exdulwicher

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?

Correction. In your view it is not appropriate. Although quite why you'd say that is questionable since no-one is (easily) identifiable and even if they are it shows fully dressed people behaving normally and decently crossing a road. In the view of the law though, there is no offence whatsoever that has been committed by filming that and posting it to any social media site.

There's a moral maze there around what's legal and what any one person would consider "appropriate". I'm not wrong - it's entirely legal to film a junction and post the footage on the internet be it cars, pedestrians, cyclists. You can dial up countless hundreds of traffic cameras yourself on the internet right now if you want and most are no different to that footage on Twitter. If you are standing on a public street and filming people as they pass by - no problem. However, if you begin to follow one of those people and film everything they did, this could easily be viewed as harassment and stalking. There are lines in the sand and obviously some people will place those differently. If you're sitting in a pub or park and decide to get a selfie and post it online, you're not committing any sort of offence if there are people (including children) in the background. Same if you drive along with a dashcam or ride along with a helmetcam. You can post that footage online and anyone else in the footage, identifiable or not, has no right of complaint providing it's filmed in a public place.

I said a few pages ago that still pics and even short videos were near useless from either "side" of the debate. I can go out and film a massive line of traffic or an empty road, loads of cyclists or none at all and use them for whatever purpose I want in order to "show" a particular outcome. Rubbish - it's a public place and no-one is directly identifiable. There is no law against photographing or filming children (or indeed adults) in a public place, provided the images are decent in nature. Different rules apply in private places such as schools. Shopping centres are also very strict about that although more from a security point of view than any privacy concerns.

legalalien Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > That Twitter thread...words fail me. Would you prefer this one?

The anti-groups are doing exactly the same Metallic, you can't pretend that there's one side of saintly people who would do no wrong and one side of militant liars. It's been badly managed, allowed to descend into a Brexit-style "I'm right, you're wrong" / "we won, you lost". One of the anti-groups supplied a template email to Grant Shapps and at the very bottom was a clause that they would "vet" all submissions - essentially to weed out all the positive comments. As was mentioned a page or two back, Lambeth have done very well generally - they've managed the narrative well enough to largely kill off a lot of the fake news although they obviously can't reach the Daily Mail hatchet jobs.

You're VERY cynical this morning Rockets! Yes, normal format is a 2-week grace period where letters get sent out saying something along the lines of "doing this after [date] will result in a fine." Depends on how the data was gathered and by who. Older data is usually less reliable as the tech back before about 2000 wasn't really up to today's standards so getting an absolute direct comparison is difficult. It's still pretty sound and you can extrapolate a lot but it's like comparing anything across big timelines. Cars on the road as a comparison - cars 20-30 years ago were far smaller, lighter etc so as malumbu mentions above, the increases in engine efficiency have been wiped out by increases in weight and tech. You can still count numbers of cars and its still valid as a direct comparison but when it comes to roads and the space occupied, you also need to look at the size/weight of the vehicle and that's changed significantly (an increase of about 25% on average). So 1000 cars now occupy 25% more space than 1000 cars 20 years ago even though all other factors remain unchanged. Some data is derived from other data so measuring Parameter A will give you a good indication of what Parameter B would be without actually going out and measuring it. Pollution and traffic is one example - if you measure traffic and have the flow rates you can make a reasonable estimate of pollution without putting a monitoring station in (they're expensive and often prone to peaks and troughs caused by external factors like temperature, wind and other non-vehicle pollution - it irons out over long periods but for short term monitoring, they're not brilliant) More recently, mobile phone and satnav data has given much clearer pictures of routing and use of streets, Strava does the same for active travel, Uber has a map of travel times which is based on millions of anonymised journeys. There's been a few studies on using crowd-sourced data - this one specifically mentions the issues of where the data is gathered and in comparing results. https://findingspress.org/article/5115-comparing-google-maps-and-uber-movement-travel-time-data Bringing it all together is a challenge and DIRECT comparisons aren't easy but the general trendlines are pretty consistent across various data sources. Combinations of them will give something that is called an estimate but which is actually pretty solid. Same way that the word Theory is used to describe evolution, the Big Bang and so on. It doesn't mean it's wrong or a wild guess - it means that not all aspects of it are fully understood or they're open to further study but the underlying principles are basically all there.

That's about right - varies depending on how you measure it, if it's a rolling road or real-world; also real-world things like temperature, speed, manner of driving but tank-to-wheel efficiency is about 16 - 20%. The TTW efficiency is determined by the total amount of losses, which in a combustion engine comprise thermal losses, pump losses and mechanical losses. The thermal losses occur as not all of the fuel energy is transformed to mechanical energy, and most of these losses are dissipated through the exhaust. The combustion process is unable to utilize all the thermal energy, and the exhaust ends up at a higher temperature and pressure than the ambient air. All the rotating parts of the engine creates friction when moving and results in mechanical losses, which increase with the speed of the engine. It's a massive pain modelling that ofr all types of vehicle though so generally an average figure is used. Diesel engines on biodiesel can get up to 35% efficiency in absolutely ideal running conditions. Not my area but useful to understand the basics when politicians start banging on about "net-zero" or how cars are more efficient now therefore there's less pollution per car therefore we can build more roads and have more cars....

I'm reminded of the scene in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade where he tells his class that archaeology is the search for FACTS. Not TRUTH. "If it's truth you're interested in, the philosophy class is right down the hall."

It does and it doesn't. If you look at the data for Southwark: https://roadtraffic.dft.gov.uk/local-authorities/103 If you go to the Summary page: https://roadtraffic.dft.gov.uk/summary and filter traffic by Road Type on C-roads, there's a massive increase. The raw counts don't always pick this up because they're at fixed locations so what is measured as a decrease in traffic passing a fixed point on an A-road is actually measured as an increase in traffic along a C-road. Basically rat-running. The physical counts of how many vehicles have gone down a certain road need to be tied into other measures like phone data, traffic flow, congestion charge counts, ANPR, temporary traffic counts (the little boxes with a sensor cable stretched across the road) plus things a bit more removed like census data, surveys and car sales figures. Here's London overall as one Region: https://roadtraffic.dft.gov.uk/regions/6 Again, you can filter by road type, traffic type etc.. It's 3.6 BILLION more miles driven on London's roads in the space of 10 years. There's a huge amount of info and data in there to go through and just saying "oh there's been a decrease in traffic" is not true. There might be a decrease past a fixed point but it's not shown in the bigger picture. Residential streets (where there are generally no traffic counts) have become sponges to absorb the arterial route traffic. Everyone is on Waze and Google Maps being shown all these little cut throughs to save a minute here or there. The result being that they're directed off the A-roads, away from the traffic counters and into the residential streets. Traffic displacement in reverse. There's a few articles out at the moment. The Peter Green one linked above. This one which mentions Railton Road: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/nov/16/i-got-it-wrong-since-the-changes-its-become-more-vibrant-life-in-an-ltn The guy in Daily Mail article has form for this, he was saying the same about segregated cycle lanes in London in about 2017. None of his scare-mongering has been shown to be true. As a general rule the Daily Mail isn't really interested in truth. ;-)

I don't have an agenda. Asking what, on the face of it is a simple question with a binary yes/no answer is not going to give you anything like the answers that are actually needed. Firstly it's quite quaint that you think the councils are there to do what you / we want. They're not, they're there to run the borough by (as near as possible) democratic means but democracy does not mean that they have to ask everyone their opinion on everything. They were democratically elected and they'll do what the democratically elected Government tell them to do mixed in with their own local issues based on the funding they can obtain for it all. Secondly, it is not a simple answer. I said this above. Some LTNs are very good, they've had very positive effects. Some are not so good and either get removed after a while or modified. Some impact certain people more than others. A resident on Calton Avenue with no private car will have a very different view to a resident on Court Lane with 2 vehicles even though they may live only 200m from each other. Some residents and businesses will love their own LTN but hate the one that forces them to drive an extra mile to get to a shop or school. There is literally no one answer to this. You're trying to make an incredibly complicated matter (that is linked in to other traffic considerations not just in Southwark but across neighbouring boroughs) a simple yes/no and sadly, the world doesn't work like that unless it's just "do you want more pudding?" I know what the answer will be by the way - 52:48 (and that could go either way). It pretty much always is when you try to break down a divisive issue to a simple question which is why it's a terrible idea. If it's more pudding then it's easier, it's always yes. ;-)

Yes and look where such a "simple" question got us to in June 2016... There are far more complexities in it than just "do you want it?", not least the fact the Government (and by extension, councils) are committed to reducing emissions, reducing reliance on private cars, promoting active travel and attempting to mitigate some of the Covid-related impacts (like the requirement for social distancing). Some are very good - in fact many have existed for years in one form or another. Gilkes Crescent for example was closed off years ago at the Calton Avenue and Gilkes Place ends. Some are badly implemented undoubtedly, they'll need some modification (or removal!) but it's better to trial that with them now and then remove a few planters than it is to completely rebuild a junction at great cost and disruption and then go "oh no, we'll change it all again". Let the trials run their course. Complain / feedback through the official channels. If/when they are modified or removed then you're vindicated. Asking simple questions to complicated issues, especially when they run cross-borough, is never going to give you anything useful.

Not really. We touched on this a few pages ago re buses and public transport. In the last 15 years, public transport in London has far far outstripped anything else in the country, the investment and development has been staggering. Capped (and heavily subsidised) fares, firstly on Oyster, now on contactless bank card. The Hopper fare so even when there isn't a direct bus, you still only pay one fare. 24/7 bus operation on a lot of routes, increased frequency of trains, buses and tube, hugely increased roll-out of the cycle hire scheme, the Overground (taking some train routes into TfL operation), construction of CrossRail... And yet in spite of all that, between 2013 and 2019, the number of miles driven on Southwark's roads has increased by 69 million miles. https://roadtraffic.dft.gov.uk/local-authorities/103 (you can access all Local Authorities road use data via that). So in spite of the vast improvement in public transport across London, it's not mitigated the use of private vehicles. Some of that is increased population - Southwark's population increased by 6.2% in the same period but the vehicle mileage increase is 13.5% so population alone doesn't account for it. I accept that Dulwich itself isn't brilliant with E-W public transport in particular, the lack of a tube line, the fact that cycle hire only extends to Walworth etc comes up pretty regularly but it's far from "bad". There is of course the other factor right now that Covid means public transport capacity has been slashed by about 2/3rds - the whole point of LTNs and related emergency measures was the Government realising that if everyone who used to use PT got into their cars, it'd be absolute gridlock and therefore attempting to come up with alternatives. Obviously at such short notice of implementation, it's not going to be perfect first time round but it does give useful info as to what measures might work on a more permanent basis. Some sort of combination of LTNs, CPZ, camera-controlled gates (with resident permits), more / better bike lanes and more / better PT (as and when TfL might be able to afford things like that), and borough-wide enforced speed limits could all have a role to play in reducing vehicle use.

The disruption work? It was many years ago as part of a behavioural psychology study (which linked into modelling since it looks at how people behave or change their behaviours when faced with "disruption"). Educational, not a published study. 2011 Census Data which then gets used for the next 10 years until the next Census. There have been dozens of studies sometimes within a single city, sometimes off the back of Census data, sometimes as part of ongoing research. The National Travel Survey is the most up to date, that's done every 2 years. https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/national-travel-survey-2019 The 2017 one is here: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/729521/national-travel-survey-2017.pdf Lots of what is done is never intended to be published to the public; it's for councils, Government, planners etc to see trends, anticipate future patterns. Mostly though, it's there to find if you look for it. Interestingly, most urban areas show almost exactly the same percentages: 1/3rd under 2km, 1/3rd 2-5km and 1/3rd over 5km and that sort of matches what you'd expect. In an urban or suburban area, most people aren't more than about 5km from at least the majority of shops and services that they need on a day-to-day basis. Rural areas, that changes dramatically due to the larger distance between population centres and the more dispersed nature of the population.

Slightly off topic but moving traffic lights / removing the traffic island etc falls well outside of ETRO since it's not temporary and to do that sort of work means a lot of extra disruption in terms of roadworks, temporary lights and so on. It also requires the relevant legal stuff like planning, procurement, award of contract to be done and it would be expensive. No idea of the status of the land at that crossroads but taking some of it up to widen the road is likely to fall foul of all sorts of planning and environmental protection laws. Dulwich Estate would know that one - I'm guessing it's protected though. I know the finger-post at that junction, while not "Listed" is certainly noted as "an item of positive contribution towards the character of the area" which I suspect makes moving it to widen the road very problematic. The wands are temporary so fall within ETRO.