I'm afraid I've written another overlong post in a final attempt to get people to reconsider how air quality should be approached in the short term- ie this local funding round.
Which roads would you close to through traffic
It's hard to say without more detailed proposals. There are three routes suggested for active travel with no or low vehicle use:
Barrington Rd, which I don't really use enough to have a view about.
Ferndale Rd, which is the only cross route through a big block, and is already one way at BR. It never seems that busy to me tbh, but I guess displaced traffic will end up on Clapham Rd or Acre Lane. Or on Landor Road, which is already pretty clogged and could be another candidate for active travel.
Railton Rd, which has a parallel route, along Effra & Dulwich Roads though that includes the Morval/Water Lane oneway system, which will be an obvious pinch point. Other drivers might prefer Shakespeare or Milkwood Roads and Loughborough Rd, with a pinch point at LJ and possibly more queuing at Herne Hill.
Between them closing those routes will push quite a lot of through traffic onto main roads and probably produce worsened congestion/pollution hotspots. Most of those main roads are conveniently outside the project area.
In terms of winners and losers, well a lot of properties on newly quieter streets will get a windfall equity boost based on their improved quality of life. A few people will be encouraged towards additional active travel journeys. People who live on Dulwich, Effra and other affected main roads will see their quality of life and air deteriorate. Those who live, work or spend time at the hotspots and on the main roads will bear the brunt. Pretty much all displaced traffic will end up on the main stretch of Brixton Road or perhaps at Loughborough Junction. Some small percentage of vehicle journeys won't be made.
But there are so many if's involved it's hard to guess what this will actually amount to. I'm not convinced that simply closing off Railton is a great plan- it may be, but without more detail it's too hard to guess.
or do you think we should maximise porosity for driving remove any restrictions that have been put in in the past and make every street busy and polluted?
You think it's all so simple, don't you? Force everyone out of their cars, get them to walk or cycle and we'll all live a happily ever after. No downsides, only positives.
Earlier you were moaning that the use of satnav meant other people were using your street, which didn't used to happen. With realtime routing round obstructions software finds the quickest route, so when it sends cars down your street it's because the main roads are choked. I understand you don't much like that, you presumably chose to live on a quiet residential street to avoid it. The people who live on busy main roads, particularly those in flats above shops, don't tend to have that choice, they're where they are because the properties are not so desirable, which means they're cheap(er).
I fully understand you're campaigning to reduce car use, and seek every incremental gain, but in the here and now, do you really feel comfortable about pushing the whole burden onto those who live on the main roads, in order that your street is quiet? It's not only those who live there, of course, it's also those who work there, in retail or offices, who have to sit in stationary buses, who just use the busy pavements and so on.
All sorts of initiatives have been tried over years or decades: the traffic hasn't evaporated. I know I keep going on, I'd intended to stop but you asked and I really will quit after this, but in this crowded, realworld city of the here and now if you improve your own quality of life by reducing the traffic in your street you will necessarily inflict a lower quality of life on someone else.
We all want cleaner air for ourselves and any children we have. To be direct but not intentionally personal as I have no idea about your circumstances, every home owner who is pushing for their street to be made traffic free, or non porous, needs to have a long, hard look at their motivation. No-one will admit to calculating the improved equity, but that doesn't mean they're not doing it.
Like I've said a few times, a little girl with asthma lived beside the S Circular, and over a period of years her hospital admissions coincided with peaks in pollution. Eventually her asthma killed her.
The effect of non-porous neighbourhoods is to push yet more traffic onto main routes.
Guardian said:
A south London housing development has been approved in an area where air pollution is so high that residents will be advised to keep their windows closed.
Nitrogen dioxide exceeds legal limits on the busy road where the development is planned, next to the A2 in Lewisham. An air quality assessment carried out on behalf of the developers found levels of 56.3 micrograms per cubic metre in the area – far above the legal limit of 40µg/m3.
here
The
Brixton Road air monitor has recorded 62µg/m3 as the current annual mean for 2019. So as an average that's 50% higher than the legal limit, with peaks higher still.
We can all throw statistics around, and these are not of the highest quality (because that monitor has been out of action a lot) but please would you recognise that I'm trying to highlight something serious here. When you push all the burden onto a few people you are likely to cause them harm, and pointing to longer term gains for a wider population doesn't change that.
One comment from the consultation, as food for thought.
You also complained about Uber using your street. Well that's just your neighbours calling a car from point A to drive to their home to take them to point B and then drive back empty to somewhere near A, where the driver bases themselves. It's a grossly inefficient way to transport individuals, yet for lone women travelling at night or people with mobility issues or shopping or kids to carry the availability of cheap cabs is a good thing, not a bad one. I don't know how many of the millions and millions of Uber/minicab journeys those or similar justifications apply to, nor what proportion are just adults who can't be bothered to walk, cycle or get a bus. The mini-Holland type schemes encourage active travel but at a scale that merely scratches the surface of the huge uptake of private hire journeys over the past few years. That's is likely to continue, even in Livable Neighbourhoods, until there's a major change in attitudes. (A couple of weeks ago I overheard a 20-something whinging that his Uber was late, I don't know anything about his mobility but he seemed to want to go from Josephine Avenue to the tube; JA is in a previously traffic calmed area.)
There's also the massive increase in online shopping with delivery vans servicing most of us. Cutting out the rat runs forces all of them onto the main roads. Consider the logistics of a van with a few drops in the streets between Dulwich and Railton Roads: making them non-porous will not change the requirement, but will increase the complexity and the number of turns into and from Dulwich Road.
I've yet to see anyone come up with serious ideas about how to incentivise, nudge, persuade or prevent people using cabs or home deliveries within these non-porous areas.
So I'm afraid I don't see any of this as being simple, and I don't see Livable Neighbourhoods as proposed as being unquestionably good for everyone. That's just in terms of transportation- without mentioning the wider issues
Gramsci has raised.
London has to change, everybody knows there has to be a reduction in traffic & pollution. Starting (IMO) by getting diesels off the road asap and quickly expanding the ULEZ, with scrappage incentives for drivers to change to electric vehicles; with disincentives for, in particular, commuters and the school run; with integration between Oyster, road pricing (based on occupancy and impact) and parking charges that doesn't simply ignore those who choose to not have a car but somehow rewards them; that incentivises active travel and public transport journeys; that reverses the trend for those that can afford it to take cabs everywhere and encourages parcel collection rather than home delivery; and with nuanced polluters pays road pricing which recognises that simply enabling the richest to rush about more quickly in electric cars while no-one else can afford to use the roads is not the solution.
That's me done, I've bleated the same things too many times now.
