Capital road pricing

Congestion in London can be grim – even with the Congestion Charging Zone. At this time of year, a fortnight of bliss, getting around town by bike or car with near empty roads is a cinch. But normally our roads are bulging with people travelling generating enough air pollution to kill 4,000 Londoners every year. The plans for London to grow by a million people will only make this beyond worse – calculated to be 20% worse. With precious few plans to increase public transport enough what should be done?

A study about road pricing of the capitals roads has just been produced which states “It is our view that a London-wide road pricing scheme is essential and without it congestion will worsen, air pollution will worsen” it also states “the health of Londoners will suffer, CO2 reduction targets will be missed”. Heady stuff. The study and its review has impeccable academic credentials Professors Whitelegg, Goodwin and Nash.

They suggest a fee of 20p per km (roughly 30p/mile) would cut 10% of car trips while raising £1.2bn gross a year from the remaining 90% of car trips. These sums are enough for a new tube line to be built biannually. Very appealing. They also calculate other benefits such as bus costs coming down by around 11% from less congestion – reducing bus fares by 11% would really help the poorest Londoners.

The appeal is accentuated by their statements that “International evidence is very clear that when car parking places of traffic levels are reduced the local economy thrives and grows in number of people employed and turnover. This is because large numbers of people are shopping locally and have a greater amount of disposable income available for local goods and services because they have reduced spending on vehicles”. I know my family would use its car far less with road pricing  – we’d ration it for important trips – staying more locally to spend our money.

At the same time that the case for road pricing seems like a potential solution popular feeling, as reported in the 2010 British Social Attitudes Survey, shows that only 18% agreed people should pay more to drive on roads at the busiest times.

So for road pricing to happen would take a braver politician with a big sell.

For Southwark only half our households own a car and under half the traffic on our roads starts or ends it journey in Southwark. So we probably have the most to gain from road pricing. We also suffer more from air pollution killing residents with roads like the Old Kent Road. But I’ll not hold my breath that road pricing happens soon.

Vaclav Havel RIP

I feel really sad that Vaclav Havel has passed away.

I was fortunate enough to spend a month cycling back to London from Warsaw across Poland, Czechoslovakia, West Germany and Belgium a few months after the Iron curtain came down. It was an amazing month with a dear friend from University. The highlight was our time in Prague soaking up the atmosphere of a newly liberated capital and nation. The buzz was astounding. I could have stopped there permanently.

Vaclav was the defining figurehead along with Lech Walesa from that period for me. Vaclav really did appear true to the Velvet revolution he created and inspired his whole life and what a life. So to hear he’d died and was buried yesterday is particularly poignant for me. It reminds me of my youth. It also marks for me how Europe’s democratic youth has now passed.

Will Europe get away from the the pleasures of its youth and settle down into grown up institutions? Dull but necessary for long term stability.

Vaclav Havel achieved so much peacefully. And as a politician inspires me on my small local scale to keep true to my roots – play a straight bat.

Lordship Lane – walking audit

In 2007 the East Dulwich councillors arranged for a walking audit of Lordship Lane. Over the years we’ve gradually been delivering it recommendations.

The final problems from that report that need fixing are crossing East Dulwich Grove where it meets Lordship Lane and crossing Lordship Lane around where the Coop/Somerfield supermarket it.

I’m chuffed to report that it has finally been agreed and approved to install three crossing to fixed these final problems. The timescales will be that the works will be completed by March 2012 and will include some rearranging of local parknig to ensure that overall a gain in car parking to make up for the loss of parking that these crossings need to proceed.

I’d like to thank residents patience. Businesses for highlighting that we needed to make good any loss of parking. Good challenge that we’ve ensured is more than met. And lastly a thank you to officers who’ve been really supportive to ensure we’ve come up with the best overal solution – and the East Dulwich Grove entry crossing solution was after a number of meetings with East Dulwich councillors and specialise consultants.

Roll on March 2012.

Uninsured

This week it was revealed that 65 people are injured by uninsured drivers every week. 15 people were killed, 307 seriously injured, 3,085 injured during 2010. by uninsured drivers. That is an awful lot of people lives wrecked.

People willing to drive while uninsured (compared to insured drivers) are:

  • Ten times more likely to have been convicted of drink driving
  • Six times more likely to have been convicted of driving a non-road worthy vehicle
  • Three times more likely to have been convicted of driving without due care and attention

On average every insured driver is paying £30 more each year to cover the costs of the uninsured.

The last league table I could find from the Motor Insurers’ Bureau showed two Southwark postcodes as the 2nd and 10th worst in the country for having uninsured drivers – Peckham SE15 has 4.33 x the UK average level of uninsured drivers and Camberwell SE5 has 3.75 x the UK average level of uninsured drivers.

Police and insurers have estimated uninsured drivers as between 1 and 5 million people. Truly astounding.

So how many live in East Dulwich?

20mph near residential completion

The most recent Dulwich Community Council meeting agreed to Lib Dem demands by making the following East Dulwich streets 20mph speed limits – Ashbourne, Bassano, Blackwater, Chesterfield and Matham Grove with sinusoidal road humps.
Plus the following roads 20mph speed limits with no road humps – Crystal Palace Road, Goodrich, Heber, Jennings, Landcroft, Landells, Pellatt, Rodwell, Silvester, Thompson and Whateley.

Overall 82% of consultation responses supported the proposals with 16% opposing them.

These 20mph speed limit streets will then only leave 5 streets out of the 65 East Dulwich ward streets with limits greater than 20mph – Barry
Road, East Dulwich Road, East Dulwich Road, Grove Vale, Lordship Lane. Barry Road is a B road and the others A roads making it a tad more compliex to get a sensible 20mph speed limit on them.

They should all be made 20mph speed limit streets but this is fab progress.

I’d like to thank all the residents who have prodded for this and the consultation respondents – but especially the residents of Matham Grove and their petition that crystallized this being one of my priorities for our very limited Cleaner, Greener, Safer money.

Nihola

As a car driving licence holder who doesn’t drive – I find car driving incredibly dull and as a consequence don’t feel safe – getting around has always been incredibly easy by walking, cycling and public transport, taxis. That was until I became a dad. My answer was to buy a Nihola Cigar trike or bucket bicycle as the kids have lovingly called it.

It has proven its worth transporting two kids around Southwark and London while they were young. The most I’ve carried was six children at reception age. Quite a mobile giggling party.

We’ve used it come rain, snow or sunshine all year round. Its carried kids, compost, leaflets and masses of shopping.

Convincing my then toddlers that flapping their arms helped us fly up hills is a very treasured memory.

When I bought it Nihola wouldn’t sell direct to UK citizens as they’d found fellow Brits awkward in the past. So I had to go to Amsterdam to collect from the nearest distributor at that time who only took cash (thankfully you can now get them from London Recumbents in Dulwich Park). Quite an adventure involving much less cycling than I’d originally prepared myself for – nice ferry and surprised but very helpful East Anglia train staff – they enjoyed the spectacle so much that they wouldn’t consider me paying for the train fare or ban me as rail regulations suggested.

But after four or is it five years the kids have now outgrown our bucket bicycle and its been sold. Very sad but with many many many happy memories.

If you need to get young kids around do consider this amazing fun bike.

20mph for Grove Vale and Lordship Lane

I’ve just obtained a weeks worth of speed data for Grove Vale and Lordship Lane:

Grove Vale westbound vehicle mean average speed of 22.8mph,  85 percentile 27.7mph, total of 73642 vehicles.

Grove Vale eastbound vehicle mean average speed of 21.2mph, 85 percentile 24.6mph, 68540.

Lordship Lane (by Ashbourne Grove ) north bound vehicle mean average of 21.5mph, 85 percentile 27.3mph, 52036.

Lordship Lane (by Ashbourne Grove ) south bound vehicle mean average 19.9mph, 85 percentile 25.3mph, 51419.

To place 20mph speed limits on roads requires 85 percent of all existing traffic to be travelling at speeds of 24mph or lower. BUT both roads have planned measures to reduce speeds by several mph and having a 20mph speed limit lowers speeds by around 2mph.

So I’ll be pushing for 20mph speed limits. At the very least in the short term finding the minimum required to make this happen.

Do you agree?

Grove Vale – road changes

I’ve been banging my head against the Labour administrations brick wall since Autumn 2010 about the changes they’d proposed for Grove Vale – needlessly expensive speed tables and lack of clarity about parking.

A local 800 signature petition was taken to the Labour cabinet and the petition organisers reported to me they felt snubbed by the Cabinet member accountable for transport Cllr Barrie Hargrove.

Clearly this feeling has finally penetrated Southwark Labour party as the recent meeting with traders on the 2nd the council leader attended and agreed to all the traders concerns.

So why did we have to go through such heartache and pain and wasted council resources?

Three reasons from where I sit.

1. Cllrs Peter John and Verinocia Ward in South Camberwell are not interested in such schemes leaving it to officers.

2. Said councillors and Cllr Barrie Hargrove ignored concerns from me representing the East Dulwich councillors.

3. That although Cllr Stephen Govier in South Camberwell is interested in such issues and reiterated my concerns having been turfed out of the Labour party anything he says cllr Peter John and co seem to want ot do the opposite.

Problably more fundamentally we also seem to have a constitutional gap in that such big schemes are not presented to Community Councils for local perspectives and input – the cabinet member has carte blanche andwe get the sort of pickles that Grove Vale proved to be. I wonder how many rubbish decisions are being taken as a result of bypassing community councils?

Bike Security – a British Standard?

Former chair of Southwark Cyclsits highlighted that no British Standard exists of bicycle locks. I was amazed to hear this. Some industry type standards exist but most UK citizens would know to trust a British Standard kite mark but wouldn’t know if some other standard quoted was just so much mumbo jumbo. Equally many locks don’t meet any standard and offer zero protection from bicycle theft. Once someone has a bike stolen they’re quite likely to give up cycling and not replace it. So this is a really important health and climate change issue.

So Simon Hughes MP has kindly taken up the challenge to try and see why this is with the following initial parliamentary questions:

Ordinary Written question to: Home Office – What steps her department is taking to improve security equipment for bicycles?

Ordinary Written question to: Home Office  – What steps her department is taking to promote awareness of cycle crime?

Ordinary Written question to: Home Office – To ask the Secretary of State for Transport whether he has considered a British standard for cycle locks and other cycle security equipment?

Ordinary Written question to: Home Office – What steps is her department taking to reduce the theft of bicycles?

Ordinary Written question to: Home Office – How many cycle thefts were reported in a) the UK and b) London in the most recent period for which statistics are available?

Fingers crossed the answers will be helpful.