DulwichLondoner

Otta Wrote: > Did you know that government guidelines on best > practice say that children up to the age of 8 > (with special educational needs) shouldn't have > school journeys lasting more than 45 minutes. Over > 8s it's an hour. These guidelines have been around > forever (well decades). > > So I think an hour to work is perfectly acceptable > for a working adult :) Are there also government guidelines on the time employees should leave the office, because otherwise their third-world trains will make them arrive after their child's nursery closing time? Are there also government guidelines on the maximum number of consecutive trains that can be cancelled before one is allowed to complain?

An alternative I want to look into is Earlsfield. The high street sucks compared to Lordship lane, but the Southside shopping centre and Wimbledon are within easy reach. It's only one train stop from Clapham Junction; since multiple lines converge onto Earlsfield, trains to Waterloo (via Clapham Junction and Vauxhall) are very very frequent, and are NOT run by Southern (unlike the Balham to Victoria line). Balham has a tube line and a much nicer high street but is more expensive. Property prices in Earlsfield seem comparable to those in ED now. The big question mark is schools; anecdotally, primary schools in Wandsworth seem to be more oversubscribed than here in ED. Wandsworth council has introduced a much-debated policy whereby siblings only have priority if the family hasn't moved since the first child got in, or if they moved but still live within 800 metres from the school. his was because even families living 200 metres from some schools failed to get a place. By the way, I was in Victoria yesterday and overheard about the gazillionth service to Brighton via Gatwick being cancelled because of 'temporary staff shortage'. A few days ago my wife came home very late because her train from London Bridge was waiting for the driver to arrive! If these were occasional occurrences one wouldn't mind too much, but they're not.

Louisa Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Knew this sort of thread was inevitable on here. > Was always baffled as to why so many people wanted > to come here? When I bought here, similar properties in the Balham - Clapham Common - Clapham North area were about 50% more expensive. It was one of the few areas within our budget, with a reasonable commute to London Bridge, with decent schools, walking distance to parks, and a bit of a high street. Until Christmas 2014, I liked the area; sure, trains weren't every 3 minutes, but the schedule was respected. Now Balham and Clapham are still more expensive, but I get the impression the difference is no longer necessarily 50%, which is why we are wondering if we shouldn't maybe stretch ourselves a bit and see if we can move there. @Bil, I honestly fail to understand how you can consider everything you need within easy reach. Similarly, I'll never understand all those comments about how unique East Dulwich is. I mean, it's nice, but it's hardly the only area in London with parks nearby and a bit of a high street, come on! And I hear the same not just about ED, hence my initial comment about the difficulty of obtaining reliable feedback because too many people can't admit that the area they live isn't the best one ever. Lordship lane has a cinema, food stores, cafes, two opticians, a shoe store, a toy store and baby store. If you ever need to buy anything else, good luck! Last time we went to TkMaxx in Brixton (Brixton, not North London) it took us about an hour door to door waiting for the 37-which-never-comes. A bus journey to Southbank on a Sunday can easily take more than an hour. It would take less from Guildford! Over the last few months my family and I have experienced: a train from Victoria to Denmark Hill changing destination and going to Herne Hill, with NO announcements. Time from Victoria to East Dulwich: over an hour, including the wait for the beloved 37. messing up our nanny's weekend plans; our nanny was supposed to leave our place at 6ish pm ,but our train from London Bridge stopped at South Bermondsey because of some fault on the line. We had to take a Uber home, we arrived late, which meant our nanny was late, too. being very late at 2 important work meetings because, in both cases, my train and the two subsequent ones were cancelled. The meetings were outside rush hour; I had planned to get there 30 minutes early, to account for the lousy public transport, but it wasn't enough. a breakdown of the overground; I made it on time to my meeting only because I had planned to get there 1 hour earlier. Is my experience so unrepresentative? Am I just unlucky? Note that this is without using the train every day, because I tend to commute by motorcycle Monday to Friday. I have been in East Dulwich for about 5 years. I never experienced anything even only remotely comparable between 2011 and the summer of 2014 - late 2014 is when it started to get really bad.

rendelharris Wrote: > Thank you, it's nice to see some people can see > the actual evidence instead of what they want to > see! From Peckham to Vauxhall is 2.8 miles up the > invariably jammed Camberwell New Road: the > segregated cycle lane runs for 0.3 of a mile from > Archbishop Tenison's School to Vauxhall Cross. I should have also mentioned that the bus lane has been removed from Vauxhall bridge to make way for segregated cycle lanes, so it's now the whole Oval to Pimlico route (bar a few metres by Vauxhall bus station) that is now without bus lanes. I suppose I am the only unlucky individual who ever gets stuck in a bus on that route because of this. Or maybe cyclists couldn't care less about bus users. > Two things to note there: one is that motor > vehicles still have two full lanes of traffic > going one way there, so there could be a bus lane > if wanted, How? You mean making the road one-way only? Or making it accessible to buses only? And where would the other vehicles be rerouted? > the other is that I can confidently > say, having worked at ATS for many years, that > that stretch of road was always badly jammed > before they built the cycle lane, in fact if > anything it's less jammed now than it was ten > years ago. But that won't stop some people seeing > a cycle lane and immediately starting to froth > that it must be the cause of the congestion - not, > apparently, the motorised vehicles causing the > congestion! I made a very specific point about buses and the importance of public transport. So the fact that buses no longer have a dedicated bus lane from Oval all the way to Pimlico is utterly irrelevant? It has had no effect on bus journey times? My experience on this is unrepresentative? Why did, then, even TFL admit that bus users would be negatively affected? Why did the transport watchdog say the same, too? https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/davehillblog/2014/jul/16/how-badly-will-boris-johnsons-cycling-vision-penalise-bus-users > Despite the claims by the Daily Mail and certain > rather similar people on here that segregated > cycle lanes are "all over London," less than 2% of > roads in central London have lanes How is this percentage calculated? Does it include tiny residential roads which cannot realistically be used for travelling around London? What is the % of A roads that do have a cycle lane, instead? That number would be way more relevant.

Good to know it's Southeatern and not Southern - thanks! As for the time, however, I have just checked tomorrow's schedule on the national rail website. From Bromley South, there are 7 trains between 7.57 am and 8.27am. They take from 26 to 31 minutes - none takes 16 minutes.

BrandNewGuy Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > But our 'metro' service has been nowhere near as > bad as the longer-distance Southern services. And > if you live in Brighton, there's not much > alternative to the train if you're a commuter. If > you live in East Dulwich and if you were seriously > at risk of losing your job, surely you'd get up > half an hour earlier and jump on a bus. Very true. This is one of the reasons why I'd never consider an area like Bromley, ie farther away and served by Southern only. I can commute by motorcycle from East Dulwich; I suppose I could from Bromley, too, but it would take too long.

Mmm, I see - thanks. Does anyone have any experience about the trains from Balham to Victoria? Do they tend to be so packed that sometimes people cannot get on board, or are they more reasonable? The train from Balham to Victoria + bus may be a decent alternative to the tube. Now I often take the train from Denmark Hill to Victoria + bus.

Jules-and-Boo Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > It is a fact that cycle lanes have slowed traffic. > Buses are taking longer than ever and less and > less people are using them, which means more > people are using cars.... I'm not so sure about more people using cars, at least not in the morning commute into zone 1: between congestion charge and the cost of parking in zone 1, driving to work in zone 1 is prohibitively expensive. I do see lots of minicabs, white vans and delivery vans. I do wonder if London doesn't have too many minicabs, and if something can/should be done to incentivise white vans, delivery vans and trucks to enter the congestion charge zone after, say, 9am. It would be useful to see if TFL publishes statistics on the type and number of vehicles entering the congestion charge zone by time. rendelharris Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Only a minority of the population can ride a > bicycle? Rather undermines your argument to say > something which is demonstrably untrue in your > first sentence. I didn't say a minority of the population is capable of riding a pushbike. What I mean is that only a minority of the population can and/or is willing to ride a bicycle for their daily commute. How about all those: who live too far for cycling to be feasible? who don't want to arrive at the office drenched in sweat and stinking? who don't have shower facilities at the office, or who do have them but are always busy so it takes them forever to become presentable? who need to arrive dressed smart and cannot get changed (eg meeting clients/business partners/etc)? who are not fit enough? who find it too dangerous? I have met more than one self-employed telling me they don't cycle to work because, unlike employees, if they have an accident they would get no pay for the period they are out of work. > Cars are a private form of transport to which > almost 50% of London's population have no access, > and there are nearly three times as many cyclists > as car drivers in central London (180,000 vs > 64,000), so why don't we ban private cars to make > way for buses? As I wrote above, I'd be very surprised if the few cars I see in my daily commute into zone 1 are of people who actually drive their car to work, since that would be incredibly expensive, and rightly so. > Odd that on the one hand you think cycling on the > road is incredibly dangerous but on the other > don't want any segregated cycle lanes. No bikes > at all would seem your ideal city. No, not odd at all, not in the slightest. A city the size of London is not and cannot ever be cycle-friendly like Cambridge or Amsterdam. Road space is a very scarce resource. It should not be allocated to a minority of users, to the detriment of the rest of the population (those whose bus journeys now take forever because bus lanes have bee removed). What is the capacity of a double decker bus? 80-90 people? How much road space would 80 to 90 bikes occupy, compared to that of a bus?

DuncanW Wrote: > > I grew up in Bromley What do you think of Bromley vs ED? Cheaper but there's less of a high street?

d.b Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Seems to be a common complaint but I'm not sure it > holds much water. Well, my main form of commuting became my motorcycle about 2 years ago, when the service to/from London Bridge started to become too unreliable. This was because my commute, which used to be a reliable and bearable 40-45-minute journey door-to-door, started to take from 1 to 1.5 hours. I am not talking about the odd, occasional delay: I am talking about months and months when it would take me from 1 to 1.5 hours because trains were constantly cancelled for no reason. I still rely on the train occasionally, and I do witness substantially more delays and cancellations now than when I moved to ED 5 years ago. It got to the point that I have to take into account that at least 1 or 2 trains might be cancelled: the few times I didn't I ended up being very late! > Southern trains have actually > been running pretty reliably recently, just fine > this morning despite the strike. How about the prolonged period over the summer, when there was basically one train per hour in the morning? > Sure we don't have the tube running every 3 mins > and sometimes we have to stand/squash ourselves > onto trains at busy times, but mostly you should > have known that when you moved here, it hasn't > really changed much, I beg to differ: it has changed substantially. Sure, there can always be the odd delay, the occasional cancellation, the unexpected problem... but they seem to have become way more frequent over the last 2 years or so! > and at the end of the day you > still get where you want to go, even if there's a > 5-10 minute delay which might feel like hours to > an impatient soul... 5-10 minutes? Wow, our experiences have been radically different, then!

Abe_froeman Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Have you ever tried to get on a tube from Clapham > between 8 and 9 in the morning? No, which is why I am asking for thoughts and opinions. I'd like to think it cannot be much worse than trying to take a train from East Dulwich to London Bridge this summer, since for most of the summer there was only one train per hour (7.30am, 8.30am, 9.30am, if I'm not mistaken). Many moons ago, when you didn't need to be a trillionaire to live in zone 1, I lived in Victoria and remember that taking the tube there was an absolute nightmare. The journey from Victoria to Blackfriars was faster and easier by bus. Seriously, what is the northern line from Balham or Clapham like in the morning? How many trains does one typically have to wait? How long can a commute from, say, Balham to London bridge take in the morning, realistically (ie taking into account all the trains which are too packed for you to board)?

geobz Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Clapham is better connected I'd reckon. > > You could try Greenwich etc and see if you can > find anything that has a descent transport link. I have heard good things about Blackheath; the high street is much smaller than ED, and I guess there are fewer schools, but of course you can't have everything. I'd like Clapham or Balham a lot; they are still more expensive than ED, but I get the impression the difference is smaller than it was when we bought in ED. The Balham to Victoria line is Southern Rail (aargh!) but there's the Northern line, and Crossrail 2 will probably get there eventually. I don't know much about Tooting. I know people who moved to Bromley, but Bromley South is served by Southern Rail, so that's a big no-no!

What is idiotic is giving priority to a private form of transport, which can only be used by a minority of the population, over public transport (like busses), which can be used by everyone. All the more so because cycle lanes are used much less in the winter, when it rains, and outside of the 8-9am / 5-6.30pm commuting times: outside of those times, I see semi-empty cycle lanes, and incredibly congested public roads. Bus lanes have been removed all over London to make way for these cycle lanes; getting by bus to Vauxhall now takes forever thanks to this enlightened decision, because busses no longer have their own lane for a significant part of the journey. I do not cycle because I consider pushbikes more dangerous than motorcycles in a city like London: cyclists wear no protective gear (bicycle helmets are like pasta drainers, covering only a tiny portion of the head, and, of course, wearing any kind of impact protection the way motorcyclists do would make the ride very unconformable), are harder to spot, are basically silent (a loud motorcycle is noticed more easily by other motorists), go slower than the rest of the traffic, which has an incentive in overtaking them (which is dangerous), etc etc. Most accidents happen in congested urban areas, so it's not true that protection is only needed by motorcyclists doing 160 mph on a track day (if anything, a track is safer than central London). What else? In many years in London I have never seen a single cyclist with mirrors installed; oh, and am I allowed to mention that most cyclists seem to show no awareness of the most basic road safety rules, not to mention common sense? Ever wondered why the stickers on trucks say "cyclists stay back" rather than "motorcyclists stay back"? Anyway, these are all moot points because the question was not on the merit of cycling!

Most friends and acquaintances who had their bikes stolen had invested little to nothing in security. Guys, get a proper chain and try to secure it to some fixed object: a lamp post, if possible, the gate of your driveway, an anchor, etc. Anything can be cut. If you google it, you'll find a video, dating a few months back, of two gentlemen on a scooter using a portable angle grinder to cut the chain of a Ducati in Soho, in broad daylight. Anything can be cut, but some chains are harder than others. Ignore what you can get from hardware stores and bike dealers, and go for Almaxx or Pragmasis chains; get at least a 16mm chain: it can be cut with a grinder, like anything, but not with bolt croppers. Get a GPS tracker, but watch out for battery drain if your battery is small and you leave the bike unused for a while. Modern bikes with 12Ah batteries can stay parked unused for more than 2 weeks, without BikeTrac (the most used GPS tracker AFAIK) killing the bike's battery. Alarms are useless - they simply drain the battery; so are alarmed chains and locks: muffling the sound is all too easy. The only thing which might make sense is the ulock with an alarmed remote, so that if someone tampers with it the remote wakes YOU up - counting on strangers or neighbours intervening won't help. Of course this only works if you keep your remote a few metres from the bike. I don't remember the name of the product, but google is your friend.

Is any one else thinking of fleeing East Dulwich because they're fed up with poor transport links? Sometimes I get the impression we live in zone 20, not in zone 2! Have you considered any alternatives? Is there any particular area you'd recommend? It is hard to get any kind of reliable advice, because it seems that most people are dedicated to convincing themselves and others that wherever they bought is the best location, and that they don't live more centrally because Nowheresville is nicer, not because it's cheaper. I have heard phrases like "we moved to Peckham because it's cooler than South Ken" or "we used to live in Notting Hill but don't miss it now that we're in Catford" or "it only takes 10 minutes from Bromley to Victoria" (no, it does not, unless you fly by helicopter!). Honestly, it's ridiculous! When we bought our current property in East Dulwich, about 5 years ago (after living in the area for a few years), we knew public transport wasn't great, but that was the reason why East Dulwich was so much cheaper than many other zone 2 areas south of the river. Of course we knew there was no tube, but decent train links to London Bridge, and (via Denmark Hill/Peckham Rye) to the overground, Victoria and the City made us think the area provided good value for money. In fact, commuting to London Bridge or Canary Wharf was faster from here than from, say, posh High Street Kensington. Over the last few years, the train service has become the shambles we all know about, roads have become way more congested (possibly because of roadworks and because of the idiotic segregated cycle lanes, which have reduced road space for everyone, including buses), but it seems that property prices have risen more in East Dulwich than in other, better connected SE areas, e.g. Clapham or Balham. Any thoughts?