LTN Discussion

[mr.chicken]

16 hours ago, Bic Basher said:

I cycle and still use public transport and my perception hasn't changed. 

I do and mine has.

16 hours ago, Bic Basher said:

If you really want to reduce car use, stop being ideological and think of practical solutions that actually benefit everyone instead of punitive punishments which divide the community.   A community that works together for the benefit of all works better than one who puts one side against the other which is what we have currently.

Such as?

One thing I've noticed about the LTN naysayers is a massive lack of ideas that are (a) concrete and (b) practical. Just lots of hot air about how someone (not me) should think of a better idea. In reality, LTNs have reduced traffic both within and on the boundary roads as compared to control areas. There now exist safe routes for cycling to a variety of different locations, making those areas more accessible than before.

Anything, anything at all which makes cars even slightly less convenient will always "pit one side of the community against the other". Feel free to offer a suggestion though, I'm sure I have not thought of everything.

[Angelina]

I think LTNs are a good thing - however there also needs to be a drive to reduce the number of car journeys - in part people not jumping in the car by default, and also by improved train services and other public transport. Unnecessary car journeys being the most obvious and quickest impact.

If there are areas that are affected by infrequent buses, have you written to TfL and said that?

If there are more buses introduced, there should be a related reduction in cars.

Of course, people choose to live where they do, and transport options is a big part of that.

 

[malumbu]

8 hours ago, first mate said:

You have hit the nail on the head. What it needs most of all is transparent and open dialogue between Council and communities they serve. That is just not happening, instead we have manipulation and paternalism. 

Drivers have to be dragged out of their vehicles kicking and screaming.  No amount of consultation will achieve this.  For many if not most driving is a hard habit to break.  I'm not anti car but anti entitled driver.  Ask them nicely to reduce their number of journeys will not work.  Ps on the alternatives to LTNs and other Schemes see nobody has suggested anything on the thread I started.  So lots of complaining but no positive proposals.  Ps central government needs to lead but their environmental credentials falling like a rock

Edited August 3, 2023 by malumbu

[mr.chicken]

15 minutes ago, malumbu said:

Ps on the alternatives to LTNs and other Schemes see nobody has suggested anything on the thread I started.

Indeed. I do not think there is a credible alternative. I've yet to see one. Oh except for:

Someone should do something and everyone else should stop driving except me.

[malumbu]

I've seen some reward systems offered by big employers working from large sites which could be one way forward.  Pfizer in Sandwich had a scheme charging for workplace parking, reduced or free if people car pooled, and separate incentives for those using public transport or active travel.  That was years ago and most of the activities there were shifted to other sites.

[Angelina]

The only way to stop people doing something has to be extreme. 
if it makes it too expensive or inconvenient to drive, people will stop.

if will of course affect those who have to drive for work, or cannot get around otherwise.

[Bic Basher]

13 minutes ago, Angelina said:

The only way to stop people doing something has to be extreme. 
if it makes it too expensive or inconvenient to drive, people will stop.

if will of course affect those who have to drive for work, or cannot get around otherwise.

It doesn't though.   The Congestion Charge has been factored into budgets for self-employed drivers and businesses and while it initially reduced traffic, go down The Strand between Aldwych and Trafalgar Square and it still resembles a car park on the westbound side.

Did raising duty cut smoking?  Nope.

The council know well that affulent Dulwich residents will pay the LTN fines regardless of the supposed benefits to everyone.   Sure you can ride down Court Lane or Melbourne Grove with a reduced risk of a pesky car trying to get from A to B, but yet again it's those of us outside the LTN zone who pay the price to allow a minority of cyclists and middle class people to have relative peace from vehicles while the rest of us choke.

[CPR Dave]

You could not be more wrong Angelina.

Politics these days seems to be full of ignorant people who refuse to acknowledge other people's views and then are flabbergasted when those people don't come round to their bone-headed point of view. 

The same thing happened with Brexit, which  should have been a huge moment of learning for the self-proclaimed righteous. You can't go round just telling people they are wrong so shut up. It doesn't work. 

I'm surprised someone who thinks their enlightened views should supersede other, less clever, people's doesn't already know this. It's been a basic facet of education for many hundreds of years. It's such a simple concept that there is an elementary text on it taught to 4 and 5 year olds in key stage 1: https://read.gov/aesop/143.html 

 

Edited August 4, 2023 by CPR Dave
KEEPS MERGING ANOTHER REPLY TO AN ENTIRELY DIFFERENT POINT FFS

[mr.chicken]

11 hours ago, Bic Basher said:

It doesn't though.   The Congestion Charge has been factored into budgets [...]

Did raising duty cut smoking?  Nope.

You know except it did. Traffic has been on the rise country wide continuously. The congestion charge pushed the clock back about 10 years in terms of growth. Based on everywhere else in the country, the amount of traffic in London is lower than it would have been without the charge.

And smoking has been subject to an enormous combination of measures over decades: reduction and removal of advertising, education, decreasing convenience, increase in cost and as a result smoking has been on a pretty consistent downward trend.

The attitude of the anti LTN position is that unless a change is both instantaneous and perfect then it has failed. Even banning tobacco advertising had a negative effect on people who relied on it. And changes took years to have a big effect. With your attitude to smoking no changes would have been made and we'd still be where we were in 1970.

[malumbu]

In deed a success over a number of governments, banning smoking in the workplace was another major factor, packaging and not having this on display at point of sale.  I know hard core smokers who said they'd not go to pubs anymore, yet now think how nice it is.  As for smoking on planes, trains, buses, cinemas....

Love bringing Brexit into the equation.  Well that has been a great success eh?  There used to be some stonking discussion on the Lounge between Cat and Steppenwolf before the former had enough and returned to Neverland, sorry Oz.  But leaving the little people out of it who voted to leave the EU without any consensus of what this meant, our elected representatives really facked this up - Cameron doing a runner, May for the silly red lines and premature application forArticle 50 , May and Corbyn for not working together (albeit that would never have worked), and Johnson going back to what Brexit was supposed to be and then bumbling it over the line.

Fortunately the little people had the working class heroes Rees-Mogg and Farage on their side. 

PS love the link to Aesop, page 2 is the Wolf and the Sheep, "don't give up friends for foes"

[Bic Basher]

While I agree that Brexit is an absolute shambles, the point CPR Dave is making is that those of us on the Remain side were too complacent over what people outside of our liberal bubble actually wanted in 2016.

Bar the xenophobes who wanted it regardless of the consequences, there were a group of people who didn't like or understand the benefits of being part of the EU and couldn't see the benefits for themselves.

Again, there are signs of that again with the current schemes.   The LTN is perceived as an anti car, anti resident drive to raise money for a council that is so ideologically driven that the consequences for those who are affected by the scheme are brushed aside like those who had legitimate concerns about staying in the EU.

[mr.chicken]

5 minutes ago, Bic Basher said:

While I agree that Brexit is an absolute shambles, the point CPR Dave is making is that those of us on the Remain side were too complacent over what people outside of our liberal bubble actually wanted in 2016.

Those are Tory talking points, and I'd recommend against repeating them uncritically. Some additional points which get much less air time:

* Expats (i.e. people not living in the UK) were allowed to vote on whether to kick people out of a country they don't live in but long term permanent residents (i.e. people living in the UK for decades) had no say. That was a Tory choice, not a fact of life, and stacked the deck in favour of leave.

* Election rules were broken during the referendum. If it was a binding referendum, then by law the election would have to be rerun. However, no such requirements exist for advisory referendums. Treating an advisory referendum as binding is a massive weakening of the rules protecting our democracy. The rules I will note were broken in favour of the leave side.

One can argue there was complacency sure, but there were also non complacency factors which pushed the result towards leave.

 

[first mate]

15 hours ago, Bic Basher said:

Again, there are signs of that again with the current schemes.   The LTN is perceived as an anti car, anti resident drive to raise money for a council that is so ideologically driven that the consequences for those who are affected by the scheme are brushed aside like those who had legitimate concerns about staying in the EU.

The problem is the premise that LTNs are equitable and fair- quite clearly they are not. The starting point is deeply flawed. It is a totally machiavellian approach.

[snowy]

Now this is an Alan Partridge / pedestrianisation of Norwich City Centre argument we can all get behind.

Extrapolating it, all cul de sacs are discriminatory, no through road council estates are the work of the devil and De Beauvoir Town is high up in Dante's circles.

 

[mr.chicken]

7 hours ago, first mate said:

The problem is the premise that LTNs are equitable and fair- quite clearly they are not. The starting point is deeply flawed. It is a totally machiavellian approach.

Uh huh.

I mean I'm sure you'll agree that London's illegally high levels of air pollution are not fair, and neither are the clogged roads which slow down buses?

We know the LTNs work because traffic is down inside and on the boundary roads it's lower relative to the control where traffic is up quite a lot.

So what's your solution to reducing traffic and pollution?

I bet you don't have one that will actually work or be in any way implementable.

 

[Spartacus]

1 hour ago, mr.chicken said:

 

We know the LTNs work because traffic is down inside and on the boundary roads it's lower relative to the control where traffic is up quite a lot.

 

Obvious now that you're not a local as you would be able to see through the "traffic on boundary roads is down" lie for yourself if you were. 

[mr.chicken]

35 minutes ago, Spartacus said:

Obvious now that you're not a local as you would be able to see through the "traffic on boundary roads is down" lie for yourself if you were. 

If you can't win on facts, attack the person and misrepresent their arguments.

I said down relative to the control area not down. That means that the boundary roads are worse than pre covid but better than they would be without the LTN, because areas far from the LTN are even worse.

But you already knew that didn't you?

 

 

 

 

[first mate]

3 hours ago, mr.chicken said:

Uh huh.

I mean I'm sure you'll agree that London's illegally high levels of air pollution are not fair, and neither are the clogged roads which slow down buses?

We know the LTNs work because traffic is down inside and on the boundary roads it's lower relative to the control where traffic is up quite a lot.

So what's your solution to reducing traffic and pollution?

I bet you don't have one that will actually work or be in any way implementable.

 

Mmmhmmmuhhh,

There are doubts about the validity of data used to support the alleged 'success'  of local LTNs. In fact, if you remember, Cllr McAsh has agreed to look into this? Now if the data was as cast iron as you suggest I doubt he'd waste his time. Hmmmm?

[Bic Basher]

3 hours ago, Spartacus said:

Obvious now that you're not a local as you would be able to see through the "traffic on boundary roads is down" lie for yourself if you were. 

Not even Cllr Leeming can, then again he apparently lives in Peckham!

Chicken and Mal don't even live in our area, they're cycle activists where their only interest is promoting LTNs and cycling and dismissing anyone who disagrees with them with textbook rhetoric.

Edited August 5, 2023 by Bic Basher

[exdulwicher]

1 hour ago, first mate said:

Mmmhmmmuhhh,

There are doubts about the validity of data used to support the alleged 'success'  of local LTNs. In fact, if you remember, Cllr McAsh has agreed to look into this? Now if the data was as cast iron as you suggest I doubt he'd waste his time. Hmmmm?

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!"

[Rockets]

2 hours ago, mr.chicken said:

If you can't win on facts, attack the person and misrepresent their arguments.

I said down relative to the control area not down. That means that the boundary roads are worse than pre covid but better than they would be without the LTN, because areas far from the LTN are even worse.

But you already knew that didn't you?

 

 

 

 

What control area - are you confusing Lambeth data used by Aldred and Co with Dulwich?

15 minutes ago, Bic Basher said:

Not even Cllr Leeming can, then again he apparently lives in Peckham!

Chicken and Mal don't even live in our area, they're cycle activists where their only interest is promoting LTNs and cycling and dismissing anyone who disagrees with them with textbook rhetoric.

Is Chicken a non-Dulwicher too? 

[Bic Basher]

4 minutes ago, Rockets said:

What control area - are you confusing Lambeth data used by Aldred and Co with Dulwich?

Is Chicken a non-Dulwicher too? 

I think he travels through here, but their purpose is to promote the positives of LTNs.    The problem with people like that is the same on social media, they're dismissive of anyone's legitimate fears.   

I've spoken to other LTN protesters in other parts of London and they're not all SUV gas guzzling Tories, some are from across the political spectrum who are just as concerned about the increased pollution and traffic on boundary roads.

[mr.chicken]

I do love a bit of poultry related fanfiction.

I'm a little interested where I'm meant to travel from and to through Dulwich, but mostly I'm curious about my purpose. Where did it come from? Is it life long? Do I have any other purposes? Am I just a tool of Southwark Council and the Illuminati? Can I blame the Jews and if so, is it my dad's Rabbi, or a more general sort of thing? Limited to the Ashkenazim or do the Shephardic crowd get a look in? Do I meet with the shadowy cycle mafia exchanging secret handshakes while (secretly?) wearing Lycra outside the East Dulwich Cafe or do we go in for a very reasonably priced pie and chips and a nice hot, fresh, strong cup of tea?

I must know my purpose. Have I, like Edgar, found my purpose? Or has it been thrust upon me?

I feel @Bic Basher and @Rockets that you really need to fill this in a bit more fully. It's a bit scattered and nonsensical, but with a bit of effort I think there is the beginnings of a really good conspiracy thriller.

2 hours ago, Bic Basher said:

who are just as concerned about the increased pollution and traffic on boundary roads.

And well they should be! Fortunately for them the LTN has suppressed that a bit, compared to what it would be otherwise. Hopefully the CPZ will have a further effect. Unfortunately, traffic continues to grow so further measures will likely be needed.

 

2 hours ago, Rockets said:

What control area - are you confusing Lambeth data used by Aldred and Co with Dulwich?

Indeed, Southwark it turns out is extra super duper special. I mean sure, such measures work in other countries and cities and even other districts in London which are really near by, but Southwark is a special place where none of the normal methods of urban design work. It's amazing how reality can shift to an alternate plane of the spiderverse in just a half a mile.

[first mate]

Mr Chicken,

i don't know if you live in ED or not but objection has always been to LTNs in this area. Even Sadiq Khan is reported as saying some LTNs work and some don't. There is strong feeling that local ED LTNs are not producing the benefits stated, especially for those living on boundary roads.

Cllr McAsh has agreed to look into the data but has asked for a number of months to do that, suggesting that this is not just a courtesy as has been suggested elsewhere.

You keep very deliberately trying to move discussion around LTNs into one of generalisations which does little to suggest you understand the local situation. Your attempts at humour are also poor and clearly aim to ridicule and undermine anyone who 'dares' query the pro LTN line.
A number of pro LTN posters seem to use this as a tactic, so one wonders if you are comparing notes?

Edited August 6, 2023 by first mate

[mr.chicken]

1 hour ago, first mate said:

Mr Chicken,  don't know if you live in ED or not but objection has always been to LTNs in this area. 

Your opinion is not a fact. There are people who have always objected to the LTNs. There are also people like me who have always approved of them. I specifically voted Labour because of their pro LTN stance. The lib dems who stood against LTNs saw their vote share collapse. This forum had under the old admins a very anti-LTN stance but that's because all the pro LTN posters were hounded off the forum or banned.

Stop pretending everyone in in the local area is uniformly against LTNs, that is simply not true.

1 hour ago, first mate said:

There is strong feeling that local ED LTNs are not producing the benefits stated

There is a strong feeling among some people that the LTNs are not producing the benefits stated. There is a strong feeling among some others that they are. You are again presenting your opinion as the one true fact.

1 hour ago, first mate said:

especially for those living on boundary roads.

Having strong feelings and being upset does not make you correct. In the places where it's been thoroughly studied nearby, traffic on the boundary roads has gone up, but that's because traffic everywhere has gone up. It's easy to blame the LTNs, because are a visible change and plenty of people are offering a simple, easy  solution to the boundary road traffic: rip up the LTNs!

Like so many simple, easy solutions not only will it not work, it will make things worse.

1 hour ago, first mate said:

Cllr McAsh has agreed to look into the data but has asked for a number of months to do that, suggesting that this is not just a courtesy as has been suggested elsewhere.

It suggests nothing of the sort. If lots of residents ask him to look at something it's pretty much on him to do it. And we both know you would not be satisfied if he came back after one day and said "yep it's all good".

1 hour ago, first mate said:

You keep very deliberately trying to move discussion around LTNs into one of generalisations

No, I do not. This is you refusing to have any stance other than "rip em up". It's sometimes even hard to get you to concede that pollution and high levels of traffic blocking buses is a problem. And you can offer no solution you would be happy with other than "not LTNs".

 

1 hour ago, first mate said:

Your attempts at humour are also poor and clearly aim to ridicule and undermine anyone who 'dares' query the pro LTN line.

Between the personal attacks, bad faith arguments and comparisons of LTNs to mass murder (and worse), there's a lot to put up with on this thread. Humour lightens the mood. LTNs are widely established as a good way of improving cities and the thorough measurements nearby show they're working. You have no argument as to why it's not working here other than you feel like it isn't and no solutions to curbing car based pollution and overwhelming traffic.

And I'm not talking about generalities, I'm talking about Southwark and what Southwark council can do.

1 hour ago, first mate said:

A number of pro LTN posters seem to use this as a tactic, so one wonders if you are comparing notes?

You complain abut me ridiculing you and then you post stuff like that.

The depth of your echo chamber is without limit. You are convinced everyone in the Dulwich area hates LTNs therefore if more than one person on the forum is for them, there must be some sort of conspiracy. The alternative, that actually there are quite a lot of people who do like them, seems to have not occurred to you, despite the local election results.

If you don't want your arguments to be held up to ridicule, make them less ridiculous.