exdulwicher

Picking this one up from a couple of pages back: Modeller, not planner. And it's a private company. The green sign is not a traffic sign. As long as the (official) Road Closed sign is displayed, the green sign alongside it acts as "clarification" or guidance or advice or whatever term you want to give to it. Non-issue. Dovercourt and, to a lesser extent Beauval, have LONG been used as sink roads for Alleyns. The school literature used to boast of the "ample free parking in surrounding residential streets" (it used to badly impact the Townley Road / EDG end of Calton as well). No-one really minded when it was a dozen or so cars (usually 6th Formers) along the upper reaches of Townley Road away from the houses but when it was school open day, Founder's Day etc, it was absolutely solid around there. And when two massive Range Rovers meet head on along Dovercourt or Beauval, you get a stand-off when neither one is actually capable of reversing their Urban Tank without taking out half the street.

This smacks of the countless "Share The Road" campaigns that have been done over the years, all promising improved road safety and "awareness" and "respect" between drivers and cyclists / pedestrians. None of them have ever worked, they're essentially ways for Government to say that they're very keen on promoting road safety and then never actually doing anything and just leaving the status quo of cars everywhere. To drivers it means "Get out of the way, stop bothering me" and to pedestrians / cyclists / wheelchair users it means "Please don't kill me!" For the last 30 years, no-one has considered "all" road users, they've considered how to make things easier for drivers. Cyclists get that bit of pointless paint along a bumpy kerb. Pedestrians get a couple of inconvenient zebra crossings 300m away from the shops they actually want to visit. Bus and train users have seen decades of fare rises and falling reliability. Meanwhile drivers get acres of free parking right outside the shops and a ten-year freeze on fuel duty. That's the outcome of "considering all road users". It's marginalised cycling and walking to single digit percentages, it's made "the school run" a thing, even radio stations refer to it as "drivetime". We've sleepwalked into a state where driving half a mile is the default normal thing to do because it's so cheap and easy and because people are fundamentally lazy, they'll always take the easy option. Loads of roads, free parking = lots of driving. Take away the free parking (CPZs), filter a few of the roads to actually FORCE change (the roads are not CLOSED, you can access any part of them by car, you just can't use them as a cut-through), make it more inconvenient to drive and easier to just walk / cycle through a filtered road and you start transitioning to considering ALL road users. Not just the easiest / quickest way through for cars. The speed of the change is pretty unprecedented, not least for councils who are unused to working at this sort of speed of delivery but the longer the changes are left, the more severe they're going to have to be. Sorry, but that tipping point has been reached. I don't necessarily agree with all the changes, I think some are going to have to be altered but the critical thing is that the information is established and acted upon. If you look to areas like Hackney and Walthamstow where these sort of changes have been in place for a while under whatever name they were given (Mini-Holland, Quietway, LTN etc), most have worked very well indeed and no-one wants the streets re-opened to a big free-for-all. Lambeth has actually done very well out of theirs, the communication has seemed a bit better.

Rockets Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Can anyone show any scheme which has SIGNIFICANTLY reduced motor volumes? The best even the most pro-scheme lobbyist can show is a maximum of 11%. NO IT ISN'T! Back on page 41, I posted a link to a meta-analysis study which had looked at 60 traffic reduction schemes worldwide to assess various measures and outcomes. Obviously very few people actually bothered reading the thing and someone asked about overall reduction - I copied and pasted an extract from the report which stated a MEDIAN (not a maximum) outcome across all these various schemes in several different countries of 11%. In fact the exact phrase I posted is here: The mean average was a reduction of 21?9% and the median ? which is a better measure of central tendency here, given the variability of results ? was a reduction of 10?6%. In other words, in half the cases, over 11% of the vehicles which were previously using the road or the area where roadspace for general traffic was reduced, could not be found in the surrounding area afterwards. Now in that context, median is kind of the best statistical tool to use (rather than mean) because it takes account of outliers. Depending on what the scheme is, where it is, the control measures introduced etc, it showed a wide range of outcomes but this time, you can actually go back and read it yourself because it's very clear that the 11% figure has been held up as some kind of absolute gold-plated figure for all schemes everywhere and it's "only" 11% (and therefore not worth doing??) What's even more telling is that the meta-analysis got shouted down as being: old / out of date (apparently science done before 2000 is no longer valid?!) flawed (go, on, tell me HOW it's flawed, I'd love to hear it) biased (no it's not, the whole point of meta-analysis is that you're looking at previous studies and studying their methodology, not the original raw data) And yet all the people saying that the study was rubbish simultaneously grabbed the 11% figure that came from that same study like a dog with a bone and now won't let it go and are twisting it to their own ends.

It's the underpass. Streetview (that's looking at it from the west looking east towards HPC). Congestion charge starts as you dip into that underpass. If you go around the surface road you can drive all around HPC, up Park Lane, down Grosvenor Place etc and not pay it cos you're on the outer border of it. If you zoom right in on the CC map hwere: https://tfl.gov.uk/modes/driving/congestion-charge/congestion-charge-zone you can see the arm of it and the way it goes UNDER HPC. Using the surface road is fine. Hope that helps. :-)

Rockets: there's a difference between Emergency and Experimental. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/making-traffic-regulation-orders-during-coronavirus-covid-19/traffic-regulation-orders-guidance-on-the-traffic-orders-procedure-coronavirus A lot of what is being used at the moment is Emergency under the new legislation (linked above) Experimental exist already: S9 of the RTRA1984 although they're not used as frequently as they should be - in terms of cheap traffic control they're very good but a lot of people complain bitterly with the "WE'VE NOT BEEN CONSULTED, IT'S UNDEMOCRATIC!" rant and most councils can't be bothered dealing with the fallout (even though it's something they're legally allowed to do as a democratically elected authority).

slarti b Wrote: > So you haven't answered my quesions have you, as > brief reminder, > 1) Are, DV, Calton, Court Lane Townly Rat runs, yes\no > 2) which roads do you think the displaced traffic should use, please name them > 3) Is it right to displace increase congestion and pollution and displace traffic onto the "main" roads - yes\no > > Question 2 is particularly important and supporters of these schemes, the councillors, > posters on here like RaRa and ExDulwicher refuse to answer it. So come on, lets hear which roads > should suffer increased congestion so we can have weekend concerts in Margy Plaza :-) I've not answered because here is no one answer to "what roads should be used instead?". It depends on the journey. Start/end points, "ideal" route vs other options, use of sat-nav vs driver just saying "I'll do X instead", purpose of journey (and that is important to differentiate between a delivery driver doing (say) 6 drops in an area vs a parent driving a child to school and then driving back empty). It will vary depending on time of day, purpose of journey and distance of journey. If you're driving 1km then you probably don't have many alternative route options (and frankly, if you're driving 1km, that's the entire purpose of these filters, to stop you doing that!) but if you're driving 20km then you probably have a few more possibilities that don't affect the overall time of the journey. One of the benefits of doing it this way with temporary measures and then just looking at what actually happens is you don't really need a huge amount of "before" data (some is certainly helpful but it's actually not as critical as some people seem to think), you get to see the results in real time with the expected disruption followed by the smoothing out of the line as people get used to the revised routes / options open to them and you can tweak things a bit as required. It won't all be perfect but it's a lot better than building an entire new junction then coming back and redoing it 2 years later. I'm not a fan of weekend concerts and other assorted crap in Dulwich Square (or whatever its name is this week) by the way. It's a road and it's still used by pedestrians and cyclists; muppets doing the waltz there get right in the way! (edited for spelling)

Councillors deal with a huge range of issues across their constituencies, they cannot be experts in social care, traffic, law and order, schools, pollution, building controls and all the other countless issues / complaints / comments that cross their desks from constituents. Their job is to collate it all, direct it to the right department in the council or Government where there ARE experts (either in-house or contracted in) who can deal with it in the appropriate manner. Moaning that a councillor is not an expert in whatever the topic du jour is doesn't help. They're (supposed to be) experts in campaign work, working with representatives of local organisations, interest groups, businesses and residents etc. To be fair, most generally do try their best although like all generalisations, that hides the few that are genuinely brilliant and the few that are near enough invisible until election time...

Dogkennelhillbilly Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > What I like is the prospect of OneDulwich - > entirely unqualified in traffic management and > environmental monitoring - bickering over > pollution measurement methodologies. Taken a leaf out of Government's books. Discredit the figures you don't like, argue about how the figures are measured, change the method half way through... Government did it with Covid deaths... You can measure pollution from traffic counts, you don't need actual pollution monitoring stations on every road. As it stands, there are already a load of them in and around London, they produce really useful baseline trends across long periods of time and every year there's a massive drop in NO2 on days when they close the roads for RideLondon and London Marathon. However they also pick up background stuff too - general city emissions, aircraft and so on. Determining what comes from traffic requires intervention from traffic counts, weather models (wind patterns and vehicle turbulence both have significant effects on what gets measured and when). However you can use traffic counts interlinked with traffic flow data and split by vehicle type to get a really good picture of pollution maps. Flow is already there - all those strips of tarmac by traffic lights are detector loops. There are cameras all over the place, mobile phone data and traffic apps. Add in some actual physical counts at various times of day alongside the counters currently tied to lamp-posts (you know, those tubes that the helpful folk who demand to see data keep cutting...) and you can accurately predict pollution patterns. Vehicle type is important as HGVs emit significantly more than cars so percentage of vehicle type gives options to potentially re-route lorries or model the impact that a bus has - a bus emits more than a car but it takes [x number] of cars off the road (sadly x at the moment with social distancing is lower than x pre-lockdown). So you add one bus but subtract (eg) 30 cars. Yep, a thoroughly sensible person!

Two weeks is nowhere near enough. You need 6 months minimum to get meaningful data, work out the medium-term trends and extrapolate from there. Especially at this time when people could be self-isolating for 2 weeks, schools have only just gone back, there's a marked difference in "normal" commuting patterns. Takes a while for all that to work through the system. The absolute worst thing that could be done now is taking them up again, that would just be a total waste of time and money and wouldn't give any meaningful information.

Thanks for the clarification Rockets, appreciated, :-) At a guess, that's down to the conditions of funding and how quickly these emergency schemes need to be implemented. Lots of factors here - much of it imposed on councils by Government as to how and when they spend the money, not all of it related to number crunching.

I'd have to go back and read it more thoroughly but they did identify through-traffic, not sure if it included start/end points? Modelling does try and identify and break down journey by type so someone getting in a car is not just "driving" - the trip is classed by business or leisure or school journey for example. Several ways and means of doing it, there's a (fairly technical) Government document on the principles here: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/888363/tag-unit-m3.1-highway-assignment-modelling.pdf If you want to read the entire thing, put aside a few days and search for Department for Transport TAG Unit, it brings up all the guidelines and documents. Mobile phone data is very good at giving origin and destination of journeys as well as overall reliability, which is a measure of the time taken to do a set journey; you end up with a sort of bell curve of it normally taking (say) 20 mins but in exceptional circumstances it might take 12 mins or 40 mins depending on traffic factors. The narrower the bell, the more reliable the journey. As a general rule, active travel is far more reliable than driving - you know it takes 20 mins to walk to the shops for example and that won't vary much but driving it could take 5 mins or it could take 30 depending on time of day, traffic factors, parking etc. No, it suggests that many people have not yet altered their behaviour. You always need time for measures like these to settle in, for people to be encouraged / nudged towards other options. It's up against a very challenging situation at the moment with mixed messages like "go back to work" followed now by "actually no, try and work from home again". A lot of people don't know if they're coming or going, the uncertainty isn't helping matters.

Thursday was when that car went into the wall at the top of DKH. Junction was closed for ages and it wrecked traffic in Camberwell, Peckham, all along LL out to Forest Hill... Not really a fair comparison to say that traffic was awful therefore it's the fault of the permeable streets. It's why I don't really bother with the anecdotes (from either side) with a still photo and a story of "I was travelling along [road] and traffic was free-flowing / gridlocked therefore..." because there are far more factors at play than just the permeable streets that someone walking along an individual road is unlikely to be aware of at first (like an accident/road closure somewhere else, a broken set of traffic lights, a badly parked lorry etc).

Alan Medic Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I am, but I haven't a clue. I'd like to know > what's less than an amateur though? Presumably it means someone who believes conspiracy theories from "a relative of an associate" rather than reading peer-reviewed scientific journals...? https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-0820-9 https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/03/200317175442.htm https://www.sciencenews.org/article/coronavirus-covid-19-not-human-made-lab-genetic-analysis-nature

Abe_froeman Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I'm not sure the council cabinet reshuffle is > going to help. One of the new appointees has the > title Member for Low Traffic Statutory post going forwards (it might not be that title in every council nationwide but they're all mandated to consider this now urgently). Don't forget, this has come down directly from central Government with direct funding available. Councils (and this applies to most traffic schemes, not just LTNs and not just now) bid for funding and then have to use that funding to implement either what they're directed to do (like LTNs) or what they want to do (eg a council will bid for funding to, say, modify a junction, they receive funding and it then has to be spent on modifying that junction, it can't be re-directed elsewhere). The problem is not LTNs - as a general rule, if they're well implemented and people are engaged with the process, they work, they deliver tangible benefits and this is well-known and well-modelled more or less worldwide, obviously with caveats around the various specifics like location, population (inc population density & demographics), the existing infrastructure and so on. The problem, and I mentioned this earlier re Wandsworth, is poor local Government engagement and implementation. There are a few instances (not all but certainly a few) where councils have fallen over themselves to get money and spend money and in their haste they've sort of forgotten anything around engaging with residents and businesses. Now to be fair this isn't all on councils; central Government was pushing for rapid implementation and they could have done far more with explaining nationally why it was being done - in many respects they've simply left the councils to cop the flak which is very poor of them but they're busy trying to break international law so I doubt they care and the messaging around Covid / returning to work etc has been incredibly muddled and chaotic. The critical thing (and hopefully this is where a specific role within council will come into play) is to trial the scheme properly under the existing legislation, model it, refine / amend it (there might be some that are removed, some that are altered etc), look at the data on it, refine it further and do that in conjunction with complementary "carrot" work - local mobility schemes, e-scooter hire, bike hire, walking buses, local home delivery services, providing information and advice to residents and businesses and so on. Many people on here have mentioned that it can't all be stick, there has to be some carrot and they're right. But equally, engagement goes both ways - constructive criticism is fine but abuse and insults and vandalism are not.

https://road.cc/content/news/vandalism-oil-spread-road-anti-ltn-protests-turn-nasty-276865 My mistake, it was oil spread on the ROADS, not actually IN the planters. They were just overturned.... http://www.ealingtoday.co.uk/default.asp?section=info&page=ldrsroad003.htm

Partly, it's the responsibility of the council although using it as a community benefit is certainly an option. There was talk somewhere (might have been Oval LTN but I can't find it now) reporting that vandals had poisoned the plants by pouring oil into them. I mean there's being against the closures but poisoning soil and plants is despicable. Manchester put a load of much more heavy duty ones in on Deansgate, a road which has long been a pain for footballers revving fast cars up and down it and restaurants / cafes campaigning for street closure to allow them to spread out into the street. The council put in massive cast iron ones with proper trees:

There is ONE thing that reduces pollution. Fewer cars (or fewer journeys, depending on how you phrase it). LTNs help with that by deterring (some) car use. It takes time to bed in, it sometimes requires additional interventions like setting up bike or scooter hire schemes or better parking for them, Walking Buses for kids to get to school, pop-up cycle lanes, 20mph zones and so on, sometimes it'll largely achieve the desired effect on its own. The roads aren't closed - residents, emergency services, deliveries etc can all reach all houses and businesses so it's an important phrasing distinction between "closed road" and "filtered road" (where through traffic is prohibited). We're in a situation which was going to arise sooner or later, Covid or not. There's a climate emergency, there's a global pandemic, there's an obesity and diabetes crisis especially amongst children and it's got to the point where we could have made minor changes over the last 20 years, drip fed into the system but we haven't. It's now at the point where it needs dramatic intervention NOW because, if we don't do it, it'll need even further dramatic intervention next year (like the Athens case mentioned above where odd and even-numbered cars were banned from the streets on alternate days - happened in Paris as well: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/dec/07/paris-bans-cars-for-second-day-running-as-pollution-strikes ) The choice now is you can be sort of nudged into making fewer journeys because it's mildly inconvenient to drive or you can wait a year or so and be banned from driving on alternate days altogether. If you're angry about pollution, look to the people driving short journeys, not the LTNs.

ali2007 Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > I haven't been following this thread so apologies > if I'm repeating what's already been said. No, it encourages shorter journeys to be made on foot, by bike etc. If you're on Calton Avenue and you need to go to Dulwich Village, the easiest / quickest option is now to walk / cycle / scooter through the planters, not to drive the long way round. Sensationlist cabbie conspiracy theory bollocks. Cabbies should be in favour of things like this. It is in the interests of every cab driver out there to minimise private car use. Drivers don't get taxis. Pedestrians do though. More walking and less traffic is good for cabbies. Plus they make a few extra quid out of a slightly longer route! No it didn't. The Fire Brigade were within a few metres of their actual destination (someone locked out of their house), they were blocked by a badly parked car and they do actually have the authority to shunt things like that if required. London Fire Brigade have been quoted several times saying they're in favour of the LTNs and actually their response times have dropped slightly in areas where these have been introduced. Check out their Twitter feed. The article you saw was in the Daily Mail which automatically places it as more sensationalist bollocks. Source? Actual cases where this has happened? I posted about this either earlier on here or on a related thread. Wandsworth messed up big time on a variety of issues, they've utterly screwed themselves over. Catastrophic local government short sighted stupidity. Why? It's costing Government to put these in, TfL aren't making any profit from it. With public transport usage curtailed due to Covid / social distancing, if everyone jumped in their car to make journeys that they previously did by public transport, the roads would be gridlocked, this was known about coming out of lockdown hence the rapid need to encourage alternative transport.

The trials in Coventry have just been paused after complaints of pavement riding! The reality is that the police aren't going to do much about it unless you're mowing down pedestrians or bouncing off cars along Red Post Hill. Echo the comments above about locking it up - it's unlikely to survive long on the open Sheffield Stand bike racks outside ND although if there's one of those Cycle Hangers anywhere nearby, that might be worth a conversation with a resident to ask about sharing it. Could ask TfL / Network Rail if they have any plans to install a bike parking shed or lockers at ND. Or is there anything at London Bridge? At least that'd save carrying it to/from the office. Most stations got rid of lockers (too easy to put bombs in) but LB bike parking (out the station, turn right towards the underground) seems pretty extensive and safe, it's always full of bikes and it's got CCTV. Tuck it away down there with a hefty lock around it?

The full monitoring report for that is here. The plus points outweighed the negatives so yes, it's essentially "semi-permanent" (or more accurately - intention to be made permanent) while further longer-term monitoring is done. That's standard - as it's been shown to be better in the short term, the "trial period" has been extended. If it can show benefits both short term and long term then it'll go from being "semi-permanent" to permanent. http://www.camberwellsociety.org.uk/rw_common/plugins/stacks/armadillo/media/ChampionHillAreaMonitoringStudyFINAL.pdf That's what happens when you leave a scheme in place long enough, you actually get meaningful data out of it. Wandsworth Council might like to take note of that...

It's a retreat for the second reason. There wasn't anywhere near enough time to ascertain effectiveness - it's been said before on here and other threads that it takes about 6 months for everything to settle down and this is known about with most road schemes, alterations etc. The council spent no time on framing the issues, engaging with residents, communicating the changes, highlighting the positives and there was no commitment to supporting complementary innovations like Walking Buses (for kids to get to school) or bike share schemes or permitting pop-up businesses in any of the closed areas. They've squandered money (ironically given to a Tory Council by a Tory Government at the specific behest of Government policy, they've lost whatever goodwill they may have had and they've made it far harder for themselves in trying to change things in future. Honestly, spineless local Government is the major stumbling block in all of these schemes and plans. It's why things get watered down to be beyond useless as consultation after consultation is ambushed by vocal NIMBYs and the councillors immediately fall over themselves to appease rather than explain. And far from being democracy, it's simply a case of shouting loudest. Exactly this @Rockets, the council have just blown any possible chances of progression. The anti-LTN side see it as a victory for shouting loudly and protesting, the pro-LTN side haven't had a chance to see any benefits of the scheme, the council have no modelling data worth a damn because it wasn't left in place long enough and the residents (and all the through traffic) see it as carte blanche to just drive anywhere, anytime. What a failure.

Dulres3 Wrote: > Have you actually read the document? Why don?t you > enlighten us as to the statistical methods used in > the models, and their validity. Don?t worry, I?ll > understand the mathematics, so get as complicated > and technical as you like. > Dogkennelhillbilly was being sarcastic. If that helps at all.

There are countless books, technical journals, websites and videos that describe how traffic is modelled, how flow rates are calculated, how journey types are differentiated, how multi-modal travel is accommodated, the methodology behind it, the data gathering processes... Some of it is incredibly technical - even Wikipedia has some quite in-depth mathematical speak - but there's plenty of introductory information there too. All easily available to search for online. You can read TfL's Modelling Guidelines here, it's only 184 pages. Bit of light bedtime reading... http://content.tfl.gov.uk/traffic-modelling-guidelines.pdf

Abe_froeman Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Thanks Ex Duwlicher, the first TFL document > confirms the proposal came form TFL which the > mayor is in charge of : > > "On 15 May, we also announced our > proposal to increase the congestion > charge from ?11.50 to ?15 daily, extend the > hours of operations to include evenings > (up to 10pm) and weekends, temporarily > close the residents? discount to new > applicants and make other consequential > changes. " > > "Our" being TFL / the Mayor. You're nitpicking in an effort to blame "the Mayor". It's literally in the document that the Government mandated TfL to maximise revenues (like removing fare freeze, removing free travel, reinstating congestion charge). Yes, TfL decided to increase it at the same time but it was essentially an arm-twisting and it certainly wasn't "TfL" acting alone. You can't blame SK for TfL going bankrupt in one sentence and then blame him for increasing CC in the next! Given the pandemic and the crash in fare revenue, TfL would have gone bankrupt under any Mayor in the world. This is splitting hairs in much the same way as certain councillors are now attempting to twist the narrative around LTNs. It comes to something when you have a Tory Council shouting on social media about LTNs being "imposed" on them - by a Tory Government. They are literally bidding for money from their own Government, doing what they're told and then, when it seems unpopular locally, they're backtracking and seeking to blame anyone else - that usually being TfL. None of this is going to work if it splits into violently pro and anti and everyone spends their time nitpicking, shouting down, blaming, finger-pointing and basically trying to govern by populism. Sadly though, that's the way that politics has gone in the last 5 years or so - there's seemingly no desire to work together to address critical issues, it's a case of "them and us", you're either with us or against us. Not a healthy place to be in, it generally doesn't work out as giving "holistic solutions" or well-implemented compromises, it ends up with each side shouting "WE'RE RIGHT, YOU'RE WRONG!" at each other.

Nope, it came direct from DfT. http://content.tfl.gov.uk/board-20200602-agenda-and-papers-supplentary.pdf There's an easier to digest version in various City finance publications eg: https://www.cityam.com/tfl-bailout-conditions-published-as-rescue-row-rolls-on/ and https://www.citymetric.com/transport/whats-actually-uk-government-s-bailout-package-transport-london-5170 TfL had one or two areas of discretion but the current Active Travel plan is also linked to TfL's future funding. Basically, if they DON'T do it, no more funding. Rock, meet Hard Place. Hard Place, this is Rock.