As part of this years Cleaner, Greener, Safer scheme the East Dulwich councillors awarded money to help local East Dulwich schools increase cyclnig to school.
Its just been announced that Goose Green and St.Anthony’s RC schools are the most suitable for this.
Fingers crossed it all goes to plan and we see an increase in children cycling to these local schools.
I’ve asked Transport for London to ‘fix’ the 176 bus announcements for the Dulwich Library. The announcements state Dulwich Plough. No.40 and 12 bus routes state Dulwich Library on the front of the bus. The no.40 announcement states Dulwich Library and then immediately Dulwich Plough.
TfL really need to get themselves sorted out and change these announcements to avoid confusion. It wouldn’t be a problem except the Dulwich Plough pub has had several names in the last few years.
Dulwich Library isn’t moving, closing, is well known and on A-Z maps. It really is an obvious landmark to use.
WAKE UP TfL. Get your act together.
Its just been announced that refurbishment work London Bridge Underground station Northern line will take place 8 October to late February 2009. That’s five month.
I often visit Munich and other European cities for my normal day job. I see lots of escalators but they’re never closed let alone for five months.
How do they do that and why can’t we.
Not something to be proud to be British over.
While travelling around on local buses I noticed that the same bus stops are described quite differently from one bus route to another. So the no.40 and 12 destination is Dulwich Library but the no.176 onboard announcement states Dulwich Plough at the same bus stop. How confusing.
So Caroline Pidgeon Greater London Assembly (www.carolinepidgeon.org) member kindly offered to take this up with Transport for London (TfL).
TfL Andrew Miles (andrew.miles@tfl.gov.uk 020 3054 0153) has responded saying that it would cause confusion to have the same bus stop called the same thing across bus routes.
If you think calling the same bus stop by two different names is just plain silly let Andrew know.
A few fridays ago I had the chance to visit London Bridge Station to discuss the South London Lines proposed closure with Andrew Munden the head of Network Rail infrastructure for SouthEast London and Kent. Apparently this area carries 1/7th of all the services Network Rail provides the tracks etc for.
As part of the visit we were shown the signal box. Which was interesting and appeared to be aimed at impressing us with how incredibly complex running trains services can be.
The meat was discussing in a group with Andrew the context of closing the South London Line.
He made it clear Network Rail would provide whatever infrastructure the Government Dept. of Transport so wishes if they are provided the cash to do it. They explain options to Government but that ultimately the final arbitor is the Secretary of State Ruth Kelly.
The rebuilding of London Bridge Station is required to enable Thameslink2000. The current 6 through and 9 terminating platforms will be changed to 9 through and 6 terminating platforms. Until 1974 London Bridge had 22 platforms. Six terminating platforms means that some of the currently terminating train services wont have any platforms to terminate on and will be closed. The argument being that the south London line having the fewest customers should be sacrficed. The counter argument being
So I asked the obvious questions about what benefits for Southwark will all this bring. Andrew suggested longer trains – but for Kent commuters, more reliable trains – but much fewer services for Southwark residents. It became clear and Andrew agreed no benefits to Southwark will come from all this.
The crumbs of comfort being proposed by the Labour Assembly Member for Lambth and Southwark Val Shawcross is that the East london Line phase 2 delivery be brought forward. I’m not sure people who currently use the South London Line into Victoria and London Bridge are going to find it useful to be delivered instead to Clapham Junction or Shoreditch.
What can be done?
The orignal planning application for London Bridge to be rebuilt was made in 2002 when Labour ran Southwark Council. No mention was made that it would result in a decimation of the train services to Southwark. If it had then I don’t believe it would have received planning permission. If such information was with held then that might mean the planning permission could be Juducial Reviewed.
The Southwark Council executive cllr Paul Noblet has agreed to urgently look into this.
While having a big tidy up, gearing myself up for the post August council buzz of meetings, I came across two cycle reports regarding the Elephant & Castle cycle by-pass. These reports were based on many hundreds fo hours of volunteer time to producing cycle count data.
Not many people know that cyclists can avoid the Elephant & Castle roundabouts by using a cycle by-pass. It isn’t offer the most direct routes, but it does the job for those of us like me who get enough excitement from life without needing the adrenalin rush of cycling around those roundabouts.
If you’re interested read the attached. The recommendations still seem as valid as eleven years ago. Shows what a good job the author Mark Hubbard and all us volunteers led by Michael Bridgeland did all that time ago.
Its been reported that Transport for London has now estimated the cost of building the Cross River Tram would be £1.3 billion but that 40-60% of that would be contingency funds ie. money in place on the self assumption TfL will screw up or not manage its contractors.
Over the last five years TfL extended the Docklands Light Railway from North Woolwich to Woolwich Arsenal with 2.5km of big bore tunnels under the River Thames. This was done on budget and on time.
Why is it that with that recent success TfL feel they can’t repeat such project management. Or is it a Political decision by the London Mayor Boris Johnson and the Labour Government who would have to fund a major part of it to make it sound so expensive that this decision to ‘can it’ is accepted.
Shame on them all.
Last week this years GCSE results A*-C with English and Maths for the Harris Girls Academy East Dulwich came out. The results had jumped 10% from the previous year. This bodes well for the Harris Boys Academy East Dulwich which is due to Open September 2009.
Some years ago a very dear friend was killed by a huge tipper truck (12 wheeled with 4 steerting wheels) turning left. The driver had been working 7 days a week for many months, 12-14 hours per day and being half term had a child in the cab. Whenever I see a truck in London I think of her. She will forever be young and beautiful.
What I’d never realised was how easy it is for a lorry driver when alert to find it hard to see a cyclists. A less alert driver through tiredness is even more likely to kill.
The following photo shows a cyclist in front of a lorry:
From above:
From the drivers position in te cab:
I found it quite shocking how he cyclists head of an average to tall man can only just be seen.
A recent Tory think tank report (Policy Exchange) recommends that Londons suburbs expand by 450,000 extra homes to house an extra 1,000,000 people. In essence this tory report suggests that rather than try helping to expand businesses outside London, especially in the North West, the nation should give up and encourage mass migration to London.
For Southwark we have already been set targets to build a huge number of extra homes (from memory 13,000). Such a proposal to add the requirement for an extra new 15,000 home build in Southwark is just weird.
In other countries they improve the infrastructure to attract or retain business. An alternate would be to make transport links from northern england to the SE so good little point in relocating to the south east. In France, Spain, Germany they have been rolling out high speed rail networks with this intention. They’ve been successful at spreading economic benefit and increasing national cohesion.
450,000 homes would cost minumum around £120bn to build without services or six times the price of a one high speed train line from Scotland to London.
We need a central government with more vision and humanity than mass migration from northern england to London. We need to start catching up with continental governments. Often these continental countries have lower per capita incomes than us yet they manage to fuind such transport schemes.