Peckham Rye station

I was delighted to hear that £10.6M will be spent making Peckham Rye station and the immediate area around it something we can all be proud of.

I helped ensure this was in the Lib Dem 2010 local election manifesto so it has always been a priority for me and my political group. So its good to know its become a local Labour priority. Roughly half the money will come from Transport for London and half from Southwark Council.

Creating a large open square to the front of the station, renovate the station, create a buzzing pleasant day time and most importantly evening destination. Currently things like the cinema are fine but really under used. Venturing out into the centre of Peckham for leisure doesn’t seem popular. I regularly take my family but it feels odd with so few people around. Changing this for a cafe culture and hopefully other attractions will be a real fillip for Peckham and more generally Southwark.

The only fly in this ointment is the proposed four year time scale. Christ that’s a long time to make it happen. I wish I was the project manager…

Capital Projects

At the last Dulwich Community Council meeting we decided (in no particular order) how to allocate our limited capital to projects:

1. Artistically illuminate East Dulwich station bridge £10,000 – we think making the station area more attractive will help reduce crime and the fear of crime there.

2. Go slower signs £6,000 – residents often contact us that people are speeding on there roads but they don’t want speed humps. Where do you think we should put the 4-5 active speed signs?

3. Cycle contraflow on Henslowe Road £8,500 – some residents have told us its a long cycle round while others have told us they don’t like pavement cycling. This should solve both points but we hope to do it for a lot less than the ridiculous sum council officers have suggested.

4. Fix North Cross Road grot spot £4,000 – just by the electricity sub station.

5. Community notice boards £3,000 – they’ve worked well so far and more should work even better.

6. 20mph Lordship Lane £15,000 – we’re hopeful that with the new crossings on Lordship Lane simple signing of a 20mph speed limit will work making Lordship Lane even more attractive.

7. Trees on Lordship Lane £8,500 – we want to make Lordship Lane even greener and more friendly.

8. Goose Green School £5,400 – they’ve asked for help greening the school grounds.

9. Goodrich School £3,300 – they’ve asked for help greening the school grounds.

10. East Dulwich Crime Reduction fund £8,000 – some more funds for local Police to tell us how to reduce crime further.

11. Worlingham Road grot spot £5,000 – space between sheltered accommodation and 31A Worlingham Road.

12. Goose Green playground £5,000 – a little help to make it an even better playground.

Total £81,700 (with reserve of £312).

Bollards to you

Southwark has 1,282 illuminated bollards. They cost £27 each per year in electricity alone or £34,614 in total.

To replace them all with non illuminated or solar powered bollards would cost around £540,000 giving a rate of return 6.3%.

I’m hopeful that the illuminated bollards in the Dulwich area replacement will start in the new financial year. But with time non illuminated bollards will be used which are even cheaper than solar powered one.

These two initiatives over time will help reduce Southwark’s carbon footprint, clearly save money and hopefully make our street look less industrial.

Crossovers

People park their cars on their front gardens for a variety of reasons in East Dulwich. Some to ensure they can park outside their home, others for security. Every crossover adds an extra place for pedestrians to be injured – they’re mini junctions.

One very simple idea some residents have proposed is that when new crossovers are proposed is to ensure that they are safe under section 184(5) of the highways Act 1980 to require a mini speed hump at the edge of the pavement with the private land. Sections 184(3) & (4) and (1b) of the same act allows local authorities to impose such conditions.

Crossovers need to also ensure that they are largely at the level of the pavement maintaining the pedestrian priority and NOT lowered to create a mini bits of new highway.  Only then can we ensure pavements are fully attractive for walking and safe for our children.

New Lordship Lane crossing – update

This is the latest update I’ve received from council officers. Generally good and progress news.

Site 1 (Lordship Lane / East Dulwich Grove) is now fully complete and was commissioned for use at 9:30am yesterday. I am pleased to inform you that the facility is working well and is already heavily used by pedestrians. The operation of the signals is also assisting with local traffic management by assisting vehicles turning in and out of East Dulwich Grove whilst the lights are red to general traffic on Lordship Lane.

Site 2 (Outside the Supermarket) has been constructed (including all civils works, footway buildout, carriageway table, antiskid surfacing and paving). Unfortunately we are still waiting for BT to disconnect the existing telephone box outside the supermarket, which is in line with the western crossing location. We have requested a detailed response from BT as to why there has been a delay in disconnecting the power supply to the box when their planning application and agreement to proceed with the scheme was granted in September last year. We anticipate that we will have a confirmed date by the end of the week and TfL are on standby to install the signal equipment once this date has been confirmed.

Once the telephone box has been disconnected and removed, then it will take approximately 5 days to install and commission the new signals. I will keep you updated accordingly.

The new parking bays are currently being installed, with line marking and sign post implementation to be completed by the 30th March.

Hellish forecast

Road traffic volumes are being forecast to balloon by 50% over the next 25 years from 2010 to 2035.
What a depressing forecast from the Department of Tansport.

This seems beyond a stark contrast with a decade of falling car use – often called beyond ‘peak car’ use.

Partly these predictions are from planned population growth from immigration etc and partly from predictions of people driving more. But at no point has the price of fuel been considered, increased use of the Internet avoiding the need to travel or the fall in the levels of adults holding driving licenses.

It also assumes no step growth in cycling or urban transport in our cities. Effectively a forecast of my idea of hell on the roads.

What possible motivation could a Department of Tansport with a history of being the Department of motor transport have for such obviously wrong forecasts?

The Charter School

I was shocked to read the admissions adjudicators report about The Charter School admissions. The report is shocking. Amazingly Southwark Council supported the school submission to the adjudicator despite the council leader being a ward councillor for the most negatively affected area.

BUT I’m pleased to see the school has now acted quickly to accept the reports findings about the schools admissions administration hadn’t reflected the actual policy and this is corrected. This will change who goes to this school – probably at the margins – but only time will tell what impact this has. People will buy and sell houses to be closer to outstanding schools so really hard to tell what the long term impact will be.

But the good news the school now accepts safe walking distance using routes that local Police officers has confirmed are safe rather than mapping that effectively was driving routes only.

Well done to all the residents who made this happen.

£10 gift

The Lib Dem GLA team have submitted their amendments to Boris’s budget. Lots of useful suggestions to save lots of money from what appears wasteful or overly generous staff perks – such as free housing for senior Police officers to free travel for TfL friends and family.

This budget would see £10 less taken from every London family every year while providing the following extras:

  • Reinstate the 150 sergeants -I’d hope we’d get our East Dulwich sergeant back again.
  • One PCSO within each Safer Neighbourhood Team to work with young people.
  • Fund  more Safer London Foundation to boroughs with the highest levels of gang crime.
  • Improve cycle safety including vital junction safety improvement works.
  • Better and fairer fares package: the One Hour Bus Ticket to allow passengers to change buses and only pay one fare; part time Travelcards to stop the discrimination faced by those who only work part of the week; reintroduce a Zone 2-6 one day Travelcard to save people having to pay Zone 1 fares when not required; and to help those often low income earners, we will introduce an ‘early bird’ fare for the Tube, TfL rail and DLR.
  • Promote walking.
  • Ensure continued operation of the London Fire Brigade Museum and develop a ‘Blue Light Museum’.
  • Protect environmental projects and speed up the rate at which London’s buses and taxis become cleaner and develop a central Clean Air Zone where pollution is worst.
  • Guarantee the roll-out of easy-to-install energy efficiency measures.
  • Tackle rogue landlords establishing minimum standards for private rented housing.
  • Take effective action to build more affordable housing in London.

All in all a great budget amendment to make London a better place.

What would you do to make London work better?

Capital road pricing

Congestion in London can be grim – even with the Congestion Charging Zone. At this time of year, a fortnight of bliss, getting around town by bike or car with near empty roads is a cinch. But normally our roads are bulging with people travelling generating enough air pollution to kill 4,000 Londoners every year. The plans for London to grow by a million people will only make this beyond worse – calculated to be 20% worse. With precious few plans to increase public transport enough what should be done?

A study about road pricing of the capitals roads has just been produced which states “It is our view that a London-wide road pricing scheme is essential and without it congestion will worsen, air pollution will worsen” it also states “the health of Londoners will suffer, CO2 reduction targets will be missed”. Heady stuff. The study and its review has impeccable academic credentials Professors Whitelegg, Goodwin and Nash.

They suggest a fee of 20p per km (roughly 30p/mile) would cut 10% of car trips while raising £1.2bn gross a year from the remaining 90% of car trips. These sums are enough for a new tube line to be built biannually. Very appealing. They also calculate other benefits such as bus costs coming down by around 11% from less congestion – reducing bus fares by 11% would really help the poorest Londoners.

The appeal is accentuated by their statements that “International evidence is very clear that when car parking places of traffic levels are reduced the local economy thrives and grows in number of people employed and turnover. This is because large numbers of people are shopping locally and have a greater amount of disposable income available for local goods and services because they have reduced spending on vehicles”. I know my family would use its car far less with road pricing  – we’d ration it for important trips – staying more locally to spend our money.

At the same time that the case for road pricing seems like a potential solution popular feeling, as reported in the 2010 British Social Attitudes Survey, shows that only 18% agreed people should pay more to drive on roads at the busiest times.

So for road pricing to happen would take a braver politician with a big sell.

For Southwark only half our households own a car and under half the traffic on our roads starts or ends it journey in Southwark. So we probably have the most to gain from road pricing. We also suffer more from air pollution killing residents with roads like the Old Kent Road. But I’ll not hold my breath that road pricing happens soon.

Lordship Lane – walking audit

In 2007 the East Dulwich councillors arranged for a walking audit of Lordship Lane. Over the years we’ve gradually been delivering it recommendations.

The final problems from that report that need fixing are crossing East Dulwich Grove where it meets Lordship Lane and crossing Lordship Lane around where the Coop/Somerfield supermarket it.

I’m chuffed to report that it has finally been agreed and approved to install three crossing to fixed these final problems. The timescales will be that the works will be completed by March 2012 and will include some rearranging of local parknig to ensure that overall a gain in car parking to make up for the loss of parking that these crossings need to proceed.

I’d like to thank residents patience. Businesses for highlighting that we needed to make good any loss of parking. Good challenge that we’ve ensured is more than met. And lastly a thank you to officers who’ve been really supportive to ensure we’ve come up with the best overal solution – and the East Dulwich Grove entry crossing solution was after a number of meetings with East Dulwich councillors and specialise consultants.

Roll on March 2012.