help-save-our-high-streets That's been seen elsewhere in the UK and abroad as well. The EV industry is worth billions and it's growing at a rapid rate. It won't be defined by a few people buying or not buying EVs or hybrids compared to schemes like car clubs, fleet vehicles, industry and subsidiaries like electric bikes and scooters. There's a wider issue as to what impact Brexit will have on the car industry and that is still very uncertain.

Modelling sort of relies on monitoring too. I mean, it's kind of helpful to have data either to base the models on or to further develop them later on. Various ways of doing that of course, most of them relying on a period of time to gather said data but modelling and monitoring are related.

macutd Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > why don't they > make public transport free > legalize electric scooters > increase the number of busses > extend the underground into the area > > Instead of just closing roads without giving a real alternative Surprisingly, the main factor of public transport usage is not cost, it's reliability. That said, at the moment people are just avoiding public transport because of Covid and on top of that there's not really much to go and do - not like people are out at all hours in pubs and clubs, at concerts, visiting attractions etc and commuting is way down on normal so usage is down due to that rather than cost. Besides, the money to run it has to come from somewhere so free public transit, while workable on small schemes (like Park & Ride or little CityHopper type buses) just means increased taxes/costs elsewhere. Agree on electric scooters, they're a definite part of micro-mobility. More buses takes us back to the cost aspect - who is going to fund all of that? You also end up with the buses themselves causing congestion which was why the bus routes into central London got revised a few years ago because there were simply too many buses going to places like Oxford Street, Regent Street etc and it was just clogging everything up. It takes 10-20 years to get a new Tube line plus a few billion ??. Camberwell has been talked about since the days of Ken as London Mayor and it's still no closer to actually happening. Old Kent Road is (probably) going ahead although it's on a much less certain timeframe now. Even that has been in the "planning" stages for about the last 10 years and it'll be 2030 at the earliest before it's in place (if at all) so Camberwell (and by extension, Dulwich) won't see a Tube until 2040 at the absolute earliest. Frankly I want a jetpack by then, I was definitely promised a jetpack as a kid watching Tomorrow's World. https://tfl.gov.uk/corporate/about-tfl/how-we-work/planning-for-the-future/bakerloo-line-extension Unfortunately, change on a short timescale is not really related to public transport, it's much more about forcing change locally via traffic management options. Besides, there's funding for LTNs and pop-up cycle lanes so that's what the council is limited to.

Same as if a parent drives from home to school to drop a child off and then drives home, that's 2 journeys. To the parent, it probably counts a one trip as in "I'm just taking [child] to school darling, back soon!" For traffic counting, it's two distinct journeys.

Decarbon8 have done a lot of good work so far, sadly the politicians got to the bit about "electric vehicles" and "technology" and went "yay, EVs are the answer to everything, we can build a load more roads!" As described in that article though, a queue of EVs is still a queue of cars, it's still the same congestion and while it removes the location-specific pollution issue, it doesn't answer the other problems of congestion, parking space, storage when not in use (almost invariably kerb-side) and the obvious one of social inclusion - as mentioned in that article and also in a recent RAC report, EVs are very expensive and not everyone can afford them, you still end up with the wealth inequality problem.

Wandsworth didn't show anything conclusive - @DulwichCentral covered this point in his/her post above ^^ referencing the Telegraph article. The measures were in place about 3-4 weeks at most before the council pulled them out again based on nothing more than populist noise. Tellingly, the streets of Wandsworth are not now some free-flowing utopia of calm, they're still solid with crawling traffic and the pollution is no different. Besides, as pointed out many pages ago, this is how it works. You get some short term disruption as people get used to it, changes are made etc and then it settles down. How long that takes depends on all sorts of factors and most of the predictions have been shot to pieces by pandemic / lockdown / decline in public transport use. It's all very well saying the Dulwich needs better public transport but at the moment very few people are using it and there's not really a consistent baseline to go off.

Written by the MD of Stagecoach so obviously very bus-focussed but this is a good read: https://www.transporttimes.co.uk/news.php/Covid-19-needs-to-be-a-defining-moment-to-deliver-fundamental-change-585 No, it just clogs up residential roads that were never designed for that volume of traffic, knackers the junctions at each end of them and gets absolutely stuck solid every time there's a bin lorry or delivery van along them and nothing else can pass.

Mix of factors but basically traffic everywhere (not just Dulwich, not just London and certainly not just in areas with LTNs) has jumped in the last week by up to 70% in some areas. Depends on what Tier the area has gone into and the rural / suburban / urban mix but after another month of lockdown (albeit far less restrictive than the first one), suddenly it's back on the roads. People are also making journeys they wouldn't normally make - extra shopping, buying the Christmas tree - all short distance ones that in almost all cases will be done by car. Partly because most people are still avoiding public transport.

The timing of that coincided with the introduction of a double roundabout system on a fairly similar style of junction in a place called Poynton, southern suburbs of Manchester/Stockport. It generated a lot of press (both for and against) and its implementation was flawed for various reasons. Nice idea, it was supposed to be a flagship scheme but there are elements of the installation that are far from perfect, it got a lot of negativity and suddenly the idea was quietly abandoned by every other council who'd seen it initially and thought "ooh, we'll have some of that". Search online for Poynton Shared Space, you can then choose whether you read the pro or anti articles depending on your point of view! Image of it in the link below. https://images.app.goo.gl/qP4iLXXcfYRgXpjs7 It's actually quite a good argument for doing things on a trial basis - no-one can afford to dig all that lot up and start again so trialling DV with planters is far better than digging the whole thing up; you can at least get some useful info on outcomes (desired and undesired) and then adjust accordingly before putting the whole lot out to consultation to make permanent.

Waze is a subsidiary of Google - most of the time (whether you know it or not), the "Google Maps" app that you open on your phone and pop in your destination is getting its info from Waze. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waze The actual Waze app just has slightly different functionality / look & feel etc but its all cross-referenced.

Ah, the Christmas turkeys have all come in then!

So a couple of pages ago, Rockets asked about this report from One Ealing: https://oneealing.co.uk/co2-and-costs-analysis/?fbclid=IwAR2erTIY7FRPFoJQDYRs1tkRAJjPztnF_iO35HyQxD8UgQd1L1V1qCENfLw which was based on "analysis" of some traffic count figures in a Sustrans report: https://livewestealing.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Live-West-Ealing_LTN_Engagement-Report_28072020.pdf The figure they base it on is one diagram of a map showing traffic counts of vehicles per day - that in itself isn't great as it doesn't tell the reader if it was just taken over one day or an average of readings over several days/weeks etc nor does it indicate if that number is good/bad/indifferent. It also doesn't differentiate between types of journey or vehicle - for instance no mention of delivery vans vs private cars etc. That's not really the end of the world for the Sustrans report which is simply the findings of some survey work - again the methodology highlights how few people actually respond to things like this because it mentions in the Executive Summary on Page 3 that 2500 surveys were sent out and they had 129 respondents and 60 people attended the two workshops they did (no indication if that 60 were in the original pool of 129). But 129 respondents out of 2500 surveys is a fraction over 5%. To be fair, that's about standard for postal surveys, they a very poor way of judging things. But the analysis starts by saying that 13621 vehicles made journeys in the north of the LTN area. That's wrong because those figures on the arrows add up to 12509 journeys north/east and 13223 journeys south/west (and again, no indication if that is people leaving the area at the start of the day and returning at the end). So the start figure is wrong. The multiplication by 300 (to assume a daily journey minus holidays / weekends) is incredibly broad at best and again takes no account of type of journey (commute to work, school drop off, leisure...?) It's then extrapolated out further to look at the whole LTN, not the northern bit which the Sustrans report focuses on and a set of calculations from each internal zone to each external zone done using, I assume, some sort of mapping software which has given distances of each section of road. That's given a before / after set of distances which has again been extrapolated out to show supposed extra mileage, rather ignoring the entire point of an LTN. And the supposed extra mileage has again been extrapolated using a generic figure of mpg to show increased fuel usage. Sorry but it's almost meaningless. It starts off with a wrong figure which in itself is of questionable origin, extrapolates again and again with no regard for journey type, modal shift (ie more walking and cycling, less driving due to the LTN) and then bases it on so many assumptions that it's near meaningless. It does look nice though, it looks like lots of figures and you can always bamboozle with lots of figures. It's why raw data is rarely given out because frankly it just confuses most people or it gets used to hide things! I can see why they've chosen that report as well - it's an effort to turn the findings from what is fairly obviously a pro-LTN report into something that can be used against it so politically, it's not a bad choice. Rather cynical perhaps but the purpose is to be able to turn to Sustrans and say "aha, these LTNs you're so fond of - look at the extra pollution you're causing!" The report isn't even designed with traffic counts in mind, it's the findings from a survey about "traffic" so trying to use it to then look at mileage is a long shot at best.

dulwichfolk Wrote: > I can?t find this anywhere can you share? > > Be interested in what other exceptions they have. They're not exceptions, they're exemptions* and it has to be quite specific. https://www.how2become.com/blog/uk-ambulance-exemptions-and-non-exemptions/ In practice there's a fair bit of leeway applied and I'm sure everyone has seen the Police, Camera, Action type programmes of police vehicles being driven in interesting ways during pursuits (again, some of it needs specific authorisation and pursuits can be called off if the hazard to other road users becomes too great). Emergency vehicles can also use segregated cycle lanes - there are a few videos on social media showing ambulances and fire engines in the city using Cycle Superhighway lanes, eg *slightly pedantic legal definition Emergency vehicle sat-navs are almost invariable awful, rarely updated and only capable of handling postcodes, not newer apps like What3Words or grid references. In practice, in urban areas this rarely matters too much but in rural areas where a postcode can apply to a wide area, it can be problematic. Dealing with LTNs and other short-notice traffic stuff like temporary roadworks can also be problematic and some paramedics just back it up with their own smartphone. That problem is exacerbated if crews are working in unfamiliar areas - not all crews will work the same area all the time.

Rockets - give me a day or so to look through it and I'll get back to you. My views on Ealing are slightly tainted by the ever-so-leading "survey" that Ealing Conservatives sent to everyone they knew to be opposed to LTNs in order to produce a nice Twitter friendly graphic claiming that 95% of residents were opposed to LTNs (link below). I'm wondering if OneEaling are basing any of their figures on that but I'll have a look through it tomorrow or Monday. Astonishing though it may be, I do occasionally have better things to do on a Saturday night than look at traffic data! https://twitter.com/SpacePootler/status/1332678583702212610?s=19

Citation needed. Where on Southwark's website does it say that they want to eliminate ownership of private cars? Where does it say those are the only two "weapons"? I suspect you mean the far less inflammatory word "measures" and they actually have another one, Car Clubs. https://www.southwark.gov.uk/parking/car-clubs

No one is voting against private cars, that's not what the issue is here. The issue is using said car for short journeys that could, for many people, be accomplished in a more sustainable manner. And before you give me all the "what about the school run Mum dropping of 3 kids at 3 different schools then doing a big shop on the way home?", I said MANY people. Not all journeys, not all the time. It's not a binary pro/anti car issue nor is it hypocritical to own a vehicle but be in favour of less traffic.

And neither the school nor the police could do anything about it because, and I cannot stress this enough, no offence is being committed. Rockets mentioned school plays, sports day etc which I noted in my first post on the subject - schools (and places of worship, shopping centres etc) are private grounds and can set their own rules. In public though, so long as it's reasonable and decent, it's entirely legal to stand in a public place and take photos or video. Whether you know it or not you're on CCTV, traffic cameras, dashcam, helmetcam, maybe a mobile phone cam or even a drone cam - go to Dulwich Park and there's often someone harmlessly flying a drone around the place (no matter how annoying it might be!). We're all probably in the background of God only knows how many videos and photos from tourist places, on beaches etc that have been uploaded to social media. And ever since people have been complaining about traffic, they've been taking photos of school buses stuck on corners, traffic jams and so on, posting them online and using those pictures to prove whatever point they're making. On which point - if a similar video clip had been taken by an anti-LTN group showing a line of stationary traffic and kids walking to school through a cloud of diesel fumes and using the video to say how awful traffic was, would you be similarly outraged?