Well of course if people move out of London then they will need their cars because there is no public transport. (I’ve posted on SE23.Life before about this, so I shan’t bang on about it now.)
But there is a real issue with the lack of internet coverage. I have just bought a new phone. It is not 5G compatible, which doesn’t bother me a jot because at my mum’s village in the New Forest I’m lucky if I can get 3G. 
My work are already asking me if I can remote work once I move away
At the risk of going off topic I wonder if we are at a turning point for London, other large cities and working life in general. The amount of people I have talked to who do not want to return to the “old ways” is substantial.
It could have enormous social and economic ramifications in years to come, maybe even the decline of big cities or at least central business districts.
I wonder the same thing, but I had my first face to face meeting in a while with a few people in the same room for work this week and it was such a relief after months of Skype, I suspect as soon as we get back to some extent of normal we’ll start to slip back to old norms. As you say, if big changes are permanent, how many businesses go under because they are set up around high capacity offices? The domino effect could be huge.
Half of Lewisham’s population manage without cars. We pay taxes that go towards roads and pavements, so a bit of focus our favour is nice.
I think we all pay taxes for things that we don’t use. I’ve been paying them and NI for 50 years (never claimed job seekers or child allowance and still no pension, heigh ho 
). But that’s just what you do.
But as far as roads and pavements go, we do all use them because even if we don’t go out of our homes, we have services that use them - everything from refuse collection, through buses, via online shopping to emergency services - I think I even heard an ice cream van yesterday and got terribly excited, but couldn’t find it. Maybe one day I’ll have visits from a carer or district nurse or chiropodist that will be my only visitors from the outside world.
But work is about so much more than getting the job done, isn’t it? It’s about getting to know people and socialising and bouncing ideas around. In my salad days it was even sometimes about romance.
Well yes that is my point. We all pay for and benefit from roads. The views of non drivers are as valid as drivers particularly as we are half the borough.
However fixing an issue means sometimes the dominant group, in this case drivers, ceding a bit of ground.
No one is saying disabled people or those otherwise reliant on cars should be disadvantaged but to echo Leos point there are a lot of short car journeys in London made by abled bodied people.
In the end most of the issues drivers complain about are caused by drivers - to fix this everyone has to want to change and be prepared to cede some ground.
I know myself I am guilty of this. Lived in london for 10 years without a car. Now have one shared with other half since last year. Partly because my personal life has also shifted from London centric to heading to the countryside to visit friends and family. And as 2 of us the car makes more sense versus two fares always. I know since getting the car I have become more lazy. Sometimes hoping in the car whereas previously I would have wait a day or two for several errands and walked down/travelled to wherever to fulfil all. Now can pop out whenever I need to immediately. In my block of 7 flats a couple of years ago there were 2 cars in the car park. Now we have 8 (so clearly 1 outside neighbour taking advantage). Residents have changed. But lots of coming and going from several cars which supports the theory of short trips.
We are looking to move further out of London, accelerated on the back of offices moving towards supporting more home working. My partners frustration is certainly when driving back the congestion on South circular and just the final couple of miles back to our flat. That isn’t to say we want to change the layout here but we recognise we want a different life style and move out. As a driver being stuck behind 3 red busses can be frustrating but for 10 years those busses were a life line. Particularly moving into my flat I was doing so many trips to Wilkos in Penge and B&Q in Sydenham. Probably one of the reasons I managed to secure a flat was because of money I saved not having a car in London and relying on public transport (and friends to pick me up from train stations in the sticks when visiting).
Well one of the drivers in growth of car ownership is cheap car finance. I wouldn’t bank on that lasting.
I have been offline for a while but will reply regarding my two comments:
I am not advocating just using CommonPlace as the only form of comment/voting but I would say that it reaches more than the Assembly system. The Forest Hill assembly was poorly attended both by Councillors and local people in the last few years. It didn’t reflect the diversity of the borough across most criteria race, age. There was rarely anybody under 50 and the average age was probably 65. I don’t think the location where it was held made much of a difference to attendance though the Pools and Sydenham School got the crowd over 20 whereas the Honor Oak venue struggled.
The Assembly was the old democracy and was subject to gaming in the sense that you got people inviting their neighbours, friends and family to sway matters especially at funding times where a small strategic group could sway a vote.
I don’t see Gaming/Social Media as bad though it might be an age/outlook thing. Gaming to me is engagement, you need to get people involved, talking about stuff to get momentum for change. In the road sense, is it that wrong that a group of neighbours come together to make their road a better place by putting in modal filters.
I agree with the majority that we should start with trying to make residential roads less friendly to cars. I think it will make through roads less busy in the long run but probably not initially as it takes people time to adjust. Hopefully we can get rid of the play out street scheme as we won’t need it any more. We should be able to let our kids play out or cycle on our roads every day of the month not just the one day a month where we block off the street from cars.
There are comments but I have seen nothing concrete. @DevonishForester , I am sure you know about the working groups for Devonshire road and Thorpewood Avenue, it seems strange that the Silverdale/Bishopsthorpe got it’s original impetus from something similar and had been acted on but I haven’t heard anything similar happening here. I have seen comments about the 2 roads, traffic, cycling, pedestrians, 700 kids plus carers and teachers but no action on these.
On a more personal note, many of us are cycling and walking more. I wonder if we should run a scheme to reward roads that are more environmentally friendly, give people rewards for not having a car or driving low miles, points for having a front garden, penalties for creating a driveway out of their garden, cycling, walking to the shops, I know it is gaming but it might get engagement. Reward would be modal filters for your road. @LeoGibbons, this could be done with an app relatively cheaply with a Council audit afterwards to validate self-reporting.
This is much more of a problem with online consultation.
Not only can people invite their friends and family (and also complete strangers from around the world), but people can create multiple accounts to boost their own opinions. Commonplace has no checks and balances to protect against this.
I think as a minimum level of protection, people should be required to enter a unique code from, say, their council tax bill, which is then validated against their address, and which gives one vote, and one vote only.
What majority is that? Measured how, exactly? Looking at the comments I see on social media (not on dot life forums), the response to modal filters is absolutely scathing.
Apologies for the fruity language below (Facebook doesn’t attract the same quality of conversation that we do here), and don’t take my posting them here as a personal endorsement
I’m no expert here but doesn’t the majority of road tax go to the pockets of the Highways Agency for the upkeep of motorways? I’ve got by in London (two and a half years now) without a car but as soon as the dust settles I’m gonna buy one so I can move further out. Beyond the M25 you’re stranded without wheels.
Hi there - can you elaborate on the below at all? Thanks!
Vehicle Excise Duty is structured around CO2 emissions and is just general taxation i.e. goes into the big pot. It’s not X amount in, X amount back on roads.
It’s daft because it penalises people in towns who drive less. So if you drive 3000 miles in your 3.0L Merc you pollute less than 12,000 miles in your City runabout but you still pay more VED. Apparently a proposal to drop it and increase fuel duty was shot down because it was proportionally worse for people who live in the country.
Anyway, pollution in town is horrible if you want to walk or cycle anywhere - if road closures cause more congestion and more diesel fumes then that’s also not ideal. You can’t win.
The majority in Lewisham who don’t own cars which is around 53%.
I am part of the minority who do and am not anti-car just choose between using the car, walking or cycling. I tend to use the car for long journeys, bike for medium journeys and walking for local trips to the shops. I am avoiding public transport.
I don’t rate Facebook groups as most are controlled and tend to be similar people with shared opinions. I have to compliment .life forums for at least being a more open to all form of communication.
I will agree though with a lot of the criticism of the council that they seemed to forget basic commonsense about filtering/blocking roads. You need to give people advance notice, there wasn’t any from Sydenham or Dacres roads. You have to put in barriers that people can’t easily move, the last time I walked past, people had moved the signs/barriers.
Me too. I’m surprised by the lack of interest in what Councillor Gibbons has posted.
Please can you quote your source for this info? (I doubt it includes commuter journeys via the A205 at rush hours.)
So they don’t make decisions, they just ‘oversee’ them?
I am not sure you are right to place your faith in this process. These traffic officers are the same experts who preside over the worst pedestrian facilities in London (IN YOUR WARD). I am talking about the disgraceful pedestrian crossing in front of Forest Hill Station. It is absolutely clear that the current design prioritises the flow of motor transport on the A205, over pedestrians trying to get across the road.
It’s an air pollution nightmare, and the pedestrian island in the middle of the road is doubly unsafe as it’s impossible to keep 2m distance from other hapless walkers stranded waiting for the lights to change.
For @DevonishForester http://content.tfl.gov.uk/technical-note-14-who-travels-by-car-in-london.pdf. ‘A little over a third (35 per cent) of all car trips are shorter than 2 km, just under a third (32 per cent) are between 2 and 5km and the remaining third are longer than 5km’. It is an illuminating read.
