I don’t have off street parking, there is no parking outside my house and the nearest electric points are always filled with those red hire cars (even before the company existed and after it dissolved) or estate agent cars - and of course that is only for 2 hours
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Hi JRW,
I’m sorry to hear about your experience trying to report illegal parking near your home. If you’d like to email me your address at cllr_leo.gibbons@lewisham.gov.uk, I can take a look at the issue and speak to officers about it.
Leo
Afraid it is a bit too early to tell.
Here is a our monitoring strategy for the Lee Green LTN, which might also interest @ForestHull
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An assertion without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence. One can easily say we’re facing a crusade by a minority of people obsessed with keeping things as they are!
Forest Hill’s roads were predominantly built in the late Victorian era (I think, correct me if I’m wrong). They were never designed for cars, and certainly not for this level of traffic. As my Twitter thread comments on, wealthy residents used to live on large houses on the arterial roads. Then the car came along… and the wealthy residents moved to quieter residential streets and large houses were sliced into flats. It is large numbers of cars that spoil our roads.
As I pointed out earlier, we accept there will be a knock-on effect in the short-to-medium term. But we believe the reduction in road space will lead to traffic evaporation, as people realise there is not enough room for everyone to keep making short unnecessary journeys in their car. This is not certain, and so we are monitoring the first Low Traffic Neighbourhood (and all future ones) to judge its impacts.
Finally, our LTNs and Healthy Neighbourhood Programme have been part of a long-term ambition to reduce car dependency in the borough, it wasn’t simply a response to Covid-19.
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Hi Leo, thanks for the offer to take up my pavement parking issue, but I am in Sydenham ward and Liam Curran has promised to look into the specific problem.
My point is that there is no way of alerting the enforcement team of an issue in real time. Councils will never be able to afford constant patrols, but can respond to alerts.
It would take so little to set up a twitter account to contact for enforcement issues, and would massively improve residents’ satisfaction with Lewisham services. Can you look into this as a possibility?
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Most communication between council employees and council employees and contractors takes place via organisation-email. Twitter isn’t really the ideal vehicle for dealing with complaints. Most councillors ask for casework to be reported by email for example. I understand your frustration and it is good that Cllr Curran is looking into this. I’ll speak to him as well about your experience of slow/non-existent responses to traffic/enforcement complaints.
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All my reports have been sent by email, copied to councillors. I also rang the team directly, and found them very helpful and keen to tackle the problem immediately. They said there is one generic email contact, so specific operational alerts don’t get through to the team in time to deal with it. They advised me to phone in, but as I said, sometimes you can spend ages on hold.
A new app has just come on line to report fly tipping. I am suggesting that some similar arrangement would work for parking enforcement.
BTW, re twitter being unsuitable, the Metropolitan police @mps or @MetCC services work extremely well.
Scientifically probably yes but I know if I had a choice with my old diesel of sitting inside with the windows closed or standing at the back when I start it. I would always favour inside where you don’t smell the exhaust. Yes, if I could afford it I would buy an EV.
On the general thread, I don’t think there is a crusade from the cycling minority just people interested in their own health. The people who want roads closed don’t hate motorists or cars just the pollution they cause. Given a choice between 100 walkers/cyclists passing my house or 100 cars, most residents would choose the former. I haven’t seen a percentage figure for cyclists but I would say it is about 20% so using the standard 50% for car drivers. In most case the residents who want their roads closed are motorists but they just dislike other motorists polluting their roads. I doubt the cycling lobby really comes into it that much.
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I have lived in London (in several different Boroughs) for many decades and it seems clear that Lewisham tolerates pavement parking more than anywhere else. In Devonshire Road it’s worse than I’ve ever seen it in previous years, just when we need more pavement space for social distancing.
If there was one thing that would have a big (“for the many”) beneficial impact - for pedestrians, and for encouraging public transport - it would be re-designing the pedestrian crossing next to Forest Hill Station.
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The video shows the blue-lit emergency vehicle appearing to be wedged between a wooden planter and a parked white vehicle in Ferndale, south London
The fire engine became blocked as it attempted to enter a road which has been shut off to motorised vehicles
Firefighters had to continue on foot after it became trapped between a planter and a car
You posted about this two weeks ago…
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yup I posted a tweet. But the article in the national press (with all the details) was published only today.
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True, I think important to flag that it isn’t a separate incident, I don’t think that would be obvious to many. Some useful details from the article which of course the daily mail leaves to the end:
Meanwhile the London Fire Bridge (LFB) said the incident involving the stuck fire engine in Ferndale happened when firefighters were attending a person locked out of their home six doors down from where the fire engine was pictured.
A spokesperson said: ‘There was no delay to our attendance and there was no damage to the fire engine or the parked cars.’
The spokesperson added the the brigade ‘supports the LTN in order to assist the recovery from the pandemic and to promote active travel,’ and that it is consulted by councils on any proposed road changes.
Lambeth Council meanwhile says the position of the planter, which was placed as part of the trial LTN scheme, was changed the day after the incident.
Cllr Claire Holland, Deputy Leader added: 'It is important to ensure those who do not have access to a car - around 60 per cent of Lambeth residents – aren’t forced to walk or cycle on dangerous roads or forced to use public transport whilst the risk of transmission remains high.
As previously discussed too, I think that white car may be on double yellows…
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Yes, I was just going to highlight this section as well:
'A spokesperson said: ‘There was no delay to our attendance and there was no damage to the fire engine or the parked cars.’
The spokesperson added the brigade 'supports the LTN in order to assist the recovery from the pandemic and to promote active travel,’ and that it is consulted by councils on any proposed road changes.’
@PV, @LeoGibbons - fair, of course, to point out those details. But I wouldn’t want us to casually brush off an incident like this.
We can all see how this could be far more serious if there was a fire, for example, or if the fire engine had got physically wedged and couldn’t manouevre out.
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I think it would require a little more than redesigning the pedestrian crossing. With the train tracks and London road Forest Hill is basically split into three (or four) bits.
Devonshire Road is often the choke point because it is a very narrow road (too small for lorries and buses - no matter how funny that is) and tfl tries to control traffic on Honor Oak Road which means people chose to drive on a parallel road
The fire brigade are quite sanguine about it, so I think the assessment of risk is ok.
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The Fire Brigade spokesperson doesn’t want to get into a political disagreement with government and local councils, you mean?
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I can’t read in to their plainly worded statement in any more detail than they’ve written I’m afraid.
If there’s any more info that suggests they’re taking a political stance do share.
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The definition of minority is anything less than the majority so I don’t think it’s unreasonable to say a minority of people are pushing these schemes.
What we really need is a time machine to do two things
-
Go back to when the EU/UK relied on bad scientific data to push diesel vehicles which have ruined air quality/livability in European cities for a generation.
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To go forward to the year 2050 when all vehicles are electric and have some form of autonomous technology that makes it incredibly safe for cyclists.
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