Council Crashes

Southwark Council officials have recently been suggesting that council vehicles crashing into cyclists 13 time in 1.2million miles driven by staff, who are professional drivers, is ok or even good.

This sounded really odd to me. So after a tiny bit of digging this is what I’ve found.

All car mileage in 2010 was 290billion miles covered by 28.7million cars. That ALL crashes of any severity of injury equalled 209,000 in 2010. Therefore for normal non professional car drivers a total crash rate of 1 crash for every 1.16million miles driven.

Clearly the council spokesperson is at best talking rubbish. If they have crashsed so frequently then clearly something seriously wrong.

The other tail end of the story was the council getting their truck drivers to get Certificate of Professional competence. This is a legal requirement! I should bloody well hope so.

Have you ever been crashed into by Southwark Council staff?

ED Changes for 2014/15

Every year local ward councillors get to decide how to spend some devolved Cleaner, Greener, Safer budget. The scheme started when Lib Dems first led the council in 2002 with only one year when it didn’t operate when the Labour administration wanted to use the money on pet Olympic projects.

I’m particularly excited by the prospect of improving the junction of North Cross Road with Lordship Lane. It’s one of our crash hot spots, doesn’t work well when closed for the street market on Saturdays. The Bike hangars will be a great experiment to see if they can work locally in East Dulwich – fingers crossed. And lastly trialling the Dulwich Hospital phlebotomy service on Saturdays. IT should really make it much easier for people to have blood tests outside of normal work hours and provide a real alternative to being at the hospital before 7am weekdays.

This year East Dulwich councillors have decided to allocate the following:

CGS capital:

–          ED Crime Prevention fund £10,000

–          ED street trees £10,000

–          Lordship Lane secure derelict property £4,500

–          Chesterfield £6,000 for upgrading street lighting to white light, £4,000 for pavement tree pit upgrading.

–          Bike hangars – fund 2 to be decided where most popular by residents £10,000

–          East Dulwich Community Centre (EDCC) children garden area materials £524

–          Bassano Street gating £2,000

–          Dawson Heights tree planting £1,000

–          Upgrade junction of NCR/LL £50,000

–          ED public Automated Emergency Defibrillators £5,000

–          Historic photos project £4,500

Total £112,524

 

CGS revenue:

–          Give and take EDCC events £1,500

–          Goose Green nursery improvements £1,400

–          EDCC gardening £700

–          WW2 plaques across Dulwich £667

–          Street cleaning machine extra half-time employee £11,605

–          Saturday Dulwich Hospital blood testing trial x 26 weeks (as per separate email) £20,000

Total £35,872

Fewer streets faster traffic?

A chap called Breass discovered the best overall flow of traffic may not be by the most direct route. In fact adding direct routes can slow down traffic. The corollary is removing shorter more direct routes can actually speed traffic up.

Example to demonstrate this…Imagine a single route between A and B that however many cars take this route it always takes them 10minutes. Add a second shorter route that takes 1 minute for every car using it. If everyone, all 20 cars, take the shorter route their average speed will be 20minutes. Chopping this shorter route and diverting them back to the less direct route would half their average journey time.

In New York they’ve produced this affect in real life. 42nd street, the second busiest road, was closed for a day. Instead of expected chaos traffic flowed much more smoothly.

I wonder what road in East Dulwich and Southwark would produce this effect?

Denmark Hill/Peckham Rye off-peak Victoria Station services

SouthEastern trains are consulting on their timetable changes to take effect 20 December 2014.

Please pasds your comments to mike.gibson@southeasternrailway.co.uk

These are my comments to him:

A number of residents in my ward use services from Peckham Rye and Denmark Hill stations. The ward I represent is only 10mins walk away from these stations.

Many found the loss of the South London Line appalling and we still anticipate its return after London Bridge redevelopment has been completed.

So any improvement in services to and from Victoria Station help fill the timetable void left from the SLL closure.

So I warmly support the return of later services from/to Victoria station to Denmark Hill and Peckham Rye and an additional hourly service off-peak.

I welcome that Saturday will reflect the Mon-Fri improvements.

I would urge that Sunday services also reflect off-peak Mon-Fri services. A 6-day a week service for a zone 2 station is very strange.

Yes, ELL2 provide services but only to go around London and not into London.

3 seconds

Living Streets have just launched a campaign to ensure the rules around how much green crossing time is allowed for pedestrians reflects research by University of London. This research shows  that most people over 65 years old can’t walk quickly enough to cross in time allowed. It’s also a dangerous problem for parents with buggies, young children.

Locally in East Dulwich we have the dreadful crossing points at the junction of East Dulwich Road with Crystal Palace Road and Adys Road. Immediately adjacent to this junction on the north east side is a great playground. 200m to the north a popular local school, Saint John’s and St Clement’s CoE Primary School. So it’s also a necessary route to school for many.

Do you support enough green time being allowed to make this junction safe for everyone crossing?

ED Crash Reduction Scheme

Police covering our area are leading a scheme to reduce road casualties.

One part is recruiting local resident volunteers to:

–          Conduct speed checks using hand-held speed cameras

–          Speed surveys

–          Collate and report registration of speeding motorists for Police action.

These are non-confrontational, non-enforcement roles and full training will be given. Completely flexible commitment.

If you’d like to help fight local speeding contact Sergeant Stewart Turnbull on 020 8721 2447 eastdulwich.snt@et.police.uk

20mph Police Enforcement

The Association of Chief Police Officers have just released new guidance about speeding.

It now includes enforcement of 20mph with new speed awareness courses being ready from November. The recommendaitons include sending errant drivers to speed awareness courses. Previously the Police counldn’t for 20mph speeding!

This change follows pressure from Lib dem Transport Minister Norman Baker.

Due to technology limitations this actually means people travelling 24->31mph, allowing for +10% +2mph for car speed display errors.

This is great news and should see fewer crashes and less severe injuries on our roads.

 

Messy East Dulwich Station

I am amazed how quickl the environs around East Dulwich station becomes so … wel rubbish…

ED STATION MESSWhat bothers me most is this litter comes mostly from East Dulwich residents and visitors.

Why would anyone do this?

If you spot someone dropping or throwing litter ask them to stop!

I’ve contacted southern again about sorting it out. The platforms and paths are leased to Southern but the grassy vegetation areas are owned and controlled by Network Rail. Network Rail are rubbish with rubbish.

 

Disaster of the litter falling on the wrong type of land to be cleared regularly.

Southern staff have promised they’ll find a permanent solution.

 

Goodrich and Pellatt Road Resurfacing

At the last Dulwich Community Council East Dulwich councillors had to make tough decisions about their devolved highway budget.

After visitng various part of East dulwich we decided to spend your taxes on:

– Resurfacing Goodrich Road between Barry Road and Friarn Road – it’s currently in a shocking state, quite frequented and on a route to schools.

– Resurfacing Pellatt Road eastern end. Again the road is in a terrible state.

The main council resurfacing budget is planning to resurface Ashbourne Grove and the remaining third of Landcroft Road.

 

 

Lordship Lane 20mph – at last

This week our long term plans to make Lordship Lane 20mph have come ot pass.

It’s now 20mph between Goose green roundabout and Melborune Grove where it meets Lordship Lane. 600m of high street now just that bit calmer.

We started trying to make Lordship Lane more friendly for locals and visitors walking about in 2006. In 2007 we had a Living Streets walkability assessment done which worked with locals to test the areas walkability.

Why? Because 99.99% of us walk.

We’ve added two extra formal crossings before, had many side roads with raised treatments, improved Goose Green with thrid arm having zebra crossings.

Last year Living Streets produced a report which reenforced our reasoning for this 20mph in particular is a Living Street report called The pedestrian pound. Making the main high street parts of Lordship Lane 20mph should make it better for people to walk around.

Any way the reports key findings:

•Research shows that making places better for walking can boost footfall and trading by up to 40%
•Good urban design can raise retail rents by up to 20%
•International and UK studies have shown that pedestrians spend more than people arriving by car. Comparisons of spending by transport mode in Canada and New Zealand revealed that pedestrians spent up to six-times more than people arriving by car. In London town centres in 2011, walkers spent £147 more per month than those travelling by car
•Retailers often overate the importance of the car – a study Graz, Austria, subsequently repeated in Bristol found that retailers overestimated the number of customers arriving by car by almost 100%
•Landowners and retailers are willing to pay to improve the streetscape in order to attract tenants and customers.