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.

 

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.

 

Get Britain Cycling

The All Party Parliamentary Cycling Group have produced a report titled Get Britain Cycling.

I’m chuffed to say that thE Liberal Democrats have adopted all 18 of the recommendaitons.

The key components being:

–  government providing funding of £10 per person each year for cycling. That this amount rise to £20.

– cross -departmental cycling action plan be produced

– appoint a national cycling champion

– raise the target proporiton of all trips by bike from 2% in 2010 to 10% by 2025.

These actions owuld produce a heatlhier, happier and richer country.

Carmageddon

It has been reported that one of the coalition minister Tory Eric Pickles wishes to relax parking restrictions. He fear local authorities are “anti-car”.

We’ve had our own local issues around Lordship Lane and the bus lanes being zealously enforced but what would happen if Mr.Pickles had his way?

Through a weird quirk of fate an full scale experiment along the dogmatic lines Mr.Pickles proposes has taken place in Aberystwyth.

Due to a mix=up between the police and Aberystwyth local authority they’ve had no parking enforcement for exactly 12 month.

These extracts from 1 June Daily Mail describe the chaos Mr.Pickles wishes up the rest of the country…

“For the last 12 months, citizens have been free to park wherever they please, without fear of prosecution. And any faith in human nature, that people might act responsibly and observe the restrictions anyway, is quickly dispelled by a visit to the town. Forget Armageddon – this is Carmageddon. Everywhere you look there are cars parking where they shouldn’t be: on single yellows, on double yellows, next to bus stops, on pavements , and – most brazenly of all – in just about every disabled parking space available.”

“As the residents of Aberystwyth are discovering, the iron is that when,  in theory you can park anywhere, you can’t in reality find anywhere to park.”

“With allocated loading bays being blocked by family saloon, frustrated delivery drivers are simply stopping their lorries in the middle of the street with queues of he-up motorists honking in frustration and demanding to know when they will be moving on.”

Bus Crashes

Bus Garage Collisions London 8,600 buses travel an amazing  490 million kms a year across 700+ bus routes. Last year 2.35 billion bus customer journeys. So bus trsavel is safe but then the drivers are professionals.

The following is table of buses that crashed and needed repaits.

Major crash requires more than 40 hours of repairs, minor crash less than 40hours of repairs. Apparently the higher rates such as at Perivale, which is an engineering centre, and Stamford Brook, which is a London United refurbishment centre, indicate where the buses are taken for repair or renewal rather than the depots at which they are stationed for operation of routes.

Even allowing for this big variations between the crashes per million kms. Why the difference. Clearly some bus garages are doing something smarter than others. It means more crashes than we truly need on London roads.

Paxton Green roundabout ideas

images  This weeks Local Transport Today  has an interesting article about Dutch style roundabouts called a turbo roundabouts.
They provide 1-1.5 time more capacity than traditional 2 lane roundabouts but with 50-70% less serious crashes than respectively traffic signalled & give-way junctions.

Struck me as a possible model for Paxton Green.

You can see a 70second video of the concept here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMYib3IR43I

Do you think it would help solve the problems at this intersection?

The Millennium Link or Connect 2 Partially Completed

Great news that the bridge is finally open. HOORAY.

Alastair Hanton, Michael Bridgeland and I originally proposed this in 1998. Please see attached graphic and map we used in our Southwark Cyclists report.The Millennium Link Graphic

It was meant to be a The Millennium Link a project linking northern Southwark to the Millennium Dome. We met so many people so many times – everyone from Network Rail, TfL, Southwark Council – officers and councillors, Southwark Police, Lewisham Police, British Transport Police, Sustrans….

Lots of hurdles. Walking the route to double check our assumption, site meetings with the great and good. Simon Hughes MP was very supportive. Things like arranging for the Blue Belle Railway to remove the redundant tracks – which were of a very old heritage railway design avoiding a major project costs while helping a charity.

Eventually Sustrans agreed to take it forward by which time it was 2002.

Not quite sure how so much of the project became side tracked linking Peckham to Rotherhithe but either way this off-road key link is in place and things can be added onto it.

I really recommend trying it and dreaming of what it will eventually lead onto.

And a particular well done to Alastair Hanton and his extreme long lasting tenacity – 15 years to make this project happen. I’m halfway through raising a family in the time it has taken.

But roll on the next phase…

Shocking London Bus Crashes

Very sad article about two buses a day on average crahsing with pedestrians and cyclists.

During the last six years 145,533 bus crashes. With 3,591 pedestrians and 1,219 cyclists injured or killed during that period. Injuries such as little Pollyanna Hope tragically losing a leg while on a pavement.

With London having 8,500 buses that means every year on average each London bus will have nearly 3 crashes (2.85). Even with their very high bus mileage it still seems an outrageous number.

But what I find shocking is that late in 2005 TfL with the First bus group deployed a $700,000 fully immersive Bus simulator to train bus drivers of off the roads. In the US they’ve been shown to help reduce crashes by 43%.

I had the good fortune to spend a day on it trying it out representing the London Cycling Campaign. You can really create a lot of tough driving quickly and repeatedly. Drivers can have what happened played back to them and really learn a lot quikcly. It got wrapped up in a light TV show but that didnt deter me from having a good go on the bus simulator. They threw sleet, storms, throngs of suicidal cyclists. First still say theyre operating it.

What was really surprising was the large insurance claims office at the other end of the bus simulator corridor. Never forgotten that. And with the stats revealed it’s not surprising they need such offices.

But the bus simulators proposed have never been rolled out across London as planned. And we still have an unacceptably high crash rate for fulltime professional drivers.

If you think London Buses need to do better and deploy bus simulators tell London Mayor Boris Johnson at mayor@london.gov.uk and copy me  james.barber@southwark.gov.uk

East Dulwich highways renewal

The plans for Southwark highway and street lighting maintenance have been issued pending a cabinet councillor decision:

http://moderngov.southwark.gov.uk/mgIssueHistoryHome.aspx?IId=50000667&Opt=0

For East Dulwich it’s proposed to:

– Barry Road resurface between Lordship Lane and Goodrich Road 22m costing £32,460

– Peckham Rye resurface and renew pavement between Barry Road and East Dulwich Road 400m costing £89,931

– Landcroft Road resurface 400m costs £57,912 – this appears to have been rolled over from this financial year with no explanation.

– Silvester Road resurfaced between Landcroft Road and Crystal Palace Road 200m costing £70,671

– Goodrich Road resurfaced between Landcroft Road and Hillcourt 418m costing £91,375

– Worlingham footway renewed 280m costing £12,930

– Dunstans and Goodrich Road replace defective lamp posts

– Install Pigeon mesh at various bridges across the borough to control pigeon mess.

Do you think this makes sense for East Dulwich and Southwark – let us know what you think?