Thorpewood Ave School Street mEnd it or End it

Streetscape
#52

Yes Leo you and I disagree over the Mais House development. That is not relevant to this debate and people will not understand your distraction techniques or that you are having a dig at me personally or why. I am entitled to my opinion on what is happening at Lammas Green/Mais House just as I am on School Streets and Road Closures and on the flaws with the Local Democracy Review. Setting up a Council Local Democracy Review that reported that reported to the Labour Group did not inspire confidence.

Obviously I get under your skin. Rise above it. You’re the Politician. I’m just a citizen and voter.

I suggest that the Moderators remove the whole of Leo’s post to which I am responding and this one, so that this discussion is kept on track.

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#53

@LeoGibbons & @marymck while there are some great views and perspectives here, please lets keep to the discussion at hand and avoid any personal digs and arguments. It would be a shame to have to move anything to #moderator-actions, especially as there are a range of views here, all equally valid and informing.

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#59

John, the traffic warden option has failed to work at EB which is why the residents up there are getting 2 cameras to protect their driveways and gate that section. I think we should applaud their success.

#60

Leo, I have not said that I want Holy Trinity moved or that anything should be done to Dartmouth Road.

I pointed out that the most polluting and busiest section of Thorpewood Avenue is beside that school and that a School Street for Thorpewood Avenue should deal with that junction as a primary concern and not add more pollution to Holy Trinity…

I did reference their playground as you have stated that this intervention is to protect our most polluted playgrounds while I think Eliot Bank has probably one of the largest and least polluted playgrounds in Forest Hill if not Lewisham.

As you say the parking pressure is greatest below the proposed cameras and this is likely to make that worse. I think there is a very high level of apathy and disengagement with the council in TA(lower)/DHC/DH so I would say you will probably not receive a single concern/complaint.

#61

Emma, perhaps they should employ a more nimble and zealous traffic warden. I’m sure (s)he could dish out enough tickets to deter the inconsiderate and earn LBC a few quid.

Re your response to Leo it’s not apathy on lower TA, although it could be considered disengagement, but when you’ve been banging your head against a wall for years it’s really nice when you stop.

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#62

Actually the assembly meeting agreed that the group would look at traffic flow throughout Forest Hill, but behind the scenes it was changed into a Tewkesbury and Thorpewood group.

"Yer not from round 'ere" - should we challenge posts from non-SE23 residents?
#63

Ah that explains it! Thank you. Also I remembered that at the same time I was told there was a Thorpewood working group that there was somewhere else mentioned. Tewkesbury does ring a bell. Did @SophieDavis run that one and anyone know what the outcome was?

#64

I wonder how he selected which doors to knock on?

There is no viable voting system, as the two main parties collude to ensure First Past the Post stops voters truly expressing themselves. A lifetime of having to vote for the least worst option. Stinks!

#65

I did a little comparison of catchment areas for the two schools.
Eliot Bank is the small circle.
Holy Trinity is the large circle.

Although Holy Trinity has half the number of pupils, they come from a far more disperse area. The maximum walk to Eliot Bank from within the catchment area is about 12 minutes - and that’s only because there isn’t a pathway between Taymount Rise and Derby Hill Crescent.

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Source: https://www.locrating.com/school_catchment_areas.aspx?schoolid=urn100723&schooltype=0

For Holy Trinity (and Kelvin Grove with three form entry) some pupils have to travel much further. I would suggest that this is a good reason to implement a school street for Eliot Bank first. Whether the exact details of the scheme are right, I don’t know, but I think it is right to test out a school street for a school which has the smallest catchment area rather than the biggest - it is more reasonable to expect Eliot Bank pupils (and parents) to walk the short distance to school - and making this change during a pandemic also makes sense as more parents are working from home.

This is about changing behaviour, and the council is encouraging Eliot Bank school children/parents to be less reliant on their cars. The impact for residents on Thorpewood will be positive, although I do worry about the impact on Derby Hill Crescent and Kirkdale. The council will need to look carefully at the impact, but it is an interesting experiment which can only encourage Eliot Bank parents to be less reliant on motor vehicles.

On the issue of Lower Thorpewood, I have no idea how to solve the issue. A small CPZ for residents on the south side without driveways might help, and a footbridge from the Perry Vale car park to the swimming pool would make a huge difference.

Full disclosure: My daughter goes to Eliot Bank and, because she is in year 6, no longer requires anybody to take her to school (prior to that she may have had a lift to school on around five occasions in the last six years).

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#66

Good post @Michael.

Just a minor note (and I’m sure you’re already aware) the catchment area of a school only tells part of the story of where its pupils live. Siblings of pupils, and also those in priority admissions areas may live outside the “as the crow flies” area. And obviously, parents can move house after their children are admitted to a school.

So actually, parents could be travelling further than shown on the map you posted, necessitating car journeys in cases where a) the children are too young to use public transport b) public transport doesn’t serve their journey c) the children have special needs d) the parents have multiple school drop offs etc etc

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#67

I can tell you actually. Before I was elected, our Labour Party borough organiser informed us about which roads had the lowest ‘contact rate’ (then had not been canvassed in a while, or have a high-turnover) so we started by canvassing those streets, then nearer to election day we canvassed areas we believed would have a higher number of Labour voters (makes sense in an election!).

Since becoming elected (until Covid-19 hit!), myself, Peter, and Sophie have tried to knock on doors at least once a month in the winter months and twice a month during the summer months. How we’ve chosen locations has been a bit more amateurish - I have a ward map and I highlight areas we’ve visited and I choose them by thinking to myself ‘we haven’t been there for a while’. Not very high-tech I know.

Regarding the working groups. As soon as we were elected we were repeatedly contacted about two major points of contention - parking congestion/school-run congestion on Thorpewood Avenue and rat-running on the roads surrounding Tewkesbury Avenue. Organising working groups, via the Local Assembly, was mine and Sophie’s idea to try and understand the issues better and therefore help tackle them. “Behind the scenes” might mean the Assembly Steering Group, which you’re very welcome to join.

Sophie’s working group (spun from concerns from around Tewkesbury) is now dealing with traffic flow in half of Forest Hill ward (Between London Rd, Honor Oak Park, Wood Vale, Devonshire Road) and she is lobbying for Honor Oak to be prioritised for Healthy Neighbourhood funding. If anyone is interested in learning more about this working group they should email Sophie at cllr_sophie.davis@lewisham.gov.uk.

On a final note, I am not a fan of FPTP either. For Westminster elections I’d a like a hybrid system like AMS or AV+. Local elections, I’d likely prefer PR via STV, which they use in Scotland and N Ireland.

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#68

I am trying to be as open and as transparent as I can on here. I want to tackle what I read as cynicism towards the local authority and local ward councillors.

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#69

When I went to primary school every child walked to school.
It is not quite so simple these days. I think some parents drive their children to school because it is safer or because they need to go onto work afterwards.

I have visited every school in Lewisham and seen the traffic problems for myself. At one school local residents used to come out of their houses to go to work only to find that they had to wait for parents parked down the middle of the road to come back to their cars!

I suspect that this scheme may move the problem to somewhere else not very far away.

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#70

Full Disclosure here before I put in this opinion. I live on the lower part of Thorpewood Avenue and all my kids have attended Eliot Bank. I was on the Thorpewood Avenue Working group (TAWG), took the minutes and helped to keep order (which was challenging :grinning:) and in the past was in favour of a CPZ.
I am not so sure now with the current economic climate and job uncertainty that I and many others would want to take on extra expense.

Firstly in reply to Michael. I think it is more correct to say it is positive for the top of Thorpewood and negative for the already very congested bottom of Thorpewood. Many people though feel perhaps we should take one for the team.

Eliot Bank is an outstanding primary school and many people go to extraordinary lengths to get in there all of which I am sure are legal but it does mean where people live and the catchment area may differ over time. It tends to have people with greater income shown by the fact that only 10% of kids have free school meals. These two factors probably contribute to a lot of driving and to these people having difficulty changing their behaviour from using the car to walking especially if they are over 15 minutes walk away.

I would like to see some evidence on the impact of a school street for a small section of it vs the whole street vs no school street. A lot of children and adults travel between Dartmouth Road and Eliot Bank to go to the shops, cafes, pools and library. Are they going to be exposed to be any less pollution? or will it be a case of going from the less polluted area to an area with twice the pollution due to congestion.

Leo, you have said the you want to be open and as transparent as possible and want to tackle cynicism so I am going to put forward an allegation which has been said to me about the TA Working Group and what happened when it finished. I am not saying it is true but I think it is in the public interest to air it so you have the opportunity to respond.

The received opinion/allegation seems to be:

The TAWG met, didn’t achieve any consensus apart from the fact that any scheme should benefit all residents of the avenue and not push the problem from one end to the other. Any scheme proposed you reminded us would need the agreement/consideration of neighbouring streets. You did have our emails so you were able to contact us later if any scheme was discussed or proposed.

The allegation is that subsequent meetings/correspondence took place between a small section of stakeholders which included local labour party members that had two vested interests, protecting the small number of driveways directly in front of Eliot Bank and retaining parking for teachers on part of Thorpewood Avenue. These stakeholders also held the interest which we all believe in that we should reduce pollution for local children. The difficulty was how do you balance both vested interests with the common goal. There is a feeling that the common goal of this scheme has been compromised because of vested interests.

There were rumours coming out of labour party circles a few weeks back that something was going to happen with school streets on Thorpewood. The first the residents and most of the members of the TAWG found out was on Sunday when a letter was posted through our letterbox. Members of the TAWG have asked why couldn’t you have emailed us the details earlier during the discussions. Why was it a closed discussion?

You seem to have annoyed local residents outside the scheme by telling them they should pay £200 to park their cars or else live in a more polluted area while you are going to spend allegedly tens of thousands of pounds to protect a small number of driveways.

Like a lot of other people lower down, I have finally given up after many years of banging my head against a wall in dealing with the council both as an individual, an assembly coordinating group member and the TAWG. I wish this scheme the best if it changes to benefit all the residents and local children but I am out.

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#73

Hi Paul,

I accept the criticism that as soon as I heard that a School Street was being considered for Thorpewood Avenue was in August I should have contacted the TAWG, despite Local Assemblies being suspended. At that point, the feasibility and design were being looked at again due to the availability of new central government funds for emergency transport programmes. All I said at this point was that I stressed the need for ANPR cameras, rather than rail-gates as I felt they would not be suitable for TA.

It was only at the end of September that I was told that a scheme was going to go ahead as planned (we could not afford more than two cameras). I knew the plan was to go ahead under new laws and the consultation would take place during its emergency 18-month (or less) implementation. However, I accept that a TAWG meeting probably should have been convened then, via Zoom or Teams, to discuss the plan and I should have seen this coming - that residents would feel like something is being thrust on them without a say. This probably comes from a lack of experience on my part.

I have heard similar rumours as this and I don’t know where they have come from. The scheme is not being done to protect ‘the vested interests of some personal driveways’, instead the scheme is being done primarily to disincentivise parents at Eliot Bank, driving their children to school - therefore - reducing pollution and congestion for all local children and residents along the whole length of Thorpewood Avenue.

As I have already said, if this School Street fails to discincentivise parents from driving to Eliot Bank and instead means they just park below Radlett Avenue, it has not worked, and I will push and push for the scheme to be reassessed.

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#74

The idea that I pushed for and supported a School Street - not as a (proven successful) programme to disincentivise car use and therefore reduce pollution and congestion near schools - but to protect the driveways of Labour members is exactly an example of the cynicism and bad-faith readings of our councillors’ actions, that I lamented in an earlier post!

I sigh.

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#76

I think unfortunately many people are already calling it the “Cameras for Driveways Scheme” but hopefully over time it will earn the respect of local people.

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#77

Thanks for this. It helps me to understand that you had already decided - before collecting any traffic data - which streets you were going to help. This explains how a discussion about the traffic flow in Forest Hill in a local assembly, then changed (without visible process) into focusing on Tewkesbury and Thorpewood. This was pre-determined; you had already decided, and then enlisted support of officers.

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I was in the supposed steering group, but was never contacted; probably not living in the preferred zones for action.

The agendas for the assemblies were never set by the assemblies.

If you want to remedy cynicism, then selecting which roads to close needs to use objectively verifiable data and transparent process. As things stand, it isn’t clear at all. Busy street A is closed to thru traffic because it is a “rat run”. Busy street B is told it has to put up with excessive traffic because it is a “strategic route”.

The perception is that these decisions are political; hence the cynicism that you say you want to do something about.

#78

@leogibbons
3 hopefully simple questions here

Firstly, is it correct to say that any (resident or non-resident) car parked on the top of Thorpewood Avenue is free to exit at any time including the School Street hours although obviously discouraged?

Secondly, traffic is going to be one way Eastbound on the top of Thorpewood Avenue only.
Can you explain the reasoning for this and the times of operation?
Is there any concern that any exiting from the protected area will lead to more congestion in the lower area whereas exiting from the top Kirkdale junction might ease this congestion?

Thirdly, is it correct to say that the only people who qualify as being in the school street are those in the upper half for the purpose of exemption to the regulations, so the lower half are having their right of way through the top part of their road removed?

#79

Hi Leo,

I live on Thorpewood Avenue near Eliot Bank and wanted to voice my preliminary support for the School Street, as proposed.

I appreciate that there is a complex history regarding the many issues affecting Thorpewood Avenue and the surrounding roads. I can also appreciate that the scheme, as proposed, will not solve all of these issues (and may actually exacerbate some); however, as a trial, and bearing in mind the limitations in funding which you have said mean a School Street for the entire street is not currently an option, I think that it is a good first step. It is then incumbent upon us, us a community as a whole and including representatives of both schools, to provide meaningful feedback to the council to ensure that its reassessment in due course is as fair and productive as possible. Do you think that if the scheme is successful in disincentivising parents from driving to Eliot Bank that would help you be able to access more funding in due course to extend the scheme further so that both primaries can benefit more equally from it? If so, then a commitment along those lines may provide comfort to some of those residents who are currently concerned by the limited scope of the trial? I think that it is important to ensure that meaningful data is collected during the trial (e.g. % parents using car as primary means of transport to/from school) so that its success or failure can be objectively assessed. Also, I think that it is important to make Eliot Bank more accountable for the behaviour of its students’ parents, as unless the school works proactively with parents towards achieving the aims of the School Streets scheme, the whole concept could be undermined by parents failing to change their behaviour and simply congesting nearby roads instead. Will the council be able to take more responsibility for liaising with the school to ensure that they take an active role in promoting the success of the scheme? Perhaps I am being overly cynical, but in my opinion a note in a newsletter telling parents to walk instead of drive etc is likely to be ignored by a large majority of parents - something more creative and probably resource intensive is required if you are looking to achieve a genuine shift in parents’ behaviour towards walking/cycling/public transport/carpooling.

I do share the concern of other residents on this thread, however, that the trial will create an even more dangerous situation for pedestrians crossing Kirkdale to enter Thorpewood Avenue. Even with the current levels of street parking on Kirkdale, at school drop off and pick up the visibility at this point of crossing is extremely poor and cars only infrequently stop to allow pedestrians, usually with groups of young children, to cross. The closure of upper Thorpewood Avenue will undoubtedly increase the parking pressure on Kirkdale, only worsening the problem. A temporary solution may be to have a ‘Lollipop Lady’? I think there is already one who assists the Kelvin Grove students lower down on Kirkdale. The present of a council employee may also act as a deterrent to parents parking over double yellow lines etc.

On a personal note, I am uncomfortable that this is being perceived by some as a “cameras for driveways” scheme and wish to make it clear that my support is in no way influenced by a desire for my driveway to be policed. My driveway is blocked in every day and I have not raised any complaints about that as for the time being I feel that it is preferable to parents double parking creating an even more unsafe school drop off environment.

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