exdulwicher

I half agree with you - I don't think for a moment it was all about LTNs at all, there'll have been a while host of issues in there (very probably *including* LTNs). My point is more that OD and the like we're spinning it as very much all about the LTNs until the results were announced. As to why there was nothing about it in the manifesto - they were already in place and Labour had no plans to remove them. What more is there to say in a manifesto? It should be all about the things you're promising if elected. What can't be denied though is that standing solely on a platform of removing the LTNs is not a vote winner. The two Tories in Dulwich Village ward got a fraction over 1000 votes each. Maybe some of One Dulwich's claimed "over 2000 supporters" don't live in Dulwich/Southwark and weren't able to vote? Surely not, that'd be hypocritical...

And yet for months before the council elections, it was being spun by anti-LTN folk as exactly that. The final word on all things LTN, the big local issue, we won't stand for these undemocratic impositions on our freedom, vote to tell the Labour Communists the truth, the silent majority will be heard, the majority want LTNs ripped out, this will be a referendum on the hated LTNs. And then 5 minutes after the election results, it was suddenly nothing to do with LTNs. There's 40 pages of it if you look back at the earlier LTN threads.

Speed limits don't apply to bicycles.

OK but we're going back to my previous question - what exactly are you looking to "manage"? Cycling on pavements - essentially decriminalised, it's allowed anyway in some places (shared space which some people on here seem very keen on when they want it to apply to cars) and kids are allowed to do it anyway so ... 🤷🏻‍♂️ The usual argument is if you don't want cyclists to use pavements, build proper cycle lanes. But then you kick off about loss of parking and loss of road space... Pedestrians/blind/elderly are not being scattered to the winds, knocked flying etc, mostly because cyclists, no matter how selfish and ignorant they are, generally look out for #1 anyway and they know that if they hit anyone or anything, they'll likely get injured too. Running red lights - depends on the scenario but plenty of places allow turns on red or to use a red light as a Stop sign and "proceed if safe". As a general rule once you have pedestrians and cyclists, you don't really need red lights since they'll just self-manage. For example: https://youtu.be/RTLDfBS9xH8 And again, as a general rule it causes no inconvenience to anyone - if anything it's quite helpful for bikes to bugger off out the way at junctions which is why there are advanced stop lights at some - like GreendaleEDG/Townley for example which essentially legitimises RLJ by creating a bike phase. Green for bike, red for vehicles. Now imagine that same junction without the advance green and imagine cyclists creating their own 5second head start. Same principle. Speeding - speed limits don't apply to bikes, and they not going faster than the cars and buses so largely irrelevant. Riding without lights at night - already illegal, can already be prosecuted. Riding without helmet - not illegal, mind your own business. Riding 2 abreast - not illegal, no different to a vehicle in front. I'm not saying all cyclists are saints because they're not. But in terms of priorities you've got drivers - killing 1700 people per year nationally; and cyclists - killing 1 person per year. TfL has all sorts of collision and fatality statistics on London and overwhelmingly, it's pedestrians and cyclists being killed/injured by drivers. So we're back to the original question - what "bad cycling" are you seeking to police?

https://twitter.com/ColdWarCliff/status/1688462280302718976?t=DTItHwERTuI3Y8exqdGB1Q&s=19 Yes, I can see how effectively the lovely trustworthy licenced/taxed/insured drivers can self-police... One weekend on London roads (and that's nowhere close to all of it). Can you advise (as a good citizen policing drivers yourself) how one should attempt to address this behaviour? Maybe next time I'm riding to the shops, I'll abandon my journey and chase down every other road user I see breaking whatever rules I decide on and berate them. Wonder how that'd go...? 🤔 Somehow you're not calling these drivers out for their behaviour and the cost to the taxpayer in police, ambulance, NHS resources being occupied?! Obviously an oversight while you work on the true danger out there, some bloke on a Lime bike scooting harmlessly across a few yards of pavement.

Why are cyclists responsible for "policing" anything?! It's not a "community" or a "collective" or anything like that - when I am on a bike I have zero responsibility for any other cyclist behaviour. I'm not the police, I'm not i charge and frankly I dont care. In the same way that when I'm driving, I am not responsible for the illegal behaviour of any other driver. When I'm walking, I don't berate other pedestrians for not crossing at the zebra crossing. People who cycle are connected only by the fact that they sometimes use the same mode of transport so stop with the collective responsibility and blaming. Examples of bad driving aren't considered to reflect badly on everyone who drives a car – and rightly so. Similarly, it would be ridiculous to claim that everyone using public transport is a fare-dodger, simply because some people use public transport without paying. It is also a fallacy to believe that prejudiced views would disappear if the subjects of prejudice were to behave in a certain ‘approved’ way. It also blows a hole in the claim on the LTN thread that we should simply have "shared space for all" and "behave nicely". One person's idea of behaving nicely is someone else's idea of selfish idiocy.

No no no Chicken! We all know that the local election results were nothing to do with LTNs, it said so on here! That's in spite of 40 pages of forum thread in advance of the council elections about how the socialist dictators in Tooley Street would be sent running for the hills once the silent majority rose up and voted against the undemocratic LTNs and how the council elections would be a referendum on all things LTN, the final voice, the nail in the coffin for the likes of Cllr Rose. They and their ridiculous ideas would be expelled from Dulwich forever. And then the results came in and oh... erm... quick, spin it as anti-Tory votes, people still hate LTNs and want them ripped out but they voted Labour because of Partygate and Boris and Brexit and some other things. So yeah, nothing to do with LTNs at all, those elections. Honest. 😉

The only real doubts exist in the minds of anti-LTN folk for whom no data will ever be good enough. No matter what is produced, it'll be too vague, too precise, biased, flawed, manipulated, taken at the wrong time, the wrong place, the wrong time AND place, not taken for long enough or taken over too long a period. I'd fully expect a Cllr to look into the data - if people are asking for clarification on council business, be that bin collections, library opening hours, leisure centre fees and facilities, parks upkeep etc, I'd fully expect the Cllr to say "thank you for raising this important point, I'll look into it". That's his job. It does not mean he's going to come back and say "wow, you know what, as it turns out it's all lies and Southwark (who remember are too incompetent to run a bath never mind a borough) are actually running a vast data manipulation scam on the side, paid for by the famously wealthy Militant Cycling Lobby, well done on spotting that one!"

They're not - they're saying anything they think can get them some positive press, trying to spin the "we only just held onto Uxbridge" win as something something ULEZ, anti-green policies, we must be more pro-motorist... LTNs have been extensively looked into for decades, the research is always the same - broadly speaking they work well (better if you use them in conjunction with other measures such as CPZ, bus priority, neighbouring LTNs etc). You can have as many independent reviews as you like and all that'll happen is it'll show the same - at which point the small minority of very vocal people actively opposed to them will claim they're not independent and that the data is wrong. And a lot of it is not even in the hands of Government to dictate anyway. I think the oil, gas and auto industry donors must have been on the phone to Rishi recently as he seems to be taking ever more private jet and helicopter flights to appear for a photo op somewhere saying how he's going to max out the oil and gas reserves, end the "war on the motorist" and other vague soundbites that all lead to more pollution and more emissions. Quick, burn what's left of the planet while the donations keep coming!

Firstly, beyond a bit of inconvenience and irritation, what issues actually ARE there? Pedestrians are not being scattered to the winds, mobility scooters are not being overturned and, while I absolutely agree that some cyclists jump red lights, they're not barrelling through at 20mph forcing emergency stops all around them. And secondly, in answer to your question - more and better infrastructure, defined and segregated. The (very few) issues that arise in Amsterdam as per the Bloomberg article are usually as a result of people being outside "their" zone. Ride a bike along a car-priority road (and there are plenty of those) you'll get arrested (after being thoroughly hooted at for ages. Walk in a cycle lane, you'll get dinged at and told to walk on the pavement. The issues come solely from areas that haven't fully benefitted from retrofitting proper infrastructure. Sometimes from creating a shared space that, initially, was absolutely fine with lower numbers but now doesn't work as well and needs some re-design. In the UK, because so many "zones" are very ill-defined, we end up with the pavement issue where cyclists are allowed on some sections (thanks councils for painting that white line there!) and not on other sections but it's not clear, it's not enforced and neither pedestrians nor cyclists are clear on the issue. And that's before you look at the other pavement clutter like parked cars, street furniture, bins, uneven pavements and advertising boards.

1) The Highway Code already says that and it's already enforceable. 2) A PSPO has to relate to a specific area. You can't just apply it to "all pavements in Southwark". They're also something of a last resort. https://asbhelp.co.uk/home-practitioners/public-spaces-protection-order/

Have you missed or misinterpreted everything I've said?! For a Council Officer to enforce no cycling, you need a PSPO: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_spaces_protection_order#:~:text=Public%20spaces%20protection%20orders%20 It needs to be specific so it has to specify the act you're attempting to control (dogs not on leads, cycling, etc) and the area in which it applies. You can't just say "pavements". If there's not a PSPO in place, the only legal enforcement is through police officers and (to a certain extent) police community support officers. Not traffic wardens, parking enforcement officers, street cleaners etc. Guidance - well it depends how much you're looking for it. That applies to everything, to a certain extent you're going to have to search for it. Guidance on using the Tube in London - well if you've never used it before, you're going to need some sort of help and yes it'll be "out there" in as much as it's a public website but anyone who doesn't use the Tube would have no reason to look for it. As it happens, the Lime bikes and Santander apps both require you to go through a host of rules before they'll let you hire a bike but again, the kids jacking them are not using the app, not using the bikes legally and don't care anyway. It would be handy if cars made the driver run through a Highway Code refresher every time they started the engine too.... Maybe some geofenced speed limits like you get on hire bikes and scooters! Penalties apply for both cycling and driving if you're caught. Usually they're considerably more draconian for cycling! (believe it or not). For example : https://road.cc/content/news/cyclist-fined-ps1000-riding-bike-town-centre-302721

You have to create Public Space Protection Order for the council to enforce anything. They're used occasionally in defined spaces like a pedestrianised high street but they can't just blanket apply to "pavements". There's plenty of guidance out there from Sustrans, British Cycling, Cycling UK, London Cycling Campaign etc about rules of the road but the people who need reminding of it are the ones who don't care anyway. Much like there is plenty of guidance around not speeding, parking on pavements, blocking junctions, using mobile phones while driving etc and still people do it. Which brings us right back to the earlier point. Asking nicely doesn't work.

Yep but as discussed earlier, those things are already illegal no matter where they are. But society seems to want a Big Mac or a vindaloo delivered to their door in 15 mins and as a result all the gig economy workers are effectively being incentivised to ride "creatively" in order to fulfil this.

Very much agree with this but part of the issue is that for years councils have positively encouraged pavement cycling by creating "shared spaces" (in practice, usually a woeful mix of painted lines and badly drawn bike symbols) along pavements in order to "cater for active travel". It's a practice that is now thankfully recognised as being way below standard but it's created a total mish mash of "well it's OK to cycle along this bit but we've decided you can't ride along that identical bit so we've put a small blue "cyclists dismount" sign up". What they were there for was mostly to get cyclists out of the way of drivers and it's not too bad when there's very few cyclists. As soon as it reaches a critical mass, it becomes inconvenient for everyone. Cyclists dodging pedestrians, pedestrians dodging cyclists, no-one making any progress. Cyclists get back on the roads, drivers get upset because they're not using the "cycle lane" and the council is under fire for wasting taxpayers money on such useless "infrastructure". Plus as mentioned earlier, cycling on pavements is essentially decriminalised anyway - it's been touched on in this thread but the actual risk is very very small. Surprisingly cyclists don't actually want to hit pedestrians or lampposts or dogs because they'll fall off and hurt themselves. Self preservation usually minimises the real stupid stuff! I can't find it at the moment but there was an incident a few years ago where a cyclist hit a pedestrian (no idea who's fault it was, can't remember the details) but the cyclist died and the pedestrian was basically uninjured. So it goes both ways.

There have been decades of ad-hoc "share with care" and "respect others" and "pass wide" campaigns. Be Safe, Be Seen rolls around every October/November time and all of them have the same "we must all be equal" trend to them. None of them have ever worked. Not one has ever lead to a statistically significant downward trend in incidents (deaths on the road have gone down, primarily because cars are safer for the drivers now with airbags, crumple zones etc so in single vehicle collisions, the driver usually escapes with nothing more than bruises whereas in the 70's/80's, they'd have an engine block embedded in them). They are however more dangerous to pedestrians and cyclists. But people (and note I'm saying PEOPLE, not "drivers" or "cyclists" or "pedestrians") cannot be trusted to behave that way. There will always be pedestrians "just nipping across the road" or walking all over the place, faces buried in their phones. There will always be cyclists jumping lights, there will always be drivers using phones, jumping lights, speeding. You need to design that out. Put in proper infrastructure and cyclist won't ride on pavements, they'll use the proper cycle path. Put in average speed cameras and drivers won't speed. It needs enforcement and design to manage it because saying "do you mind awfully not doing that?" never works. Try that to a parent parked half on the pavement, half on double yellows outside JAGS one morning, see where "asking nicely" gets you. If you don't want that to happen it needs a School Street or bollards or police patrols actually booking the drivers. Have proper enforcement on the roads, catching RLJing cyclists and motorists, towing badly parked cars, removing discarded hire bikes etc and then you'll get behaviour change. Asking nicely doesn't do it.

Taxation is a greater good type arrangement. If everyone chips in a bit according to their means then there's a pot of money to benefit everyone with shared services. But then there are aspects of life which don't have any sort of greater good and indeed inflict significant harm on society. Smoking being a classic one where it's reasonable for the smoker to bear some of the additional costs that they are inflicting onto society as well as have some restrictions put on where they can "enjoy" their habit to protect others. Same with driving/parking - no-one (other than the owner) benefits from their private property being left on public space or given unrestricted access due to the significant negative externalities such as noise, pollution, road danger etc imposed on everyone whether they drive or not so it seems appropriate to charge extra for that and/or put some restrictions on it, no? The garden waste one is an interesting middle ground - why should everyone pay towards a service that only some use when there is no greater good aspect to it? There's no societal benefit to charging everyone for it, it's solely personal. So yes, someone with a garden should pay extra for the service that they (and they alone) benefit from.

Well since road upkeep is paid for by the council, the bulk of it comes from council tax. And if you're going down the wrong-in-so-many-ways "they don't pay road tax" argument, I assume you'll also be having a go at emergency services vehicles, agricultural vehicles, most electric vehicles, mobility scooters, historic vehicles and vehicles that are used by organisations providing transport for disabled people which are all exempt from VED.

https://www.como.org.uk/shared-cars/overview-and-benefits Scroll down, it's all there and there's access to all the reports from the last few years plus further links to the existing operators.

They sort of are and the Superloop is coming to outer London soon but the problem in London is that you can't fit any more onto the roads. That's part of the reason they removed some services into central London or through London and out the other side (requiring a change midway although the Hopper fare means there's no additional charge), it's because the sheer number of buses going into places like Oxford Street, Strand, Regent Street etc was causing congestion in and of itself. And any ideas about putting in 24/7 bus lanes gets met with howls of outrage and "what about the parking?" / "what about the elderly?", the result being there's a patchwork of confusing lanes that are sometimes in operation and sometimes not - and the times when they're needed for fast bus travel is also the times when everyone wants to park in them to access the shops. All of this - the "penalising car owners", LTNs, CPZ, bus lanes, ULEZ etc has to work together. None of them, on their own, are the answer. They are all an answer, but none of them work to anything like their full potential unless backed up with complementary measures. If you just have ULEZ then everyone (OK *most people*) simply swap to a compliant vehicle and carry on driving, which solves nothing. If you have free/unrestricted parking, people will carry on driving cos it's cheap and convenient. The challenge is that all of this is being introduced in a relatively short timeframe as our glorious leaders have very gradually come to the realisation that you can't just keep filling the roads with cars - if they'd actually have started this process 20+ years ago the initial pain of it now wouldn't be nearly as bad.

On average, each car club vehicle in the UK replaced 22 private cars. Shared mobility (be that bikes, scooters or cars) is absolutely the way forward and if you can use a car on a pay-per-use basis, it frees people from the sunk costs of owning a car like insurance, depreciation etc and makes people think much more about their journeys. You need something like CPZ and/or ULEZ to start that transition as well otherwise, even if there's an LTN in place, people will often tend to hang onto their cars "just in case" - even if they're using it less. And CPZ also allows the council to create more specific parking bays for car club parking - one of the major problems with them at the moment is the limited number of parking spots.

It's not trolling at all, it goes back to the central point of OD "being fully in favour of reducing car use" while suggesting stuff that is: a) not in Southwark council's power or responsibility b) not practical c) might be workable given sufficient time/funding which isn't (yet) available - Electric buses - yes they're coming but every local authority wants them, there's a limited supply of them and there is not the funding to buy them all. It's a process which will be played out over the next 5+ years to replace the existing fleet. - ULEZ - excellent, good to see support for it but that is PART of the bigger picture. Replacing every car on the road currently with an electric vehicle solves "pollution at tailpipe" issues; it does not solve parking, congestion, road danger, tyre and brake particulates... - banning all petrol engine cars in London is not practical and would requires billions in scrappage scheme - it's quicker, cheaper and easier to just restrict journeys of ALL cars. - BBQs/wood burners - nothing to do with Southwark Council, TfL or transport, probably mostly unworkable and a classic bit of whataboutery - look at the problem OVER THERE ->>>

Nope! It was one of several conditions and caveats lumped onto TfL in various rounds of funding from central Government including such unworkable rubbish as "looking again at driverless options for the Tube". Government stipulated that the ULEZ expansion (which by the way was already on the cards and going to happen anyway) should be brought forward. https://www.transportxtra.com/publications/local-transport-today/news/71906/tfl-to-get-1-2bn-from-government-in-long-term-settlement/ Same with LTNs - it's a Government policy, funded by central Government and then they sit back and let the (mostly Labour) councils deal with the fallout because it suits their political narrative. They know full well that it'll meet resistance and opposition so it's made out to be the fault of the council (or TfL, either works from a political point of view). Transport should be a cross-party cooperation and it isn't at all, it's a political football (much like the NHS) where Government can (for example) de-fund the buses then blame the councils for failing to provide a service or cut rail reform funding then blame Network Rail and the Train Operating Companies. It's interesting that the councils opposed to ULEZ expansion who have brought the current judicial review (Bexley, Bromley, Harrow, Hillingdon and Surrey) are all Conservative controlled councils and they all have appalling records on active travel and EV charging installation in particular, they're the ones that ripped out all their LTNs within weeks of them being put in - basically they're the ones who have done nothing to promote or enable less polluting methods of transport and now they're kicking off going "it'll hurt the poor who depend on cars..." Well yes, you're the councils that have done nothing to enable any other mode of transport. And also, you're arguing against a direct instruction from Conservative central Government. And now you're throwing hundreds of thousands of pounds at a judicial review which will come back and say "probably not perfect but yes, it can happen" - much like all the anti-LTN judicial reviews that people got conned into donating for by the various One... groups that brought the reviews. CPZ isn't quite the same but it's in TfL's London-wide Transport Plan, it's in all the borough transport plans and occasionally it'll get its own "chapter" like Lambeth's flagship Kerbside Strategy which ties into the overall transport plan. The rollout is slightly more dependent on the councils as it'll have to fit in with stuff like roadworks, utilities and so on. Also CPZ works best alongside active travel and bus priority schemes, they're very much complementary.

I've had a decent amount of credit in the past for picking up badly parked bikes and riding them a short distance to a parking bay or safe parking area. You get a £1 credit for doing that or a free ride (depending on whether you're using a Ride Pass or not).

And since that is 10+ years away at best, your solution is simply to do nothing until then? This is all just textbook "retain the status quo", kick the can down the road, make it someone else's problem while confidently claiming to support measures to reduce car use knowing that nothing you suggest is going to happen in a meaningful timeframe. It's the One... playbook (derived directly from climate change denial) of wanting a perfect solution that disadvantages no-one, is completely equitable to all, receives 100% approval, and requires that no-one really changes anything because it'll all be dealt with for us. Policy perfectionism. Since you can never have a perfect policy, it's all just pie in the sky. If road pricing were to come onto the political agenda tomorrow, there'd be some further reason why that is not the answer. We've seen it with ULEZ expansion - oh it's sort of the right thing to do but not now because we're in a cost-of-living crisis / oh we support the principle but what about the poor/elderly/disabled/shift workers/those that can't afford a new car/those that rely on their older car...