Dulwich Walking & Cycling Network

The Dulwich Society Traffic & Transport Group have initiated the idea of a new walking & cycling network. This concept has been endorsed by the Dulwich Safe Route to School group – local schools coming together to discuss common problems that get in the way of pupils, teachers and parents walking and cycling to local schools.

To help formulate where to concentrate on starting this network they’ve created a travel survey.

If you take kids to school locally please do fill it in:

http://dulwichsaferoutes.wordpress.com

or email Dulwichsaferoutesinfo@gmail.com

I think its a great idea which the Dulwich Estates have so far indicated they’d like to support.

Important concept that many don’t walk or cycle as its not pleasant. But making it pleasant will increase numbers walking and cycling reducing car use, making it more etc etc.

Resurfacing Pellatt, Landells and Upland

Resurfacing works about to commence:

– Pellatt Road between Lordship Lane and Cyrena Road will be resurfaced 4 & 7 June.

– Landells Road between Lordship Lane and Goodrich Road will be resurfaced 7 & 8 June.

– Upland Road between Lordship Lane and Mount Adon Park will be resurfaced later this year.

These are as a direct result in feedback from residents and where we’ve decided to allocate our limited devolved budgets in East Dulwich.

Cycle superhighway

Two weeks ago I complained that a temporary works yard had been created at the junction of Newington butts with Hampton Street blocking the Elephant & Castle cycle by-pass.

It was quickly amended to allow one lane of cyclists.

Today the other half of the cycle lane has a contractors car parked in it. Talk about insulting to cyclists.

So another complaint has gone into the relevant officers who has asked for an explanation from Transport for London.

One-way streets

Southwark Council has a rolling programme to review all one-way streets to ensure they are truly required. On one-way streets people drive much father making it at best unpleasant for cycling and walking and at worst much more dangerous. It also creates very long detours making it attractive for some to cycle on pavements or the wrong way.

I used to live on Tabard Street which had a crazy one-way gyratory. It took several years to persuaded Transport For London to remove it but boy what a step improvement for the area. Still marked on maps as major road even though very little goes down it.

Closer to home in East Dulwich this review should cover Crawthew, Etherow and Henslowe as well as finalising the cycle contraflow on Spurling Road.

The contraflow cycle path on Rye Lane is taking an eternity but what a great change that will see.

If you have any views on one-way streets please let me know.

Heathrow runway 3

It was great news to hear that the high court challenge 3 day challenge was successful. The judicial review challenging the process was upheld and effectively the government has to start again. This is a good result for the government as a daft policy can be reviewed. It delays things until after elections. Starting all over again means that the stark sense of global warming will have more impact on any decision and High speed 2 will have hopefully made at least some planning progress.

Missing 50,000 residents

One of my councillor colleagues testified to the London Regional Parliamennts Select Committee regarding the 2011 census. The MPs heard a unified message from Newham, Southwark and Westminster councils about how hard it is to count residents.

Each resident attracts roughly £600 of funding from central government.

Currently central government believes 270,000 residents are residents in Southwark. Southwark currently has 320,000 people registered with GPs. That means roughly £30M of central government grants are not being made to Southwark.

It seems unlikely as planned the 2011 Census will close any of that gap. Worringly it could well open it up further.

Car clubs in East Dulwich

Southwark Council is negotiating with which preferred Car CLub supplie rshould have 85 dedicated car clubs parking spaces around Southwark.

Car clubs are a great concept and have shown that each car club car replaces 8-15 private cars. Most private cars sit parked up 95%+ of their lives. Also, car club members tend to increase their thinking about travel and use publci transport more.

To accelerate this the East Dulwich councillors allocated £10,000 for extra Car Club spaces in East Dulwich. These spaces have been proposed no casework feedback about parking issues AND to ensure that generally an East Dulwich resident will have car club space within 200m of their home.

The next step is to finalise the Car Club and then the road markings process will happen across Southwark. 

Infrastructure bank

At last some sense about infrastructure. For years Tory and labour governments have been pushing public bodies to have Private Public Partnerships or Private Finance Initiatives. Where public bodies pay through the nose to have capital investment built to a generally minimalist quality and get locked into inflexible contracts – imagine 25 years ago predicting the internet, mobile phones, etc and building a contract sufficiently flexible to cope.

As a Liberal Democrat I thin kwe’ve cracked it by suggesting a national infrastructure bank. The idea is a bank guaranteed by government, long term investment from the private sector to build capital public projects that build wealth creating infrastructure.

The Institution of Civil Engineers have welcomed the idea.

You can be sure Conservatives wont like the idea – the current PFI system makes private bankers wealthy but locks in public inefficiencies for decades to come.

Hopefully the financial crisis will ensure all politicians take a fresh look at such a great idea. 

Sustainable Communities Act

This act enables residents to indetify and suggest ways to improve local areas. Only 1/3rd of local councils took part. 293 ideas were proposed of which 8 came from Southwark.

These have been short listed to be discussed by government ministers and 7 of Southwark’s 8 have made it to this final list:

1. Southwark camera partnership – Transfer of funding to a Southwark camera partnership, which would redistribute revenue towards services such as road calming measures and have the power to move existing cameras.
2. Relax the requirement for 20mph zones – It should be at the discretion of the council whether there are self enforcing calming measures and what form they take
3. National plastic bag free day – No exchange of plastic bags between retailer and customer on a given day.
4. A duty on Network Rail and any other rail operators – A duty to be imposed on Network Rail and any other rail operators to work in partnership with local authorities and local communities to safeguard and improve the environment directly relating to railway land and infrastructure
5. Smooth leaseholder repair bills – Change in the rules to allow councils to take deposits and prudently invest leaseholder funds, on a voluntary basis, to help smooth leaseholder repairs bills.
6. Unlawful use of properties – Penalties for unlawful use of a property, with the council having the ability to impose civil penalties on the freeholder to cover the costs of planning enforcement.
7. Permaculture design principles – A permissive regime that enables Council to prioritise permaculture design principle in local planning policy.

All great ideas (the first was my idea) that would make a real difference to Southwark.

Fingers crossed they don’t get lost in the general election period but that most proceed.

Unforecast snow

Monday afternoon unforecast snow arrived. Council gritting is undertaken 12 hours in advance of icy or snowy weather forecasts as per the Met Office and Meteo. Unforecast snow during day time is terrible as no grit is in place. So day time traffic quickly snarls up and the gritters can’t get through to get gritting. Proverbial nightmare.

To reduce the chances of this Southwark employs two different weather forecasters – one the Met Office and Meteo. Both got it wrong. Arrgh.

So Southwark, as with everyone else, was caught out.

The good news is that we have more resources than most councils to get things moving again – 3 lorry gritters, 80 manual gritters, 500 officers and contractor staff, 1,000 tonnes of salt/grit. But we’ll never have sufficient to clear all 340km of road, 680km of pavements instantly.

Let me know your experiences to help shape the service for the future.