To think that the current traffic restrictions are fucking ridiculous

[Gobelinoisawitchescat]

I live in SE London - and since these sodding barriers have gone up all over the place the roads are just completely blocked with traffic.

While I know someone is going to come on talking about climate change etc - am not sure how directing all the traffic to one location makes a damn bit of difference - the cars are still on the roads, they’re just concentrated in certain ones.

Am I missing something?

Have it delivered

*in response to Londonmummy

[quote RomanyBlood]InTheNorth
Lambeth is ruled by the London Cycling Campaign. The leader of the council is an anti car zealot.

You haven’t noticed the powerful cycling lobby influencing City Hall??

And in Balham this week the main post office has stopped accepting parcels and mail to post because a new in-consulted cycle lane outside has meant that the vans cannot collect from the Post Office.

www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/parcels-and-letters-are-stuck-in-limbo/ar-BB19lWup[/quote]
about time there was a bit of competition for the car and fossil fuel lobbies

--- and all you mention is still not even a rounding error of the influence that the car and oil industries have over uk govt

InTheNorth

I don’t dispute the power of the oil industry.
But the implementation of the LTNs, which in our area appears to be causing more pollution and queuing traffic was fine without consultation with any residents, local businesses etc, and was under the influence of the cycling lobby.

You said the cycling lobby was not powerful in your borough and amounted to a few blokes in a coffee shops. All I am saying is that round us the cycling lobby are powerful.

Cycling is good, traffic needs to be reduced, far fewer car journeys need to be made. But badly thought out schemes in which emergency vehicles get stuck, Post Offices can’t function and traffic gets diverted into already polluted main roads to queue past care homes and social housing is not the way to go about it.

Macncheeseballs have what delivered?

@Macncheeseballs

Have it delivered

I think it refers to a post when someone said that they needed their car to collect a unit for their son’s bedroom?

How does getting things delivered reduce vehicle use and pollution? Why should delivery drivers also sit in gridlock, increasing their stress levels, using more petrol and working longer hours. Most get paid per job so they can do fewer deliveries.

No one who who lives in and agrees to the LTN’s has yet to answer if they would be prepared to get rid of their car completely. The fact that residents are happy that shopping and goods can continued to be delivered to these roads but health and social care professional can’t drive in to deliver vital services seems ludicrous. As long as you get what you want you don’t care about the sick and the elderly.

I was the one getting a unit for my sons bedroom.

I was getting it from a private address for free.
Who would pay for the delivery?
I can’t afford to.

And what would be the point?
It would still be a vehicle on the road, just a bigger vehicle than my car.

How does getting things delivered reduce vehicle use and pollution?

this is really dim tbh.
delivery drivers usually carry multiple items for delivery for different households. which means only one vehicle on the roads instead of more.
plus in inner cities some deliveries come on a cargo cycle.

@pinkbalconyrailing

How does getting things delivered reduce vehicle use and pollution?

this is really dim tbh.
delivery drivers usually carry multiple items for delivery for different households. which means only one vehicle on the roads instead of more.
plus in inner cities some deliveries come on a cargo cycle.

Not necessarily. If I had to take my son to football by car which is several miles away I might collect something that I needed to avoid a delivery and also take things to the charity shop en route. This would be the only time that week when I might use the car that week. Not quite so dim (how rude some people are).

The point is that despite those pushing everyone to use bikes they are still reliant on cars from birth to death.

I would imagine that many delivery drivers will refuse to deliver to LTN’s in the future if it is too much hassle.

We live in south west London near Richmond park. Some cyclists are a big issue here. When the park stopped cyclists they just walked their bikes in and went back to haring round screaming at pedi to get out of their way because they are 'on a time'. I speak from experience.

delivery drivers usually carry multiple items for delivery for different households. which means only one vehicle on the roads instead of more.
plus in inner cities some deliveries come on a cargo cycle.

That’s the general idea, but the reality is that it doesn’t work. You have van after van blocking the road with bad parking, letting their engine run and blocking dropped kerbs.
Unless they manage their slots really well then it doesn’t work.

Every house in an LTN is accessible by car. Health workers, deivery drivers etc can get in and out.

Most residents in LTNs don't have cars, simply because most people don't have cars in cities.

I posted before several links to the research showing this. And also about concerns about traffic on boundary roads and traffic evaporation.

As to whether people living in LTNs give up cars, yes there's evidence that they do. And even if they have a car they drive less. I don't live in an LTN, just near several. I'll be getting rid of my car. As an aside, buying a car was probably my biggest waste of money ever but I believed everyone who told me I'd need one once I had children. Oh well!

Brockleygirl, how do you think people without cars do all those things? It is possible, it's looking for the alternative rather than looking for barriers

Ooh, hadn’t realised that so many MN’ers were nearby!
Sadly for me, I’m on fucking Blackheath Hill in Greenwich where ALL the traffic is being directed to.
It can take DP half an hour to get from the bottom of the hill on his drive home from work. Nightmare!!

Yes but I had something delivered yesterday from Amazon. Tiny box containing a soap dish. There was a white van delivering a tiny soap dish all the way to my door. Or lightbulbs which I used to get from Maplins on the High St now have to be delivered to me by vehicle. For every journey that’s saved by deliveries so many more are created because people now have to get things on Amazon that they would have got in a high st store.

@JaggySplinter

Every house in an LTN is accessible by car. Health workers, deivery drivers etc can get in and out.

Most residents in LTNs don't have cars, simply because most people don't have cars in cities.

I posted before several links to the research showing this. And also about concerns about traffic on boundary roads and traffic evaporation.

As to whether people living in LTNs give up cars, yes there's evidence that they do. And even if they have a car they drive less. I don't live in an LTN, just near several. I'll be getting rid of my car. As an aside, buying a car was probably my biggest waste of money ever but I believed everyone who told me I'd need one once I had children. Oh well!

No health and social care workers can’t access the Lewisham LTN’s.

So the lewisham ltns are completely blocked to all vehicles?

Mollscroll - why do you need a car to get soap dishes and lightbulbs?

The Lewisham LTN isn't blocked to all vehicles and it is possible for health and social care workers to access every address. However, those vehicles will need to drive around the outside of the LTN in order to do so as massive planters have been bolted to the roads or ANPR cameras are in operation, issuing a £65 fine each time someone drives through. There is a bollard in the middle of the planters - that can be lowered by emergency services in theory although problems have been reported with not all of the vehicles having a key.

SEN transport, end of life care etc. do not have any special dispensation that allows them through the road blocks or cameras without penalty.

Who’s looking for barriers?

I’ve already suggested many ways to reduce car use.

I’m just against LTN’s for the reasons I have already outlined. This is a good summary of the concerns.

onelewisham.co.uk/

The only families I know without cars manage by getting lifts to football matches. It’s the selkent league. Two sons so often a match in Lewisham and a match in Kent 30 minutes later. If someone chauffeured my children around I would manage without a car if I didn’t need it for work (community NHS).

Anyone describing these parts of SE London as the ‘inner city’ clearly doesn’t have a clue what they’re talking about.

One thing that has been slightly missed in all this by cycling advocates is the issue of urban density. London is - by global standards - a remarkably low density city. That means cycling and walking can do less to mitigate other forms of transport use because people need to travel greeter distances, in general, to go about their business. Types of intervention that work in high density spaces will not have the same results in places with a different urban morphology. Added in to that the long-standing problem of London’s public transport planning (largely focused at shipping people in and out of the centre, less so on helping people travel around the outer parts of the city radially) and you end up with a lot of vehicle use which is hard to shift.

Then let’s talk about education policy. The New Labour era philosophy of school choice and publicly graded performance ratings means that people send their children long distances in London, either by public transport or by private vehicle. Going to the local school which admits everyone within a certain radius is the norm in some other countries but it’s a very alien model to a lot of people in the U.K. who have got used to the choice model. Schools are one of the biggest reasons for traffic on the roads (as anyone who’s driven across London during half term will have noticed) and shifting to a local educational model would significantly impact on school related private vehicle journeys. But that is a matter for educational policy not transport policy or urban planning.

TLDR: Other areas of public policy need to change in order to make the adaption to mass cycling and road closures efficient, popular and successful.

@JaggySplinter I get a feeling that you’ve never set foot in the areas that we are talking about in your life.
Most people inside the Lee Green LTNs do have cars - we are talking roads where the value of the houses is well into the millions.
South east London is not the same as say, Chelsea. There is no tube here - just trains and busses plus the DLR.

@Gobelinoisawitchescat - I live in the area. I don't want to be more outing than that.

Brockleygirl, so it seems that yes your car is very useful for dropping kid off at football which possibly is outside an ltn anyway, not sure? And the other errands you mention dont necessarily need to be done by car? If you need a car, use it, we are talking about using it less.

But my family members also live around and about all the areas that are being discuss in zone 3/4 SE London so I do travel around this area with my DC regularly.

I appreciate that different people make different choices, but there's no basis to arguing that people need to use or own a private car. It's really clear that it's a choice and not a need.

As for social care/SN transport issues, if that really is the case across Lewisham LTNs then that makes them a serious exception to other LTNs across the country and that's exactly the kind of adjustment that gets made during a trial if the council gets and acts on feedback.

(And I haven’t even mentioned the need for integrated transport planning in healthcare strategy which would also be massively helpful in reducing private vehicle journeys).