Close to half a million, according to that News Shopper article.
That’s about the same amount as was spent building and then demolishing the Adamsrill School decant buildings on the Council (ie local taxpayer) owned depot on Willow Way. The contractors took pride in building it. Lovely buildings. Used for three terms, then demolished by some very upset contractors. The site remains derelict to this day. At least one local business tried to buy or rent it. And received a “no” from the Council. Sydenham Society funded a student project/report to come up with suggestions for multi use of the site (a Local Employment Zone) to fuel discussions with the Council. That report disappeared into Kafka Towers. The rest is silence.
I’m sorry but that’s a false statement. The actual article says:
This is despite the council starting work on a host of schemes across the borough, which it expects will cost £460,000.
There are clearly multiple schemes underway and it’s a cost estimate for ALL of them not just for Blackheath.
I’m not disputing that government wastes money at all levels (Garden Bridge anyone?) but I think your comment is selectively quoting a number to fit your narrative.
Apologies. But I wasn’t “selecting a number to suit [my] narrative”. I made a mistake. By the phrase “the scheme” I misinterpreted @anon5422159 as wondering what the entire scheme cost, rather than just that small part of it. I don’t need to select a narrative to suit my purposes, unlike elements of our Council and certain pressure groups.
So I will rephrase. According to the News shopper these temporary/trial road measures (still being called temporary trial measures) are costing 460k across the borough.
So how much do you say it cost?
Lewisham has form on wasting our money and I used the Adamsrill School decant as an example. Those buildings cost us 500k and could have been repurposed, rather than demolished after one academic year of use. The Kirkdale area had lost all its public infrastructure in the few years preceding that, including the Kirkdale Institute Adult Education Centre, so even if the area has plenty of children’s schools and facilities I’m sure a use could have been at least discussed.
I think a broader discussion about local government spending & efficiency would take us off topic.
What I do find daft is the people in the News Shopper story claiming they’re more likely to run over a kid if they have to drive past a school. Jeez if you’re genuinely worried about that then try cycling instead if you can, or perhaps even just slow down in general.
Dear Leo, thanks for this. The report only deals, however, with London Residents. What I think we really need is solid data on is how many long distance and medium distance commuters are driving through Forest Hill, New Cross and other busy locations every day. My guess is that many commuters (perhaps 40%) driving through the Borough every working day are coming in from Kent, Essex and Sussex via the A2 and A20. [edit. The report itself states that over one third of car journeys in London are non-resident drivers. I couldn’t see anything in the report about the differences between Boroughs in this respect. Also not clear overall where the data is from.]
It’s easy to penalise London residents with high charges for parking a car that they use once a week to go to Sainsbury’s and twice a year to go on holiday. But the non-resident commuters are paying nothing to drive through residential streets causing air pollution, noise pollution and congestion.
So we’re OK to break any laws we disagree with? I don’t think that will end well. I bet these are the same people who complain about cyclists jumping red lights.
No it’s not OK to break laws. They are making a mockery of the “barriers”! A poorly thought out and executed scheme. I hope Openreach take action on their van driver!
Is there anywhere for the vehicles to turn, or is it literally an instant traffic jam?
I can’t see from the video, but the map on this page suggests the modal filter maybe on the borough boundary in the middle of the road with no turn off:
If that’s the case, trying to get that lot to back up may be impossible, hence the drivers getting frustrated and going around.
I could be completely wrong, but I rarely trust something I see straight from Twitter!
Yes, you can see from the vid, the drivers have no alternative. And I’ve read in comments online that there’s inadequate signage at either end of the road warning drivers of the blockage in the middle.
I see people have taken pleasure in reporting these drivers to the police though (62 likes of the below comment):
Let’s hope the police “plan” is to a) demand adequate signage or b) remove the scheme
Its inappropriate to punish drivers for doing the only thing possible when they’re stuck in a impossible jam that they cannot back out of due to the queue of traffic behind them (which is probably unaware of this arbitrary road block).
When discussing this on Twitter I once again heard the trope that a “majority” wanted this scheme. So I pointed out the straw poll on SE26.life (an early indication that a majority is actually against the scheme). I was derided for the low participation in the poll (68 people), which is a fair criticism. So then I asked my skeptics to count how many people had voted for the Upwood Road scheme during the council’s official “consultation” on Commonplace … suddenly the skeptics went quiet…
Another failing here is that the traffic planners should be experienced enough to know that some drivers would choose to take the pavement if presented with such a partial blockage. It’s still not right for the drivers to take to the pavement, but the traffic planners should have implemented something to protect the pavement too.
I also can’t help but feel if this ‘emergency response’ had been implemented a few months earlier - when there was much less traffic - these schemes would have bedded in much better and may have had a more desirable outcome.
The poor placement and lack of signage could also be because the remainder of Upwood Road is in a different borough and Lewisham didn’t consult the other council? It happened in Blackheath too:
This is probably because Colfe’s School is on Upwood Road and there could be children walking along the pavement. Perhaps they’re parents.
I’d be doing an annoyed 3 point turn and then telling anyone else who’s backed up behind me they need to turn around. It does seem like it’s in a daft place, but that doesn’t excuse driving on the pavement near a school entrance.
If you’re the lead car, how do you communicate with every driver up to a quarter of a mile behind you? And how do you prevent further cars from joining the jam?
Trust me, I’ve been in this nightmare scenario before, and there’s no way backward. Only forward.
And I feel very sorry for the tradesmen in the video who are now being reported on twitter for mounting the pavement. They’ll probably lose their jobs. These are the kind of skilled people that travelled miles into London to fix everyone’s broadband, or repair dangerous sinkholes. I wouldn’t blame them for refusing to ever drive in London again.
When we’re complaining about slow responses to infrastructure emergencies, let’s bear this topic in mind. Calamitous traffic management, which leads to commercial drivers refusing to drive in London, will affect all Londoners.
So the argument is: if my broadband is out, I’m probably getting a slow response because of a road closure? And I should be happy that my engineer is driving on the pavement to get to my outage sooner rather than later. OK cool, got it.
So if I need to get home urgently I can ignore the dumb pedestrian crossing traffic light on my bike because there’s nobody crossing and it’s safe for me to go through it? Better still I could go around it over the pavement! Seems fair.
So is it that my broadband is taking longer to fix now because Openreach fired one of their engineers for driving on the pavement outside a school and as an organisation they’re taking action to deal with the reputational risk associated with it? Sorry, I’m confused.
If it’s unavoidable then I’m sure he’ll make his case and they’ll decide to keep him on.
In a similar vein you’re not supposed to break the law moving out of the way for emergency vehicles either - if you go through a red light to let an ambulance through and get photographed, then the emergency vehicle doesn’t give you a pass to break the law. It’s still your ticket.
It’s not as simple as that. When it’s framed as a “driver broke the law” scenario, the employer will have no choice but to fire the driver.
My argument is not that drivers should mount pavements.
My argument is that we should try to understand what kind of awful situation would compel tradesmen to do so. They know that if they’re caught they might lose their entire livelihood.
Notably absent from any pro-roadblock comments is a recognition of motorists as human beings. We hear them described as “rat runners” and worse. This kind of dehumanising rhetoric is, I think, deliberately applied in order to justify hostile measures against them.
