East Dulwich 20mph…

The East Dulwich councillors have been campaigning for our streets to be safer. Many residents have contacted us about speeding vehicles. We’ve provided the local Police with a state of art speed gun and display. But on some streets the speed limit is excessive.

Just before the summer holidays traffic and speed counters were installed for a fortnight on 22 of the 65 streets in East Dulwich. On some streets several were installed.

The governments rules to make a street 20mph is that the mean average speed must be lower than 24mph. The results of the counters are below. The next step is for officers to meet the police and other emeregency services and agreed that their happy for these streets to be made 20mph in principle. Local residents are then formally consulted. Then we have to by law advertise this in the local papers (now you know why lots of council tax money on publicity goes), then the signs go up and we should see an average speed reduction due to the signs of 1-3mph. Then local Police can enforce such reasonable speeds on wholly residential roads in East Dulwich. Read the rest of this entry. Read the rest of this entry.

Sinusiodal humps

Lots of debate about traffic calming measures – speed cushions are often  ignored by larger vehicles and 4WD cars, humps are painful and dangerous for cyclists and painful for vehicle occupants even when taken at less than 20mph. Until the Labour Government finally approves average speed cameras or changes insurance laws physical measures have to be installed to calm peoples behaviour behind the wheel.However, one type of hump doesn’t seem to have this problem – sinusoidal humps. They’re curved like a wave. Not quite as effective at traffic calming as regular ’round topped’ humps but boy are they more comfortable for vehicle occupants and safer for cyclists.

With the executive councillor Paul Kyriacou agreement it is now Southwark Council policy that all new humps will be sinusoidal.  I also expect when old humps get replaced during maintenance that they’ll be replaced with sinusoidal humps.

Alley gates

Alleys are magnets for anti social acts and worse. A simple measure to drastically reduce such problems is gating alleyways. Sounds easy – so I thought. The first act as a councillor was to arrange a pot of money to fund gating alleyways. Boy, is it hard to gate them. You have to obtain agreement from everyone who has legal access. Once you have agreement to gate an alleyway you need to arrange keys for everyone, who can provide emergency access. The list of issues and problems is long, very long.

So I’m delighted to report that the alleyway from Northcross Road behind the Palmerston has now been gated.

That an alleyway on Ashbourne Grove is imminent. We’re working on an Elsie Road one, and a Chesterfield Grove alleyway. We’re working on another but need to talk to residents more before telling anyone else.

If you know of any alleyway in East Dulwich that would ideally be gated please do get in touch.

East Dulwich Leisure Centre

In January the East Dulwich Lib Dem councillors supported the planning application for the £6.5M renovation of the East dulwich Leisure Centre but asked that the scheme should be rejected if as planned due to the buildings heritage the pool roof wasn’t insulated. The main planning committee added a condition that this should be assessed and if practical roof insulation included.

What a relief – we’ve just been told that although insulating the roof will add 4 weeks to the centres closure it can and will be insulated. So I’d like to apologise for the extra 4 weeks the pool will be closed but the reduced CO2 emissions will make this really worthwhile.


Ensuring maximum insulation, as per this condition, is crucial to Southwark Council helping fight global warming.
The £6.5M renovation will be fantastic and will once again become the truely great facility it once was.

1 hour bus tickets

Caroline Pidgeon a local Lib Dem Southwark councillor and also a Greater London Assembly member has come up with the great idea for 1 hour bus tickets. The idea is much like the tube where once you’re in the system you can change tube trains and lines as many times as you need. 1 hour bus tickets would mean you could change buses with no extra charge. For me this would mean catching the first bus in the direction I want to go rather than a bus that goes exactly where I need to go. It will reduce the overal time taken to get me from A to B. It would also mean people are penalised for living in areas that have poor bus choices.

Caroline has visited a number of boroughs across London to drum up support including Lambeth, Waltham Forest, islington, Brent, Westminster, Harrow, Hammersmith and Fulham with lots more visits planned.

If you support this idea please sign the petition through the online petition www.ourcampaign.org.uk/1hourbusticket . Reaction from Londoners has been extremely positive. We need as many signatures as possible to really persuade the Mayor of London to listen to our idea and get a better deal for London bus users.

2009 Cleaner, Greener, Safer.

Each year, Dulwich Community Council has around £370,000 to spend on improving our area through the Cleaner, Greener, Safer programme. No one likes a constitutional anorak but if ever there was a demonstration of how the way we make decisions can improve the quality of those decisions it is Community Councils. In the past all spending decisions were made in Peckham by people who may or may not have a clue about our local area. Now spending decisions are made by people who represent the area – and that means we’re more likely to invest in things the community really wants to see happen. Liberal Democracy in action.

Each year, any local person or community organisation can submit an idea for how to improve our local area. All ideas are welcome no matter how big or small and each year the applications flood in.

In the past projects have involved things like improving open spaces , small parks and playgrounds, tree planting and public art. The famous East Dulwich SNUB Say No to Unwanted Bags campaign was funded this way, as was the crime fighting alert boxes for local shops in Lordship Lane. Funding can range from just £2000 for small projects to over £150,000.

This year, we’ve funded another great range of projects. Here are a few:

· School composting scheme

· New cycle parking at Halliwell Court

· Improved fencing at Norcroft Gardens

· 25 new car club spaces – so half of East Dulwich streets will have a car club space

· More street trees

· Hanging baskets and lamp post banners promoting local shopping on Lordship Lane

· Pop-up electic points for Northcross Road market – to eliminate noisy polluting generators

· Improving the shopping parade at The Plough on Lordship Lane

· A pilot food composting scheme for our shops and restaurants

We think we’ve chosen a good range of schemes – but if you’ve got better ideas, there’s always next year!

(East) Dulwich Baths

Dulwich Baths is one of the jewels of East Dulwich. It was built by that breed of municipal Victorian politicians who took a real pride in their community and were determined to improve the lives of local people at a local level.

But just like our great Victorian parks, Dulwich Park and Peckham Rye Park, Dulwich Baths were neglected to a scandalous extent  – seemingly by every generation that followed them.

The parks have been beautifully restored over the past few years and now the spotlight is falling on the Dulwich Baths.

As local councillors, we have been campaigning with local residents to save the pool – and it has been a very popular cause!  Happily Southwark council is funding a multi-million pound refurbishment.

The building’s charm also makes refurbishment a difficult job but the plans include improved changing facilities, a café and poolside viewing area and an expanded gym.

Planning permission for the work was granted earlier this year and the refurbishment works have now begun. This means that the pool has been taken out of service but the good news is that despite the scaffolding, gym facilities will be available throughout the refurbishment works.

The final scheme also has great green credentials with a dramatic reduction in the energy required to heat and light it. Modern insulation has been used where ever possible.

The new swimming facilities should be available from spring 2010 and I’m sure will be well worth the wait. After all we’ve waited over a hundred years for this sort of investment!

iBus

I understand Transport for London has announced iBus is present on all 8,000 London buses. This is the system that speaks the next bus stop and has indicator boards with the next bus stop stated. Useful. For East Dulwich different bus routes name the same bus stop differently. How kooky is that.

Apparently this system improve Countdown accuracy.  only trouble is Countdown isn’t as all bus stops.

When will we get Countdown at all London bus stops – especially those areas with no underground service that rely wholly or largely on bus services?


TfL seem to be pushing for people to receive such information by mobile phones or internet. What a narrow idea. How many people want to have to check the internet before leaving home for real time bus info or text a number on a bus stop, wait for a response and then make bus journey decisions by which time they’ve missed a second best bus choice but the best isn’t coming for some time.  it seems clear that people making such decisions don’t use buses.

Making Lordship Lane safer to cross

For most of us who live in East Dulwich, Lordship Lane defines our community.  Its importance to East Dulwich as a commercial, social and cultural centre is clear. But it also serves many other purposes too – as a bus route and a through route for traffic.

It is not surprising that everyone has a view about Lordship Lane.

Road safety is always top of the list when we ask people about how Lordship Lane could be improved – what has not always been clear is what should be done to improve the situation.

So we commissioned Living Streets to help us identify the problems on Lordship Lane. The Living Streets approach is simple but effective. They walk up and down the road with a group of local people and a clip board, identifying issues and talking about possible solutions.

This is exactly what a small gang of us did.  We identified loads of things that would improve the shopping experience on Lordship Lane.  But overwhelmingly, the one issue highlighted was that people shopping on Lordship Lane tend to walk up one side of the street or down the other. They rarely cross the street to reach a shop on the other side of the road and when they want to – they find it unpleasant, off-putting and down right dangerous.  That’s not just bad from a road safety point of view. By degrading our shopping experience it threatens the lifeblood of our local shops and encourages particularly the elderly and families to head for the safety of Sainsbury’s or White City. Better crossing points – especially outside Somerfield – was the number one way to improve things.

So that is what we have been working on and we have now got to the point where we have designed and consulted upon new crossings on Lordship Lane – at the Goose Green roundabout and outside Somerfield.

The initial results indicate that the plans are supported by over 80% of people who responded.

There is still some way to go – not least to persuade Transport for London that providing a safe crossing point won’t interfere too much with the bus timetables. I hope that in the end the road safety arguments and the need to promote our local shops in the current climate will win the day.