Urban75 Home About Offline BrixtonBuzz Contact

Brixton Liveable Neighbourhood and LTN schemes - improvements for pedestrians and cyclists

edcraw said:
Can you share the reply then?
Click to expand...
I’ll ask someone in the group if they have it. Ultimately the proof is in the pudding. They could have done something to help disabled people but they didn’t.
If you can find the video of the deputation you should see it in one of the replies
 
From the council's minutes: Agenda item - Deputations and Petitions | Lambeth Council

  • · Christian Oakley, Richard Marshall and Gina Attridge stated that a consultation should have been conducted in the spring, before the introduction of LTNs, and that residents and businesses had never been asked if they were in favour of LTNs. Many people had been excluded from the process. An Equalities Impact Assessment had not been completed, no evidence had been provided prior to the introduction of LTNs, and there were only three air pollution monitoring stations in the borough. In the short term, there was increased pollution, congestion and journey times, and in Waltham Forest, the long-term data showed only a 1% reduction in traffic. Traffic was diverted to main roads, increasing pollution for residents of these roads. They wanted to be able to travel efficiently but believed in safe and healthy streets for everyone. Most roads in LTNs were quiet outside of rush hour, and all had pavements for pedestrians. LTNs did not address the climate crisis, were ill-conceived and were anti-vehicle. There were businesses that had lost business as a result of LTNs, and key workers’ journey times were longer. People with disabilities were particularly affected, as Motability vehicles gave them the freedom to leave their homes safely. Increased journey times as a result of LTNs increased stress and anxiety. While the climate crisis was important, those who were not able to use alternative methods of transport needed to be considered and consulted.
  • · Councillor Claire Holland, Deputy Leader (Sustainable Transport, Environment and Clean Air) stated that LTNs had been introduced in an unusual way, but that it was in order to support the economic recovery and adjust to changing travel patterns and to meet the requirement to spend the emergency funding by September 2020. Full consultation would be required to make the schemes permanent. There was no evidence showing an increase in pollution. The majority of Lambeth residents did not own a car and air pollution disproportionately affected older people, people on low incomes and the BAME community. LTNs were not benefiting richer areas at the expense of poorer areas; five housing estates were within the Oval LTN. Displacement of traffic was complex and was affected by other changes to the road network. The impact of LTNs was being monitored closely, and Cllr Holland would be willing to meet with residents.
Click to expand...
Exemptions don't seem to have been raised by the deputation.
 
edcraw said:
Convenient. Suggest you stop making wild claims with nothing to back them up.
Click to expand...
Hardly wild but believe what you want to. Of course it’s very likely that we didn’t ask for this at all and just decided to go down the legal route for shits and giggles. For Sofia this is all just a massive jape
 
edcraw said:
Convenient. Suggest you stop making wild claims with nothing to back them up.
Click to expand...
I think it's obvious that Lambeth do not want to give blue badge access. Many councils have already done this - Ealing, Hackney, Southwark - Lambeth are still holding out or offering one filter access.
 
edcraw said:
You haven’t gone to any of the Q&As or signed up to the email updates? It sounds like you’re not really that interested in LTNs at all then.

It’d be great if the council can write to every address but can see that that would be v expensive for the whole of Lambeth. Maybe they’re doing it for the areas being consulted on.
Click to expand...
I thought I’d heard that there were leaflets sent to every home in and around, the LTN areas where consultations are taking place a few weeks ago? But I suspect that, like the multiple letters and notices about Brixton Liveable Neighbourhood, and various posted notices about the 2020 LTNs, and the coverage in Lambeth Life (which goes to every household), the council keeps a heavily profiled data base to ensure none of these things are delivered to people pre selected to oppose the schemes.
 
Looks like the people that bought the failed Hackney judicial review didn’t raise enough money and so need to ask people to donate now to pay the bills.

C4DEAA90-87EC-49C7-B2B5-8A7155778CE9.png
 
thebackrow said:
I thought I’d heard that there were leaflets sent to every home in and around, the LTN areas where consultations are taking place a few weeks ago? But I suspect that, like the multiple letters and notices about Brixton Liveable Neighbourhood, and various posted notices about the 2020 LTNs, and the coverage in Lambeth Life (which goes to every household), the council keeps a heavily profiled data base to ensure none of these things are delivered to people pre selected to oppose the schemes.
Click to expand...
Nothing to anyone on my street, and the next door street
 
nagapie said:
Except one of the problems with care work is the number of people who have to be visited and given essential and quality care in a short space of hours, making it difficult to do on public transport. Especially in London when you are travelling around large boroughs.
Care workers essentially fill the roles of community nurses after decades of cuts to the NHS. They are working medics. I think you are missing the point of LTNs, they're not to get all cars off the road but to reduce significantly the traffic on the road leaving the roads free for those that really need them. Carers who fulfil the role of community nurses are those.
But perhaps we shouldn't allow those with cars to use them because some might not have cars. Seeing as this is your version of fair. We can then deter even more workers from doing this chronically understaffed role.
Click to expand...
There are probably certain categories of care workers where I would agree an exemption would be reasonable. Where it's genuinely not feasible to do it by public transport or on foot and where negotiating the LTN filters would genuinely add a lot of time. But then 'carers' covers a wide spectrum of people carrying out a wide spectrum of roles, and includes for example people helping out with relatives on an informal basis, and there's nothing to say that all of those kinds of visits have to be done by car, on top of the fact that lots of people who don't have a car also do those kinds of visits. This is why I don't think it's obvious where it's fair or reasonable to draw the line for who does or doesn't get an exemption. I don't think it's as simple as saying all carers should get an exemption. I would hope that some thought is going into all this, with those who ultimately have to decide. If it was me making the decision, which it's not, I'd want to try and understand the numbers involved with each level of exemption - are we talking about putting 2% or 10% or 40% of the traffic back onto the roads concerned. My guess is that a very large proportion of the people who now have to negotiate the filters will believe that there's a good reason it would be 'fair' for them to have an exemption. But in your version of things it's evidently "ableist" for me to suggest that a line needs to be drawn at some place where a balance of benefits is judged to exist, and it's also "ableist" to say that deciding where that line is, is difficult and not obvious.
 
And there's another thing relevant to some doing care work for agencies - who are not paid for their travel time, only the time they spend with clients. I know this is a problem and it is not dissimilar to delivery drivers being paid by parcel drop rather than time on the road.

This has come up before in discussions about delivery drivers, with people saying that it's not fair on them to introduce changes which make their routes longer and therefore they make less money per hour. The same could be said for some people doing contracted care work, and various other things too.

But this is basically asking transport policy and also the layout and usage of our streets to fill in for deficiencies in other aspects of policy. The problems that need fixing are to do with the way people are employed.

Also - in anything but the short term, making it easier to get quickly between appointments is not really helping the people doing the work, it's helping the companies that employ them. In the end, the economics that determine the minimum pay the employer can get away with, and the largest proportion of their time the workers will tolerate being effectively unpaid, will remain the same. By allowing the workers to travel further in the same amount of time you are just allowing their employers to cover a wider scatter of deliveries or clients on each run. So this just encourages more traveling around in motor vehicles. It reduces the incentive for routes to be more tightly planned.

I believe we have actually already seen this with some delivery companies - the routes have changes and in some cases also the vehicles. This is policy working as it should. Anecdotally, I've also been told by two small building companies that they have decided to concentrate their jobs in smaller areas. Again, this is good, this is all positive feedback mechanisms which allow an overall reduction in vehicles on the road. It's stupid for some builders from Tottenham to be doing an extension in Streatham while some builders from Brixton are doing another extension in Holloway. In each case they spend the beginning and end of each day sitting in traffic jams crossing London.

As I said there will be certain categories of care or medical work that don't fit with this - where a vehicle is necessary, and where there's already a relatively tightly planned route around a limited area. This is where exemptions would be completely reasonable, just as they are for ambulances or certain types of hospital transport. As we all know, certain bits of the health service have been privatised out and thrown to the free market, the economics of which then determines who travels where and how, and this very often ends up with lots of unnecessary travel (the same is true in the wider logistics sector). Those economics just love things that make it easier for privately owned vehicles to travel around as much as they feel like it. This doesn't in the long term make things better for carers or those who they care for. It creates towns and cities built around motor vehicles instead of people.
 
teuchter said:
There are probably certain categories of care workers where I would agree an exemption would be reasonable. Where it's genuinely not feasible to do it by public transport or on foot and where negotiating the LTN filters would genuinely add a lot of time. But then 'carers' covers a wide spectrum of people carrying out a wide spectrum of roles, and includes for example people helping out with relatives on an informal basis, and there's nothing to say that all of those kinds of visits have to be done by car, on top of the fact that lots of people who don't have a car also do those kinds of visits. This is why I don't think it's obvious where it's fair or reasonable to draw the line for who does or doesn't get an exemption. I don't think it's as simple as saying all carers should get an exemption. I would hope that some thought is going into all this, with those who ultimately have to decide. If it was me making the decision, which it's not, I'd want to try and understand the numbers involved with each level of exemption - are we talking about putting 2% or 10% or 40% of the traffic back onto the roads concerned. My guess is that a very large proportion of the people who now have to negotiate the filters will believe that there's a good reason it would be 'fair' for them to have an exemption. But in your version of things it's evidently "ableist" for me to suggest that a line needs to be drawn at some place where a balance of benefits is judged to exist, and it's also "ableist" to say that deciding where that line is, is difficult and not obvious.
Click to expand...
I am talking about carers who do it as a job and are paid to look after the sick and vulnerable.

This idea that we have to be equal to everyone is the exact excuse that's always trotted out by people who disagree with reasonable adjustments. Fair is not equal. And you don't make things better for people by making everything harder for everyone.
 
teuchter said:
And there's another thing relevant to some doing care work for agencies - who are not paid for their travel time, only the time they spend with clients. I know this is a problem and it is not dissimilar to delivery drivers being paid by parcel drop rather than time on the road.

This has come up before in discussions about delivery drivers, with people saying that it's not fair on them to introduce changes which make their routes longer and therefore they make less money per hour. The same could be said for some people doing contracted care work, and various other things too.

But this is basically asking transport policy and also the layout and usage of our streets to fill in for deficiencies in other aspects of policy. The problems that need fixing are to do with the way people are employed.

Also - in anything but the short term, making it easier to get quickly between appointments is not really helping the people doing the work, it's helping the companies that employ them. In the end, the economics that determine the minimum pay the employer can get away with, and the largest proportion of their time the workers will tolerate being effectively unpaid, will remain the same. By allowing the workers to travel further in the same amount of time you are just allowing their employers to cover a wider scatter of deliveries or clients on each run. So this just encourages more traveling around in motor vehicles. It reduces the incentive for routes to be more tightly planned.

I believe we have actually already seen this with some delivery companies - the routes have changes and in some cases also the vehicles. This is policy working as it should. Anecdotally, I've also been told by two small building companies that they have decided to concentrate their jobs in smaller areas. Again, this is good, this is all positive feedback mechanisms which allow an overall reduction in vehicles on the road. It's stupid for some builders from Tottenham to be doing an extension in Streatham while some builders from Brixton are doing another extension in Holloway. In each case they spend the beginning and end of each day sitting in traffic jams crossing London.

As I said there will be certain categories of care or medical work that don't fit with this - where a vehicle is necessary, and where there's already a relatively tightly planned route around a limited area. This is where exemptions would be completely reasonable, just as they are for ambulances or certain types of hospital transport. As we all know, certain bits of the health service have been privatised out and thrown to the free market, the economics of which then determines who travels where and how, and this very often ends up with lots of unnecessary travel (the same is true in the wider logistics sector). Those economics just love things that make it easier for privately owned vehicles to travel around as much as they feel like it. This doesn't in the long term make things better for carers or those who they care for. It creates towns and cities built around motor vehicles instead of people.
Click to expand...
I am well aware that the issue lies with how we pay people in work and that carers are massively underpaid. But unless LTNs are going to come in in partnership with a bunch of socially targeted economic reforms, that's a pointless argument.
Also stop comparing delivery drivers to carers. While there is an issue there for low paid delivery workers, it's not on a par with caring for people.
Finally you actually agree with me as you've said, there are carers who should get exemptions.
 
Last edited:
And just to add, you are fully ableist. You are ableist because you think the reasonable adjustments to alleviate hardship for people living with illness and disability need to firstly be fair to those who don't have these problems. That's not how inclusion works, you give support to those that need it, even if it appears that they are getting more than others, because they are starting off with less.
Do you think affirmative action for black people and women is unfair?
Equal doesn't mean fair.
 
nagapie said:
And just to add, you are fully ableist. You are ableist because you think the reasonable adjustments to alleviate hardship for people living with illness and disability need to firstly be fair to those who don't have these problems.
Click to expand...
I absolutely do not think that.
 
teuchter said:
I absolutely do not think that.
Click to expand...
Then stop arguing for blue badge holders to not have full access. Stop arguing that this will lead to unfairness. Stop talking about how you would have to measure how many disabled people would have to use the roads to see if it was fair.
 
nagapie said:
No, why? I am a teacher, I do not provide daily care to someone who could not look after themself without it.
Click to expand...
I agree. But I thought we were discussing whether people with disabilities could have access. Now it seems it’s also people looking after people with disabilities - even if they aren’t transporting their charges?

I think if the exemption is extended to those in the ‘caring industry’ then it’s difficult to define who that is.
 
Winot said:
I agree. But I thought we were discussing whether people with disabilities could have access. Now it seems it’s also people looking after people with disabilities - even if they aren’t transporting their charges?

I think if the exemption is extended to those in the ‘caring industry’ then it’s difficult to define who that is.
Click to expand...
I don't want to detract too much from yesterday's arguments, because it was clear that people still are not fully behind full blue badge access. And I think that's disgusting and my main concern.
But yes, I do think that carers who are working and going to people's houses should have access too. Many people rely on those carers for their only meal of the day, their only wash, their only medication. Hard to define isn't impossible.
As I said, I don't think the point of LTNs is to take necessary traffic off roads and I don't see the point of doing things for the greater good (LTNs) if you negate other supports.
 
nagapie said:
Then stop arguing for blue badge holders to not have full access. Stop arguing that this will lead to unfairness. Stop talking about how you would have to measure how many disabled people would have to use the roads to see if it was fair.
Click to expand...
I think you are mixing up what I'm saying about carers with what I've said about blue badge holders, and as a result you are making out that I've said stuff that i haven't.
 
teuchter said:
I think you are mixing up what I'm saying about carers with what I've said about blue badge holders, and as a result you are making out that I've said stuff that i haven't.
Click to expand...
Yet yesterday you were talking about how giving access to blue badge holders was unfair to disabled people who don't have cars. So you were arguing against full access for blue badge holders and then using some made up bullshit to justify it - people with disabilities do not want others to have less support, that's a made up division and one that would only be used to argue against reasonable adjustments.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

editor
Cyclist killed in Brixton
2
Replies
32
Views
1K
T & P
T & P
blameless77
After work pint in Brixton?
Replies
12
Views
745
editor
editor
editor
It's a grim Christmas around Brixton: no lights, no tree and no funfair
Replies
1
Views
730
skyscraper101
skyscraper101
editor
Coronation (and anti Coronation events this weekend in and around Brixton
Replies
5
Views
795
Gramsci
Gramsci
editor
Homophobia in Brixton
2
Replies
38
Views
5K
Tulster218
T
Back
Top Bottom