Brixton Liveable Neighbourhood and LTN schemes - improvements for pedestrians and cyclists
- Thread starter teuchter
- Start date
Bus Stopped
Active Member
The problem is that there are regularly road works on the high road, and fairly regularly on LCR. They always caused bad problems but now that’s really exacerbated by the LTN.
It’s now almost impossible to go down Greyhound Lane in the morning and there are huge traffic jams from Norbury in to Streatham.
It’s massively holding up buses. And that’s the point I made earlier. Some LTNs make little difference in terms of wider problems. This one is pushing commuter traffic far beyond boundary roads so must be very difficult to measure in terms of the impact.
Also the pollution was already awful the high street, it must be a lot worse now.
Is it seriously going to take 18 months to review it?
It’s now almost impossible to go down Greyhound Lane in the morning and there are huge traffic jams from Norbury in to Streatham.
It’s massively holding up buses. And that’s the point I made earlier. Some LTNs make little difference in terms of wider problems. This one is pushing commuter traffic far beyond boundary roads so must be very difficult to measure in terms of the impact.
Also the pollution was already awful the high street, it must be a lot worse now.
Is it seriously going to take 18 months to review it?
It’s still early days. There has to be some pain before people change their driving habits. Every LTN in Lambeth has started the same but time means that people do change. Squeeze the school runs. People get into a school catchment area and then move out. There’s also a major obesity problem in this country, get people active
Hollis
bloody furious
I don't necessarily buy that. You don't need LTNs to introduce road charging or reduce car parking. In fact there's an opposing argument that they're a massive distraction to more radical change.
I'm someone who would quite happily see private ownership of the car abolished, but I can't say the endless overclaiming and ignoring/dismissal of direct experience by some LTN advocates has exactly endeared me to them as a group of people.
the problem is the pain is being inflicted on everyone, not just car drivers.
I know Twitter/X is best avoided but the pro LTN lot on there (and councillors) failure to even acknowledge that it may be causing people problems (even if only temporary) doesn’t really endear me to their argument. You can see why posts about jolly family bike rides round Streatham Wells don’t go down well with some people.
I know Twitter/X is best avoided but the pro LTN lot on there (and councillors) failure to even acknowledge that it may be causing people problems (even if only temporary) doesn’t really endear me to their argument. You can see why posts about jolly family bike rides round Streatham Wells don’t go down well with some people.
teuchter
je suis teuchter
I'd be interested to hear about examples of places where more radical change has been achieved thanks to the absence of LTN-like measures distracting from the cause along the way.
Hollis
bloody furious
The congestion charge in London didn't require LTNs to be implemented did it?
But you're slightly missing my point about where you choose to put your energy..
Hollis
bloody furious
Yes - all exactly the same in Haringey. And don't believe the promises that it will "settle down". They've been in place over a year here, and the traffic displacement's remained the same.
Bus Stopped
Active Member
The traffic is almost comically bad today. I know, I know, road works, but when is there ever not some kind of disruption?
Hopton Road has become ridiculous and when that rat run is cut off it’s yet more traffic on the main roads again.
Hopton Road has become ridiculous and when that rat run is cut off it’s yet more traffic on the main roads again.
editor
hiraethified
The majority of that traffic will be single occupant vehicles driving short distances. If only people used their cars less, eh?
Bus Stopped
Active Member
100% agree. I almost always use the bus.
Twitter doesn’t lend itself to nuance though. You could say exactly the same about anti-LTNers on there never acknowledging the problems LTNs seek to fix or that there is anything good about them.
The issue needs reasonable people on both sides talking away from the internet. I think councillors & the council are trying to do that.
Exactly this. Walked down Streatham High Road yesterday evening and nearly every vehicle had only one person in it. We can’t prioritise that!
Bus Stopped
Active Member
Are LTNs stopping one person car use? I know the latest one is stopping the buses I use. The LTNs up until the latest one were largely a good thing in my view. The only change I would have made is to let residents who live in them go through the cameras (other boroughs do this).
But the latest LTN is terrible so far.
When Hopton gets blocked off, which it should do now for safety reasons, it will get even worse on the main roads.
The only one I’ve seen which was worse was on coldharbour lane which they eventually changed as emergency vehicles got stuck.
teuchter
je suis teuchter
I don't think this is true.
Bus Stopped
Active Member
Apologies if so. Why did they radically alter it? I know coldharbour lane was a standstill.
teuchter
je suis teuchter
Are you talking about the Loughborough Junction road changes, back in something like 2015? Or are you talking about the Railton LTN?
In the former, there were claims that emergency vehicles were being held up (there always are) but these weren't confirmed by the emergency services. The scheme was abandoned because Lambeth chickened out very early in the process, and gave in to protest at the congestion that occurred soon after implementation. They didn't give it any time to settle down. I think they learned from that experience, they weren't prepared for the level of objection.
In the latter, there was quite a bit of fuss about traffic backing up along Coldharbour Lane for a while after the implementation - it existed, I saw it myself - but it gradually died away and is now (as far as I know) back to something like it always has been. I think there might have been some tweaking of the traffic lights at the bottom of Railton rd but I don't think anything very significant got changed.
Bus Stopped
Active Member
The 2015 one. Don’t think they were called LTNs back then. The traffic was much worse than the Railton Road one. But fair enough about emergency vehicles.
In terms of the latest LTN I was told 2-3 months it will settle down. 7 weeks in and it’s still awful. How long will it take?
Agent Sparrow
the age of slippers and migraines
Tbf there also seems to be a fuck ton of road works around atm. Including some that I rarely see worked on. Is it a budget thing, ie start the works whilst there’s money to be allocated? I wonder how much of the traffic is being caused by all that?
Agent Sparrow
the age of slippers and migraines
The Coldhabour Lane Traffic Hell was caused by endless road works iirc.
Yeah the last few days have been particularly bad because of emergency roadworks (gas repairs I believe) on streatham high road closing off a lane in an awkward location.
Roadworks definitely aren’t unusual on SHR and surroundings, so it will happen again. Part of the problem seems to be there’s no dialogue between the council, TfL, whoever’s doing the works etc, so no planning.
Bus Stopped
Active Member
I brought up a while ago that it was worth looking at car travel across London in terms of trends. And someone rightly said that it’s very hard to measure as some boroughs are encouraging car use so on balance that could override benefits from LTNs in more progressive boroughs.
But how can you measure LTNs? Just looking at boundary roads can’t be adequate. My daughter’s primary school is about a 30-35 walk. When the weather is ok we walk mostly, but in the winter we quite often take the bus or drive it the weather is grim. I won’t cycle with her as it’s too dangerous (I appreciate there are different views on that). The bus is no longer viable as Greyhound Lane is always gridlocked since the LTN.
But now the route must be about double the distance driving as you need to go via crown point and then round through Norbury and back round the back routes. Same back again too.
Now maybe that’s unusual but as said there are now always big traffic jams on the main road and the knock on is around Norbury, Greyhound Lane etc, so my hunch is quite a lot of people are now driving for longer and there is more pollution from idle traffic.
Would any of that be picked up as most of it isn’t boundary roads?
But how can you measure LTNs? Just looking at boundary roads can’t be adequate. My daughter’s primary school is about a 30-35 walk. When the weather is ok we walk mostly, but in the winter we quite often take the bus or drive it the weather is grim. I won’t cycle with her as it’s too dangerous (I appreciate there are different views on that). The bus is no longer viable as Greyhound Lane is always gridlocked since the LTN.
But now the route must be about double the distance driving as you need to go via crown point and then round through Norbury and back round the back routes. Same back again too.
Now maybe that’s unusual but as said there are now always big traffic jams on the main road and the knock on is around Norbury, Greyhound Lane etc, so my hunch is quite a lot of people are now driving for longer and there is more pollution from idle traffic.
Would any of that be picked up as most of it isn’t boundary roads?
nick
Pleomorphic Adenomas R us
Maybe related to the sugar coating bit of the HS2 cancelation, plus the budget the other week. I vaguely recall there was a promise of more money to fix potholes (to make up for the fact the rest of the country is going to shit) - whether this has filtered down to immediate activity I don't know, and doubt, but perhaps it has allowed the relevant departments to change up a gear. ?
Cat Fan
Cats and stats
Short answer, no it will not be picked up.
Lambeth council also excludes major roads such as A23/South Circular when it measures increase/decrease in traffic from LTNs, so it's arguably never going to get a full picture.
There seems to be some sort of belief that main roads can take unlimited traffic with no consequences, and because they are TFL managed it becomes TFL's problem not Lambeth's problem.
teuchter
je suis teuchter
here is an extract from the Tulse Hill LTN monitoring report, showing monitoring sites on the A23 and on the South Circular.
And this is basically nonsense too.
The whole point is that roads have finite capacity. Reduce the overall capacity of the road network and you reduce the amount of traffic that exists. Many main roads operate near capacity (at peak times) whether or not there is an LTN nearby.
And capacity basically means, what most drivers will tolerate. Hence, in the period after implementation many roads become very full, and drivers complain. They complain because things have gotten to a situation they don't want to tolerate. And that's why they start to use alternatives, and gradually things settle down to a level of congestion that's similar to what was there before - because that's the level drivers will tolerate. Yes this is a generalisation and doesn't apply neatly to everywhere; there will always be bottlenecks that may shift in location.
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Cat Fan
Cats and stats
Ah fair enough, I think it was maybe the pollution impact that wasn't collected on some of the main roads?
Please provide any evidence that Lambeth is concerned about displacing traffic onto TFL managed roads
teuchter
je suis teuchter
As far as I understand the pollution is not generally measured anywhere for these reports. Because air pollution is highly variable depending on weather conditions so data is only really meaningful over quite long periods. And possibly also because it's expensive to do.
Whenever pollution levels are discussed, it's usually on the basis of inferred assumptions, from number of vehicles and so on. I do often see pollution levels presented by anti-LTN folk as fact when it's not.
I'm not Lambeth so can't evidence their "concern" other than pointing out that the monitoring reports do measure and discuss the impacts on TfL managed roads.
Bus Stopped
Active Member
As said before I used to live on Streatham high street and the pollution is horrendous. You couldn’t clean painted walls as it would hurt smear black marks. And it’s densely populated roads with both council and private estates the whole way down.
We need to get far less cars. But it’s hard to know what impact LTNs have if such limited data it used. I would be very surprised if the council looks at Norbury, Greyhound Lane etc
I think previous ones in Lambeth probably have been net positive (again main gripe with those is why they don’t let people who live there through the cameras). Not so sure on this one.
editor - cant wait for the comments to come through on this!!
www.brixtonbuzz.com
‘Carmageddon’ chaos continues as more roadworks wreak havoc on Streatham Wells LTN – Lib Dems
The Lambeth Lib Dems have weighed in on the ongoing problems surrounding the newly introduced Streatham Wells LTN trial, which was launched at the end of October.
www.brixtonbuzz.com
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