I hate that crossing. If I get a bus up from East Dulwich, usually laden with shopping, that is the crossing I have to use to get to my road. I have taken to staying on the bus to the next stop. A little longer to haul my shopping back but the crossing near Sainsbury’s is safer.
I love living in Forest Hill but the presence of the South Circular and the apparent prioritisation of traffic over pedestrians really impacts on the quality of life here.
Sorry off topic from the original post but to also add to bad crossings…
The same could be said about the Tesco’s petrol station crossing on Honor Oak Road. Doesn’t actually provide an allocated time for pedestrians to cross and there’s no “crossing man” on the lights. Terrifying for parents crossing with young children to get to the Hornimans and just truly unacceptable in this day and age. Just another example of how our high street favours cars over its residents.
On that one there’s a little positive news. There was a consultation that agreed a new road layout at the junction with pedestrian crossings.
Although TFL were supposed to start work in 2020 so who knows when it will happen.
Ahh finally, that junction is pretty dodgy wether you’re walking or driving.
Quite a few of those residents are in those cars.
However, I agree with you, that junction is not a good one. The summer walk through the Horniman to the school was challenging at times.
And many aren’t. Only about half of Lewisham residents own cars and the South circular is a major London artery so many people using that junction will be driving through.
For me it isn’t an either or but a rebalancing the public realm away from the car driver more to the pedestrian.p
The thing I can’t fathom is that as a pedestrian trying to cross Honor Oak Road at that junction you can’t see any of the traffic lights. I recall that previously (up topic) there was comment from TfL that a signalised crossing for pedestrians would slow down traffic, but that’s no excuse to design it so that pedestrians can’t even see the vehicle traffic lights from the crossing points.
It’s just such bad design, I don’t know how the design could have been approved and implemented.
Focusing on a US V THEM argument doesn’t help. It would possibly be more productive to focus on the issue, the crossing.
I explicitly said I wasn’t doing that.
But you explicitly did it:
Marginalising people’s legitimate interests on the basis of them being a minority? A nasty line of thinking.
Lewisham is a climate where community leaders, councillors and their “grassroots” social media campaigns actively promote this divisive “us vs them” rhetoric against residents who own cars, so I don’t blame you specifically, Hannah - it’s just a prevailing environment of division. But we should be mindful of it.
It’s disappointing that there seems to be zero interest from the Council or the GLA / City Mayor in tunnelling the A205.
Meanwhile, if the A205 is what we’re dealing with, then there is no reason it should remain as 30 MPH through Forest Hill - especially near amenities such as the museum and the station.
Other Boroughs have reduced speeds of sections of A roads to 20 MPH. A good example is the A1 from Highbury corner towards Holloway. This stretch of A road has tube stations, University buildings, many shops and restaurants. The speed is 20 MPH and heavily enforced. Needless to say, all the pedestrian crossings are single phase with plenty of time given for the crossing the road.
Currently, vehicle traffic definitely has priority over pedestrians in Forest Hill.
Putting a 20mph limit into a vital circular artery road would have repercussions that span a lot further than Forest Hill. It would cause needless grinding congestion, longer journeys and pollution (provided the limit is actually effective, and not another embarrassing failure)
I’m sure some bright spark will respond with “but cars on this road don’t travel faster than 20mph anyway.” If that were true we should leave the limits as they are, because it would be unnecessary to lower them.
Absurdly low speed limits are not a substitute for safe, effective crossings and good road design. Let’s think beyond these crude and counterproductive measures.
Have you got something to say about the crossing?
And I didn’t say you did, but others have. You made a good, reasoned comment as always.
Dial back the hyperbole eh Chris. Argueing for a rebalancing is not marginalising or nasty. Drivers are hardly an oppressed minority when it comes to the south circular. A lot of roads like the south circular are designed to keep traffic flowing often at the expense of pedestrians and the areas they pass through. In Forest Hill that approach causes issues for both residents and businesses. No one would argue that London road is a particularly nice environment to shop or dwell in at the moment.
Dividing residents into two groups and inciting one side against the other is indeed marginalising and nasty. Words like “rebalancing” sound laudable until we consider what they mean in this context.
Yes, roads are indeed designed to keep traffic flowing. That’s what roads are for. If people buy houses and shops next to busy roads, that’s on them. They shouldn’t then turn around and complain about the road.
That’s a bit like moving to the countryside, complaining about cockerels crowing, and then demanding that the countryside be “rebalanced” in your favour.
I believe I did, yes!
I think the main hypo-criticality of the south circular is that pedestrians are favoured on certain stretches of the route - Dulwich park, Clapham Common etc. where the crossings are either much favoured to the local residents (which they rightly should be) or have lower speed restrictions and/or cameras. Whilst I can’t argue the environmental aspect of introducing a speed reduction it would certainly make the area feel less “whacky racers”. And it feels really insulting having to wait 5 minutes (particularly in the rain) just to be able to cross our high street to get home.
It beggars belief that the main crossing to the hornimans doesn’t have a pedestrian-safe crossing, no child would be able to cross here by themself. I tried crossing here with young children a couple of years ago and in the end I had to carry them and dash across when the coast looked clear. Just not safe. Regardless of traffic impact associated with changing the lights it is simply not fair to not provide pedestrians an allocated time frame to safely cross the road.
Eh, pretty sure it does. It has one right outside the main gate and was updated just a few years ago.
When considering fairness, we need to weigh up how many people we’re inconveniencing on both sides of the equation.
If we kept this in mind, we’d probably weight the lights heavily toward green in order to inconvenience the fewest human beings.
My reasoning assumes we treat drivers and passengers (and all others who rely on them) as human beings, whose rights are equivalent to those of pedestrians.
