Dogkennelhillbilly

Bit of an odd post from West Dulwich Action Group here (hoping the link works): https://x.com/WDulwichAction/status/1838117258104545427 It claims to show a massive year on year increase in the volume of traffic along Rosendale Rd. It actually seems to show percentage splits of speeds of an unspecified volume of traffic along an unspecified road on an unspecified date. It's not terribly compelling...

By the way, I was poking around on the Dulwich Society website and one of their newsletters seemed to suggest it was only in about 2000 or 2001 before access to Dulwich Park was via the Old College Gates only. Didn't think to keep the link, sorry.

That's nonsense. It's because there's more profit margin in big cars. Increasing weight, height and volume increases, not reduces, the risk to other road users (including people in other cars). https://www.motoringresearch.com/car-news/end-sales-growth-suvs/ https://michaelschneider.medium.com/the-suv-arms-race-46cf2aae809b

No, this is nonsense. The planning document linked above details the ludicrous objections of local yokels at the time and their petitions - like claiming the old, old petrol station was designed by the same architect as St Barny's (it wasn't) and should be evaluated as part of the same site (it shouldn't), or loss of free parking to Gilkes Crescent car owners, or objections to construction...because there would be construction noise while the houses were under construction ffs! What has emerged is a perfectly nice little block of terraced houses - and 20 (?) years after the petrol station closed and 10 years after planning permission was issued, it's now the subject of carping about it having too many off-street parking spots and the subject of weird conspiracy theories.

The council can't just come along and unilaterally change a planning permission once it's been issued. It was never open to Southwark to tell the developer out of the blue to remove or add parking spaces. And just to be clear: you are now complaining that a private developer built too many houses that are too small and have too many off-street parking spaces? You wanted the council (which you believe is under the control of a Marxist-socialist-cyclist cabal) to intervene more and force this company to build bigger houses and fewer parking spaces on its own land? Is that what you're genuinely upset about now?

If this is your idea of a rabbit hutch, perhaps your butler can take me on a tour of your stately home one weekend: https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/147845681#/?channel=RES_NEW

No, a council can't just come along and unilaterally change a planning permission once it's been issued. Consent was issued in 2015. Yes, a pipsqueak development of a dozen bloody houses that took a decade to get done. We need 80,000 new homes in London alone every year ffs! https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cgl7kpn4ygvo.amp Meanwhile we've got the usual suspects moaning about knocking down dogshit failing big box retail units and car parks and replacing them with thousands of homes (a third of them affordable) as part of mixed used developments at no cost to the taxpayer.

The rail connection is quite quick BUT Surrey Quays is not mobility accessible. It's an old station with a steep flight of stairs IIRC. I've always gone one stop further to the redeveloped (or as some would have it "socially cleansed and gentrified") Canada Water station which has a lift, and then come back. The last time I went to the Surrey Quays shops half of the units looked empty and two scrotes with an angle grinder were stealing a bike from the bike rack.

Ahh well that's the source of your confusion, isn't it, guv. It wasnt anywhere close to simultaneous. As any local would know, this pipsqueak development of a handful of houses has taken more than a decade (and possibly closer to two - when did the petrol station close?). Planning permission was going as early as 2014 - years before COVID or LTN were terms that any of us knew, and years before the Dulwich Village/Village ward flipped from Tory to Labour. Much of that delay was caused by locals moaning about the impact on their parking (but who also didn't want a CPZ to ensure that locals got a certain volume of parking). No wonder we have a housing crisis in this country. There is plenty of gory detail in here - the parking allowances were capped by the London Plan in place at the time. (In fact, the number of parking places seems to have been reduced since then). https://moderngov.southwark.gov.uk/documents/s55358/Report%20The%20Workshop%20Site%20land%20bounded%20by%20Gilkes%20Place%20Gilkes%20Crescent%20and%20Calton%20Avenue%20to%20the%20re.pdf https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Village_(Southwark_ward) Odd to see such enthusiasm for government interferece in the property rights of private developers on the part of someone with such concerns about Marxist conspiracies!

No-one has ever called the Pizza Hut or the car park or the bowling alley or the cinema "home".

Does London need more housing or more pizza shops?

How many people currently live in the pizza chain, bowling alley, cinema and car park? This is classic NIMBYBANOTE (not in my back yard but also not over there either) posting. "Oh no, don't let investors knock down the sad postindustrial sheds and replace them with housing and shops and dining and entertainment! Won't someone think of the Pizza Hut???"

If you're saying that development land should be nationalised, private parking on new developments banned, and only social housing should be built until median rent is beneath 25% of household median income in London, then for once we are completely agreed.

I would not describe the area as very gentrified, esp not the bit that was built 30 years ago. It's human scale, low rise flats and terraces mixed on cul de sacs for the most part, but it's not knee deep in Gail's and, candle shops and luxury butchers. The cluster of new blocks of flats near the new Decathlon and Canada Water tube is shinier- but tbh that's just what modern blocks of flats look like these days. Everything gets promoted by estate agents as luxury. More housing is good, whatever the type - dumping supply on the market always helps. I am sure there will be adequate provision for pizza restaurants and entertainment in the new mixed use development. And don't forget everyone's favourite Dulwich Library also has a ~free~ film club for adults: https://www.southwark.gov.uk/libraries/adults/library-activities-for-adults

"It seems TfL may need drivers to offend and generate income instead of complying with road rules." Wow, this is so unbelievably cynical of TfL. Drivers should totally band together and stick it up Khan's arse by not committing traffic offences on red routes. That'll show him!

Wake up, babe, a new LTN conspiracy theory just dropped

Oh no - that was a heritage Pizza Hut, wasn't it? Luckily there are 4 other pizza places within half a mile.

It's a really good concept. The one at Crystal Palace library has been around for a while so good to see Canada Water get in on the action too!

On the upside, the P13 bus is ready to whisk you directly to the Odeon in Streatham. And failing that there's the mighty Peckhamplex, the Ritzy, the East Dulwich or West Norwood Picturehouses, the one up on Crystal Palace, and even Whirled Cinema. We're doing okay for cinemas!

It's been so long under construction I'm surprised each house didn't come specced with a stable.

Or, you know, the original hysterical assumption that the workers are wasteful idiots who know nothing about their job was wrong.

The 80s or early 90s, I thought...?

These pipes fracture so frequently on Lordship Lane, and the South Circular, and East Dulwich Grove, because of the relentless volume and increasing weight of the vehicles driving over them.

Bit unambitious there, bud. If you look at a satellite map, if you demolished just one of the houses directly to the south of Gail's on Dulwich Village, you could get an access road into Dulwich Park. Then you'd just need to upgrade the surfacing to get a direct link to the Queen Margaret Gate and the South Circular. 👍👍👍

Fine by me. 🤷‍♂️ Online (which is to say here and Mr OneDulwich's blog) there is a small number of monomaniacs raging about closure of a side road 4 years ago, spreading increasingly weird conspiracy theories about Marxist-cyclist takeovers, and claiming to speak on behalf of a furious, ignored majority. None of that is reflected in the real world. The Tories were basically a single issue party against LTNs at the last local elections and they got pumped. The Tory Mayoral candidate for London pinned her whole campaign on being anti-ULEZ, anti-LTN and anti-woke, and she got pumped too. There is no sign in the real world that this supposed majority of people really upset about a road being closed exists. https://m.facebook.com/groups/ImperialMeas/