Mr Simms Olde Sweet Shoppe.... arriving soon on Lordship Lane...
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Ok here goes..... Since day 1 of the LTNs the emergency services have been very clear - blocked roads increase response times. Southwark councillors were more than aware of this from the beginning of the LTN debacle during Covid because, when the council were going LTN mad and were trying to carpet bomb them everywhere they had suggested one for Peckham Rye and had initiated a consultation. As usual they took glowing endorsements of their proposal to close parts of Peckham Rye from the cycle lobby but got negative feedback from TFL and the emergency services due to the disruption their physical closure barriers were going to have - the emergency services made their preference clear that they do not like physical barriers. Needless to say Southwark ignored that emergency service input and pushed ahead with their plans only to cancel them when the realised LTNs were turning residents against them. Now the video below (from March 2021) is interesting from a couple of perspectives: 1) Clearly LAS were making their feelings on permanent closures very clear to Southwark - please scroll to 1 hour 4 minutes to hear from them - 51 of the 170 delays caused by LTNs in London were in Southwark - yet it took over a year for emergency vehicles to be given access and, if I remember correctly FOIs showed that LAS had been writing to Dale Foden and the council alerting them to the delays. So why the delay and why is there a constant narrative from local lobby groups that the junction has to be closed to ALL traffic (including emergency vehicles) and why the new designs return to a partial full closure of the junction - most rational and pragmatic people can surely see that the compromise installed in 2022 to allow emergency vehicle access was the most sensible approach. The council put the desires of local lobby groups ahead of the emergency services...which is madness...and then that leads us to point 2).... 2) Notice the presence of Jeremy Leach on the call - not a councillor but the Co-Optee of the council's environmental scrutiny committee and he is constantly pushing the councillors to do more to deal with traffic issues and reduce traffic. I suspect he is deemed one of the "expert" voices the council was turning to for guidance at this period. But, much like the activist researchers the council turned to Jeremy is very much an "activist expert" and was chair of the London Living Streets, co-founder of Action Vision Zero and part of Southwark Cyclists - so you can see why if the council was taking guidance and direction from him how they may have not been making decisions in the public interest. Clearly someone has convinced the council that the junction needs to be closed to all vehicles as there cannot be any other explanation for why they held out for so long (that created increased response times) - remember they are wasting another £1.5m to close one arm of the roads permanently again - honestly if someone wants to enlighten me to a part of this story I am missing then feel free but to me it looks like something very odd has been going on at the DV junction and the council is ignoring the majority and listening to the few... https://lrscconference.org.uk/index.php/agenda-speakers/jeremy-leach-co-founder-action-vision-zero/ No it was 64% of the total who lived in the consultation area - 57% when the council looked at all the respondents to the consultation. 3,162 (64%) wanted it returned to its original state 823 (17%) wanted it retained as was 422 (8%) wanted a different measure installed 564 (11%) wanted the measure, but modify/ enhance it with other features So back then the 11% got their wish! In every consultation in relation to the DV junction there has been overwhelming rejection of the council's plans by local residents - yet they carry-on wasting our money on it regardless - just who are they trying to placate? -
Calton was particularly hideous. An ambulance wouldn’t have got anywhere fast. -
By first mate · Posted
Not clear what point you are trying to make here Earl? A majority of those consulted wanted measures returned to their original state. Majority is the salient point. Again, if consultations are pretty irrelevent, as you seem to suggest, then why do oragnisations like Southwark Cyclists repeatedly prompt their members, whether local to the consultation area or not, to respond to consultations on CPZ or LTNs. What a waste of everyone's time if of no import in terms of local policy-making. -
Funny how some people don’t remember how awful it used to be
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