West Dulwich LTN Action Group - needs your support

[first mate]

8 hours ago, march46 said:

Interesting to see Dulwich Village’s Richard Aldwinkle (aka Mr One Dulwich) in the article’s photo of “members of the West Dulwich community who campaigned to scrap the LTN in their neighbourhood.” 

Why is it interesting? We have posters(cycling activists) from Lewisham who 'advise' on these forums on all kinds of Dulwich-wide issues, especially LTNS and the like, they have also responded to the ED CPZ consultation. On that basis, what is your point about Richard Aldwinkle?

[EDmummy101]

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/south-london-council-raked-in-1-million-from-illegal-low-traffic-zone-b1227062.html another article on the victory

[malumbu]

I wasn't going to comment until the dust settled and the impact better understood, eg would Lambeth challenge the decision, go through the earlier objection and deal with this etc.

But all this talk of victory is irritating, particularly as the groups opposing LTNs and some of the most vocal on this site do not have alternative solutions to reducing traffic.  I would rather you said that you wanted the status quo and don't believe or care about poor air quality and climate change rather than some sort of moral high ground.

You will not get communities calling for and agreeing restrictions on private car journeys because when push comes to shove, like paying more tax, when changes affect you personally most will not be in favour.

The celebrations remind me of when Bromley successfully challenged Ken Livingstone's fare's fair cuts to public transport fares in the 80s.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fares_Fair#:~:text=Fares Fair was a public,and rescinded the following year.

I'm now keeping quiet until we all know more.  

 

[first mate]

Malumbu said   " I would rather you said that you wanted the status quo and don't believe or care about poor air quality and climate change rather than some sort of moral high ground."

Objectors have said that the LTN does not improve air quality for the majority and makes it worse on boundary roads, so your point does not at all reflect their motivation or what they stand for.

Rashmipat said:

"I support serious climate action — but badly implemented LTNs actually increase pollution. Lambeth’s own data, along with TfL’s, proves this. And yet, the council continues to press on, ignoring the facts and the concerns of residents and businesses.

Edited May 12 by first mate

[march46]

Rashmipat also said:

“Look at the Rosendale Road cycle lane: it’s an eyesore, dangerous, and the cause of accidents.”

and

“And frankly, hardly anyone even uses the cycle lanes.”

Hard to believe concerns about air pollution are genuine when they attack cycling infrastructure that’s literally keeping people safe, and giving them the option to not drive, thus reducing air pollution. 

[first mate]

If you don't see cycling infrastructure being well used then you may begin to question its value. If the councils and TFL were not complaining about lack of money then the 'build it and they will come' rhetoric would stand, but with lack of funds it is less easy to justify.

You may have hard data that shows usage of the cycle lanes referred to that proves they are well used. Feel free to share.

[Earl Aelfheah]

Personally, I would love to see changes to how these consultation processes are run. As I've said before, I don't think they're remotely constructive and tend to please no one.

They're also skewed towards people with the strongest views (usually those who vociferously oppose change).

A better way might involve some sort of representative sampling, focus groups and expert advice. The community stakeholder panels, and citizen jury approaches seem to have worked really well where they've been used.

[first mate]

But surely a community stakeholder panel would comprise groups like Southwark Cyclists, Dulwich Roads, Clean air Dulwich etc.. Expert advice would be from people like Rachel Aldred. I looked at how a Southwark citizens jury is formed and run; discussion is 'overseen' by a panel

"It must be acknowledged that the Oversight Panel consisted of members from various professional backgrounds including the local authority, private sector, academia, the voluntary sector, and environmental groups [2]. The aim was to establish a panel of diverse experts, whose duty was to create an impartial process that would meaningfully engage all the participants."

It feels like many of the above already have sway within the council and its decisions. I am not convinced. What it might do is remove some pesky, dissenting resident voices from any process.

 

Edited May 12 by first mate

[Penguin68]

If councils were solely fixed on climate change and air quality issues then fully electric vehicles would be able to pass through these areas, as their contribution to air quality pollution is minimal (outwith build issues, but these aren't relevant to local air quality in LTNs).

But electric vehicles are as fined as any other.

Councils are focused on two things - first the political intention to drive private owned vehicles out of their streets - openly stated by Southwark Labour Party - and secondly, and probably immediately more important, the opportunity to raise revenue. 

Both cases have arguments in favour of them, but councils are weaseling their way into what they think are more convincingly woke and 'right-on' arguments - climate change and local air quality. Both these aspects, as generalities, are more difficult to argue against, of course, but the recent case has suggested that the particular cases in hand may be less tenable - when the actions simply shift, but don't eradicate, the problem, for instance. [NB - those arguing against our local LTNs, by the way, are mostly on record as being clear that, and in particular, where air quality is genuinely improved (rather than problems shifted) this is a good thing.]

[Rockets]

11 hours ago, malumbu said:

But all this talk of victory is irritating,

It might be irritating for you Mal but it is a victory. It is a victory for all of those who said the council/s have been manipulating the process of forcing these measures on local residents. As I said a long, long time ago the way councils were going about is ultimately doing long-term harm to the climate change debate as they fixated on idealogical rather than pragmatic measures - and measures that actually did nothing to help the very cause they were trying to influence -  in some cases making it worse.

I sense your irritation is because that one decision vindicates much of what some of us have been saying for a long time and I suspect you also realise this will have a knock-on effect in other areas as the template and legal precedent has been set for more challenges on the basis of councils installing them unlawfully.

53 minutes ago, Earl Aelfheah said:

They're also skewed towards people with the strongest views (usually those who vociferously oppose change).

Actually Earl, the problem is that they are skewed towards councils being able to manipulate the process to install things, in the case of West Dulwich unlawfully - this is the crux of this but I wholeheartedly agree that there needs to be wholesale change to what is clearly not a democratic consultation process and one that is being manipulated.

31 minutes ago, first mate said:

But surely a community stakeholder panel would comprise groups like Southwark Cyclists, Dulwich Roads, Clean air Dulwich etc.. Expert advice would be from people like Rachel Aldred. I looked at how a Southwark citizens jury is formed and run; discussion is 'overseen' by a panel

This is why I think this is a watershed moment because if you look back on how Southwark council behaved in relation to LTN and CPZ consultations in our area it was a woefully poor and biased process. Just think back to consultations where you could not say a simple "no" but were forced to agree to some sort of measure - it's utterly shameful how local politicians have manipulated to the process - with the help of many of the aforementioned groups. I do hope that those politicians will one day be held accountable for their role in all of this.

Lambeth clearly have a big issue based solely on the number of fines issued unlawfully (is it supposed to be £1,000,000 worth?) - that sounds like the mother of all legal battles and now you may see the ambulance chasers going after Lambeth on behalf of the thousands of people who have been incorrectly issued tickets - more tax-payers money being wasted in defending them. It's going to get really messy and they only have themselves to blame - I suspect a lot of other councils are having cold sweats right now. 

[Earl Aelfheah]

The citizens jury approach involves a representative sample of the community, who can call experts and consider a wide range of evidence. It's a facilitated discussion, which tries to get a proper view of what a broad range of residents want. The result is a set of recommendations which are used to inform policy. It's a better method (imo), of simply inviting feedback from those with the strongest views, (who usually vociferously oppose change). Inevitably the latter results in an unrepresentative view of local opinion, which then has to be balanced with data, expert opinion etc, and those who have self selected to the consultation get upset because it's not the referendum they imagined.

 https://www.southwark.gov.uk/sites/default/files/2024-10/Citizens' Jury Report Accessible.pdf

Edited May 12 by Earl Aelfheah

[malumbu]

All sounds good in principle but I don't know if this would work.  Firstly you need an agreed objective eg stop the rat running, reduce the number of journeys, reduce air pollution, reduce carbon emissions, increase active travel.

The means to this - good citizenship (driving is habitual for many, or seen as a right, so encouraging people doesn't work that well).

Economic measures - charging for the most polluting vehicles - done, works, but diminishing returns. Charging to park - this wont happen in many areas, certainly as you go out of zones 2 and 3, access charging - only in central London and wont be rolled out wider on a local level; straight forward economics - for many owning and driving a car that does predominantly local roads is more expensive than other means such as car clubs, public transport, walking and cycling. Yet most do not look at whole life costs of car ownership, 45p a mile or more.

Incentives including improvements to active travel infrastructure and public transport. Yet....

My perception is as a nation most don't like change, don't see the bigger picture, very much conservative with a small 'c' and worse, seem to enjoy finding fault in many things.

Which leads us onto restricting access to roads.  And we know what happens then.

I've worked in many fields where there are efforts to engage communities.  Blair's government did much on this, pre 97 we thought of stakeholders as local citizens in vampire movies.  I did work on Big Society, which as a concept continued Blair's work but that all unfolded.

I'm just not convinced that the main opponents would come with an open mind to work constructively on solutions.

But I've been saying much of this for the last four years, and sadly many still hold entrenched views.

 

[Earl Aelfheah]

1 hour ago, malumbu said:

main opponents would come with an open mind to work constructively on solutions

The main opponents won't. But if you have representation from across the wider community, then their's is not the only voice to be heard. At the very least, they should swap online forms, for targeted market research, using a representative sample of the local community.

[Rockets]

But folks remember, it's not the constituent dissenting voices who are the problem here. It is the people who are running the consultations who are trying to skew things to their advantage. All of these dissenting voice groups are only in existence because the councils tried to railroad their plans through undemocratically. The West Dulwich group had to raise £50,000 to challenge the council after the council refused to entertain any of their concerns - that is shameful and shows the lengths constituents have to go to to be heard and the lengths councils will go to to silence them. There is a similar pattern of behaviour between all of the councils locally.

[Earl Aelfheah]

The council should canvas the views of a cross section of the community. These online consultations are not remotely helpful.

It would keep the council a lot more honest. You can ignore a self selecting sample of people opposed to a change and who've rallied responses to an online form; but you can't so easily ignore a targeted and representative sample of the whole community. Why they don't use the same standards as basic market research firms I don't understand. 

[first mate]

But you could argue that anyone that gets involved in anything is self selecting. Are you saying those who object are self-selecting but those in support are not? 
 

Penguin knows a lot about market research, so I would defer to him on how suitable a representative sample would be for the purpose of LTN and CPZ resident/ local business impacts feedback. Also whether this is even realistically achievable.

Edited May 12 by first mate

[Rockets]

24 minutes ago, Earl Aelfheah said:

Why they don't use the same standards as basic market research firms I don't understand. 

Because it's not in their interests.....any council, no matter the political leaning, likes the idea that they can manipulate the outcome....we are repeatedly told by the council and their supporters that "consultations are not referendum's" but the council actually treats them as if they are by making binding decisions on the basis of the outcome (nee the decision they decide that is right whether residents support it or not during the consultation). Ahem and then loose-lipped councillors like Cllr Leeming say silly things like they will stay whilst there is a Labour administration which makes them look even more entrenched and stubborn and utterly at odds with the local mood board.

The whole consultation process is a farce and only works if the result the community gives is the result the council wants - they're about as democratic as Russian elections.....;-)

[Earl Aelfheah]

25 minutes ago, Rockets said:

we are repeatedly told by the council and their supporters that "consultations are not referendum's"

They’re not referendums.

28 minutes ago, Rockets said:

but the council actually treats them as if they are by making binding decisions on the basis of the outcome (nee the decision they decide that is right whether residents support it or not during the consultation)

This is contradictory. If they ignore the outcome, they clearly do not base decisions on them, or treat them as a referendum

29 minutes ago, Rockets said:

The whole consultation process is a farce

Yes, my point exactly. Seeking the views of a self selecting sample of the most vociferous opponents isn’t very enlightening as to what the broader community actually want.

[first mate]

The problem with all this is that we have multiple councillors saying on the record that traffic management systems, like CPZ, would only be introduced if they had majority local support. Where is the evidence for that support?

[Rockets]

45 minutes ago, Earl Aelfheah said:

This is contradictory. If they ignore the outcome, they clearly do not base decisions on them, or treat them as a referendum

But the point I am making is they treat the decision they make as if it were a a referendum - except they are the only ones who have a vote! Do you see the point I am making: we the council embark on a democratic consultation. The people say they don't want it so we say - well we're the only ones with the vote that matters, we are going to ignore the weight of evidence against us and are going to do whatever we want whether you want it or not....this is the whole basis of why the High Court Judge ruled the West Dulwich one unlawful. The judge is actually saying the consultation should have been run more like a referendum.

[exdulwicher]

4 minutes ago, Rockets said:

.this is the whole basis of why the High Court Judge ruled the West Dulwich one unlawful. 

Judicial Review challenges the process - not the outcome or the result. The one aspect of it that was upheld was that the consultation was flawed and that only came about because the anti-group submitted a 53-page dossier outside of the normal consultation route and Lambeth have been unable to show that they took it into account - even though everything in it was bollocks.

It doesn't make the LTN unlawful nor does it allow the fines to be recovered.

Edited May 12 by exdulwicher

[malumbu]

In deed.  Not sure what the confused emoji is for.  Very clear. Thanks Ex.

[Rockets]

BBC News - West Dulwich low-traffic neighbourhood (LTN) unlawful, High Court rules - BBC News
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/ckg4178plvdo

 

Hmmm, might be wishful thinking on your parts there folks....

[march46]

Good to see Lambeth continuing with their borough-wide roll-out of Healthy Neighbourhoods (aka LTNs), prioritising people over vehicles.

https://love.lambeth.gov.uk/lambeth-launches-public-engagement-on-two-new-healthy-neighbourhoodslambeth-launches-public-engagement-on-two-new-healthy-neighbourhoods/

[first mate]

4 hours ago, exdulwicher said:

The one aspect of it that was upheld was that the consultation was flawed and that only came about because the anti-group submitted a 53-page dossier outside of the normal consultation route and Lambeth have been unable to show that they took it into account - even though everything in it was bollocks.

The Judge said the document was impressive and detailed; I cannot remember if he used the word relevant. I think he did. Aside from that, it seems a bit odd that Lambeth had no means whatsoever to show they had taken the document into account. Does seem like they just ignored it...not a good look.