Sorry to hear you got a ticket. Unfortunately it seems that residents are in some cases moving signs or unblocking roads. Blaming Google or not seeing signs is sadly not a defence.
Remember the council can’t block the end of the road with Road Closed signs as residents still need access up to where it’s actually closed. So it’s unfortunate you got a ticket. I’ve had a couple when I’ve misread bus lane signs - sometimes they’re 7-10 and the next one is 24/7 and you miss the second sign - it’s cost of doing business when driving.
I’m not at all sure it is residents. I did see one of the Bishopthorpe ones that had clearly been moved by an industrial vehicle and the Devonshire Road blocks were moved by people using it as a rat run (or by the pavement people despite the fact it was closed due to a sink hole!)
I know it’s easy to pick and choose one’s quotes but:
The findings also reflect the impacts of changes to congestion charging in central London, as higher charges may be encouraging drivers to switch to routes outside the charging zone
The government made this a condition of the TfL bailout. If that hadn’t happened then there’d be no money to run the bus and rail network… what would have happened then.
Also the increase in traffic is kind of needed to get people to realise it’s time to rethink or switch behaviour. You saw in Wandsworth lots of people complaining that the Road Closure initiative wasn’t in place long enough to get people to rethink. In other cities it’s taken months if not years.
In my direct local observation I was cycling to Sydenham yesterday - a parked car pulled out in front of me on Dartmouth Road from around Boots and proceeded to drive to the Sushi parking at the other end of the road and pulled in with no indicator again and parked. These are the journeys they’re trying to get people to change (disclaimer again, as long as you’re able to walk or cycle). Clearly people don’t get it yet, but bear with it, it will happen slowly.
Note that the article states this is not a measure of traffic volume and is estimated from Waze GPS journey times. 153% means 53% increase in congestion. I’d have thought that is a great way to convince some people to look for alternative transport!
Also they noted that was on the day when everyone went back to work and to school all at the same time and people are probably still worried about public transport - if it’s not getting worse then people might. be adapting already.
The flip side is you can now race across central London in double the time…
Congestion within the central charging zone stood at just over half the levels of 2019
There are obviously two sides, if you are living in a less polluted street then you probably think that it is reasonable for the motorists to keep their pollution and lose time and productivity rather than negatively affecting your health.
Interesting to see the euphemism of strengthened for increasing prices
There are better ways to encourage alternative modes of transport just like laws but unfortunately the stick seems more effective. There is no prize which of the following slows down traffic: a sign or camera enforcement.
I won’t be driving my car north of the South Circular from October next year. If the ULEZ wasn’t coming in, I wouldn’t change my behaviour.
Please can you DM me when you get a response to your FOI Request.
When they responded to my last FOI they stated no PCNs has been issued up until 24th August as the cameras were not live so I’m guessing they’ve switched them on (can you please confirm when you drove through there?)
I have raised several FOIs asking for hourly / daily breakdown of PCNs and am in contact with two national journalists whom I am sharing data with because I believe Lewisham are simply using Covid as an excuse to close off “rat runs” and raise revenue without and sort of proper consultation or consideration of the impact on traffic / pollution in other areas.
Oh good, I’m sure everyone will be fine about being consulted properly this time around before they make any further changes!
Also I noted that Ealing are extending their trial for another 6 months - at least I’ve seen it on BBC London news in the mornings but can’t seem to find any notices online.
Relevant to this topic is the following change.org petition which has reached in excess of 9,000 signatures (note this is different to the Make Mayow Road safer one mentioned earlier which stands at about 800 signatures):
For balance I did try and find a petition to keep / extend the road closures in Lewisham, but didn’t find anything quite comparable. Perhaps someone here can find something comparable?
Interesting. Democratically elected council takes action on road safety measures. Some people petition it to change on the basis there was no proper consultation. It is impractical to have a consultation every time anything needs to get done: we could but it would be prohibitively expensive, time consuming and people would lose interest rapidly. That’s why you have local elections: to elect people to make decisions for you so you don’t have to bother. We elect these people to represent us. Someone is going to disagree every time government at any level does anything, constant petitioning…why? 9000 out of 300,000 residents is not a huge number.
On the flip side, why would you petition to keep something that’s already there? I expect a proper review at the end of the scheme then let’s decide if it’s effective and if we want to keep it.
A 9000-strong petition is huge and represents a groundswell of opinion that the council are picking up on. They’ve gone very quiet on social media about LTNs now and have acknowledged the need to ask the public about this divisive policy.
I’m only reporting what I would say is a not-insignificant petition which hasn’t been mentioned here before. 9,000 isn’t a huge number, but comparing it to the population of residents isn’t particularly useful either (and the petition also doesn’t require signatories to be a resident). For comparison, the “Save Duncombe Hill Green” petition reached over 5,000 signatures before it was presented to the Council and I wouldn’t belittle that.
But personally I don’t think democracy is limited to a couple of days voting every 4 years and petitions are a time honoured way for people to show what they care about and influence the decision making of those that have been previously elected. This is important, especially given that Covid response wasn’t on any manifesto or agenda at the time any elections were last held.
I know it sounds a bit regressive but I would have more faith in a paper petition of a few hundred people than an anonymous online petition even it has thousands of signatures.
There is no qualitative control that I can see with this petition. Many of the people signing will be people who contribute nothing to our borough except their pollution.
I am in favour of petitions but they have to be local and there has to be some quality control to ensure that they reflect local opinion. It takes a lot more effort to walk the streets collecting signatures, writing to councillors and writing your name on a petition than clicking Sign this petition with complete anonymity.
Indeed, and the same criticism can be levelled at the council’s own use of Commonplace for consultation.
Personally I think a paper based petition can also be faked or manipulated because it’s unlikely anyone is going to check names and addresses supplied.
The benefit of online is that it reaches a lot of people, but at the same time it does exclude other groups (those without easy access to computers).
