Loughborough Junction public space improvements - consultation begins
- Thread starter Leo Chesterton
- Start date
bimble
floofy
Yes- see the resounding evidence for this statement from one of teuchter's documents, the case study about the city in Finland which got a car-free central square(completely different story to ours but still)
" A survey of retailers* found that 52 % felt that the scheme had improved or would improve their business in the future. "
*In 2000, a questionnaire was circulated to all retailers (190 in total) occupying first floor shops in the city centre, 110 responses were received.
[& note that's from a place where the central (shopping) square has been turned into a pretty properly pedestrian area.]
" A survey of retailers* found that 52 % felt that the scheme had improved or would improve their business in the future. "
*In 2000, a questionnaire was circulated to all retailers (190 in total) occupying first floor shops in the city centre, 110 responses were received.
[& note that's from a place where the central (shopping) square has been turned into a pretty properly pedestrian area.]
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teuchter
je suis teuchter
critical1
All views expressed are definitely my own.
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CH1
"Red Guard"(NLYL)
I would just like to point out I took The Sun to the press council for comparing Brixton to Precinct 46 THe Bronx.
Say no more.
bimble
floofy
I'm disappointed teuchter. you're really going to apply a story about the dozens of pedestrian plazas in central NYC to Loughborough Road?
"One example was Columbus Avenue, a busy shopping boulevard on the city's affluent Upper West Side. There, the DOT had built a protected bike lane and pedestrian safety islands while narrowing travel lanes for motor vehicles. According to the tax data, revenue was up 20 percent over the baseline in the second year after bike lanes were implemented in the area."
This is relevant to LJ how? They didn't even close a road..
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prunus
Tick tock.
A little anecdata with some additional research;
I had to head to Streatham this morning (by car, full-load inc 4 people if you want to judge) and was pleasantly surprised that the normal hell of Denmark road followed by the queue at the CHL/LR lights did not present a problem. Then it occurred to me. Its half-term. No school-run traffic - and I do think this is a significant component of the traffic volumes we see locally. This would also account for the somewhat "delayed reaction" of the chaos build-up - where the early days of the experiment didn't show much traffic impact. Things only became hellish from around the end of the first week in September, once all the schools were back.
I don't want to get into an education system debate here - but LJ sits immediately to the north of Dulwich- an area with an unusually high density of schools including state and private. These schools draw pupils from a wide catchment - including much of south and central London; from Bromley to Wimbledon, Kensington to Tooting. I think the main (largest) four; Dulwich College, Alleyns, JAGS and Charter, must have around 5000 pupils between them, and this doesn't include any of the Dulwich/Herne Hill primary schools, nurseries etc that probably add another 1500.
Trying determine the effect on traffic - and how all these kids get to school is quite hard, but JAGS does have its recent (2014) "Travel Plan" available online (thank you Google) and maybe the others do to? http://www.jags.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/School_Travel_Plan_-_10_April_2014.pdf.
What's interesting is that this report does give some qualitative data for the numbers of pupils who travel to school by private car (or car share). I think it reasonable to assume (although Teuchter would probably disagree!) that one could extrapolate the percentages in the JAGS report and apply these for the other schools in the area. 23% travel by car (32% if you include car share). Assuming that a typical school-run generates 4 individual journeys (home-school; school-home, twice a day) that means in excess of 6000 car trips are being made to/from Dulwich each day during term time.
Not all through CHL/LJ of course, but even if it were only 15% of the total, that would by 900 trips - or 7% of the quoted CHL traffic volume of 13000. That's a significant chunk.
And this isn't including staff numbers (JAGS 150 people). The JAGS report goes on to explain some of the reasons different travel methods are chosen and how they try to change/influence this behaviour away from car use.
All interesting stuff.
Good points, and certainly this week so far the reduction in traffic is noticeable. It was also noticeable last week, hang on - don't some private schools have two week half terms, starting last week? Does anyone know if dulwich college and jags et al do?
Nb: charter is state, and has a strict entry by walking distance criterion (ok plus some siblings) - the maximum distance away one can be is about 3/4 mile so there will be very few charter kids being driven (I'd hope).
prunus
Tick tock.
Jags and dulwich college have both been off since the 17th - is it possible that our CHL traffic is caused by coddled posh kids being chauffeured to school????
The traffic have been noticeably better (imo) mornings and evenings since about then... I'd attributed last week to the traffic lights being sorted out, as I didnt recall the 2 week holidays they get.
So: testable hypothesis. Will it stay relatively light for the rest of this week, and get heavy again next week? Stay tuned... (And your impressions welcome too).
The traffic have been noticeably better (imo) mornings and evenings since about then... I'd attributed last week to the traffic lights being sorted out, as I didnt recall the 2 week holidays they get.
So: testable hypothesis. Will it stay relatively light for the rest of this week, and get heavy again next week? Stay tuned... (And your impressions welcome too).
teuchter
je suis teuchter
Almost anywhere, if you propose a restriction to car traffic (whether that's pedestrianisation, closing off access points, implementing bike or bus lanes, or removing parking), there will be predictions about the devastating impact it's going to have on businesses in the immediate area. And yet in reality, usually these terrible effects fail to materialise - in fact often trade increases. This NYC story is just an example of that.
Of course, the particular nature of many of the businesses around LJ (car repairs, scrap yards etc) means that they are unlikely to benefit from an increase in passing pedestrians. And some will be particularly sensitive to ease of road access. So this is why it's important that they are listened to. I still think that it's very easy for people to over-estimate the negative effects though. Earlier in the thread someone commented about how certain businesses were going to suffer as a result of being left at the end of a dead-end route. I pointed out that both the examples given were already on dead-end roads.
Take as an example a scrap yard such as the one off Gordon Grove - I can see that if access becomes a lot more difficult, customers might be less likely to use it. But I'd want to look at how much extra difficulty was really involved. If it was a matter of an extra 5 minutes being added onto journeys which from their start points were generally an hour or two away, then I'd say the difference is not massive and it seems unlikely that it's really going to put customers off. Especially if changes in traffic flow might mean that from certain directions other journeys become quicker. On the other hand if the typical customer's journey is only from 20 minutes away and they make it several times a day, then adding 5 minutes is significant and i would accept that is likely to have an impact on business.
There are quite a few businesses (car-related) for whom the principal access is off CHL. I can see that an increase in congestion on CHL could cause them difficulties. This is another reason why as Ive already said, if it looks like the scheme is going to create a long-term, rather than temporary, issue of significantly increased congestion on CHL then that is a valid reason to argue against its continuation.
People are making various claims about the impact on business - including Mr facebook QC claiming that a large number of businesses "of all kinds' have seen a 50% decrease in turnover. That's a big claim to make without any supporting evidence. I want to know more detail if I'm going to find that convincing. So, in the absence of any detail on effects on business, about the best I can do for now is offer up examples from elsewhere that there is a familiar pattern of negative impact on business being wildly over-predicted.
Burn:Cycle
Active Member
Yes two weeks from the 17th.
Good point on Charter. More anecdata, but I sometimes do travel through that way for work and I do see some Charter kids being dropped by car. Likely fewer than the JAGS percentage though. However, I do know more than one family who has moved to rented accommodation close to Charter for a shortish time (maybe 12 months or so) while letting out their own house. Enough time to get a child into the school, before moving back to their own house further away at a later date. Subsequent children getting in on the basis of sibling policy. These kids then fall outside of your walking catchment. I think this sort of thing happens much more than you might think. This is probably one for the local education debate though!
There's at least one instance of a small business proprietor claiming a 50% reduction in trade on that video of the public meeting (the car wash on Hinton Road).
I don't know what his finances are like, but I could imagine a 50% reduction in turnover for 6 months could be enough to drive a lot of small businesses into bankruptcy or to throw in the towel before going bankrupt.
There are also examples where being able to park free results in increased trade:
Shoppers flood back to town centre after vandals smash up pay and display machines
teuchter
je suis teuchter
Except the truth of that story is that it's car dependancy that is what's really killing the town centre.
Those town centre businesses are having to compete with out-of-town shopping with free parking, shopping that is only really accessible to car owners. I expect there are people without cars who walk or use the bus to get to shops in town who may not benefit so much from a free-for-all parking scheme and the increased levels of traffic it might bring.
But that's rural Wales. The changes to planning and transport policy that would be necessary to really decrease car dependency in rural areas are much more radical than what's needed in urban areas, especially urban areas such as Zone 2 London where we already have a pretty good public transport network.
Your example is pretty much irrelevant to what we're talking about here.
Burn:Cycle
Active Member
Teuchter, I am a local resident and small business owner. We are a service business. Our business doesn't have / need retail premises so arguments relating to footfall and passing trade are not relevant to us. What we care about is being able to move around freely. To get from customer site to customer site or back to the office in the shortest time possible.
The more calls we can do in a day, the more profitable we can be, the more we can grow, the more people we could employ. All better for the local economy.
Time spent travelling is dead time. Unproductive.
Personally, where I can use public transport, I do. Sometimes I'll be on my bike. Frequently, because of the need to carry equipment, tools etc - or just because the customer may be further afield, I will be in a vehicle. Denmark Road and Flodden Road are now virtually my only entry/exit points to the Myatt's Fields area where we are based. I estimate I make around 30 vehicle movements through CHL/LJ per week (average 6 per day). therefore every 5 minute increase in journey times costs me an extra 2.5 hours per week.
I haven't yet calculated the time lost for other staff and contractors.
Obviously all this has a direct financial cost. I reckon it would cost us around £15,000 if the current conditions were to last for a year.
If it continues we either end-up having to pass the cost on to customers (inflationary - not good.) or we expand more slowly and cant re-invest / create the same job opportunities we might have been able to do otherwise.
I can completely understand that for some businesses a 6 month "experiment" could force them to close.
The more calls we can do in a day, the more profitable we can be, the more we can grow, the more people we could employ. All better for the local economy.
Time spent travelling is dead time. Unproductive.
Personally, where I can use public transport, I do. Sometimes I'll be on my bike. Frequently, because of the need to carry equipment, tools etc - or just because the customer may be further afield, I will be in a vehicle. Denmark Road and Flodden Road are now virtually my only entry/exit points to the Myatt's Fields area where we are based. I estimate I make around 30 vehicle movements through CHL/LJ per week (average 6 per day). therefore every 5 minute increase in journey times costs me an extra 2.5 hours per week.
I haven't yet calculated the time lost for other staff and contractors.
Obviously all this has a direct financial cost. I reckon it would cost us around £15,000 if the current conditions were to last for a year.
If it continues we either end-up having to pass the cost on to customers (inflationary - not good.) or we expand more slowly and cant re-invest / create the same job opportunities we might have been able to do otherwise.
I can completely understand that for some businesses a 6 month "experiment" could force them to close.
teuchter
je suis teuchter
Two questions before I answer more fully -
- You say you make about 6 vehicle movements through CHL/LJ a day. Taking a guess from your description of roughly where you are based, assuming you make journeys to a variety of locations in all directions, maybe 1/3 of them would involve (prior to closures) a route through a location where there's now a closure. So as well as those 6 movements there would be about 12 that don't go through those locations. Would that be about right or is there some reason that your journeys are predominantly in a south-westerly direction?
- How do you arrive at the £15,000 per year figure?
toblerone3
Grrrrr
Groningen in the 1970s: Groningen businesses lobby to ministers and the King to reverse road closures claiming that sales had declined 30%
2014 Cycle mode share: 38%. Email exchange with Groningen Chamber of Commerce.
What is the attitude of the chamber and its members towards traffic management in the city centre today?
"Nowadays our members and the entrepreneurs in the city centre are happy that traffic is banned. The number of visitors has increased, the centre of Groningen is the number one shopping centre of the Northern Netherlands and Groningen is the city of cycling. The number of terraces in summer has increased and the city of Groningen is the place to be."
Do any businesses today advocate reopening the city centre to through traffic?
"No one. It is no issue"
2014 Cycle mode share: 38%. Email exchange with Groningen Chamber of Commerce.
What is the attitude of the chamber and its members towards traffic management in the city centre today?
"Nowadays our members and the entrepreneurs in the city centre are happy that traffic is banned. The number of visitors has increased, the centre of Groningen is the number one shopping centre of the Northern Netherlands and Groningen is the city of cycling. The number of terraces in summer has increased and the city of Groningen is the place to be."
Do any businesses today advocate reopening the city centre to through traffic?
"No one. It is no issue"
concerned1
behind the small print
Cllr Brathwaite was clearly told at the beginning of this year by a group of businesses, residents and organisations that businesses would have to close down due to the loss of trade. She was clearly informed of the dire consequences to all traffic not just car owners.
She was at LJ yesterday speaking to businesses who told her their concerns and that their takings were down.
teuchter asked what has changed in the last 15 years with transport re road closures in towns etc ONLINE SHOPPING is one big thing!
More people work, less can go out and shop, more home businesses who still depend on various transport being able to reach their homes, better home visits from carers, doctors, more people dependent on visitors, more people needing transport to and fro Hospitals, more use of public transport which is now seriously affected by buses that can no longer be depended on time wise due to the serious congestion, more companies which offer many services to homes etc, far more new builds of properties requiring a huge amount of transport, yes there have been a lot of changes to transport.
People on here keep droning on about cars, cars, cars..... get out there and have a look at the amount of BUSINESS vehicles on the roads struggling through congested small side roads etc.
She was at LJ yesterday speaking to businesses who told her their concerns and that their takings were down.
teuchter asked what has changed in the last 15 years with transport re road closures in towns etc ONLINE SHOPPING is one big thing!
More people work, less can go out and shop, more home businesses who still depend on various transport being able to reach their homes, better home visits from carers, doctors, more people dependent on visitors, more people needing transport to and fro Hospitals, more use of public transport which is now seriously affected by buses that can no longer be depended on time wise due to the serious congestion, more companies which offer many services to homes etc, far more new builds of properties requiring a huge amount of transport, yes there have been a lot of changes to transport.
People on here keep droning on about cars, cars, cars..... get out there and have a look at the amount of BUSINESS vehicles on the roads struggling through congested small side roads etc.
critical1
All views expressed are definitely my own.
concerned1
behind the small print
LOL Cyclists trying to get others who do not live in the area to fill in the survey what a joke
Burn:Cycle
Active Member
That's 6 movements in total (i.e 30 per week for me as an idividual). The closures that most directly alter my routes/habits were Lilford, Lougborough Rd, Padfield and Calais St.
Customers are all over London and also Kent, Sussex, Surrey - hence the bias to the south.
Padfield was a useful escape valve for traffic needing to head south to Dulwich on HHR and helped to prevent build-up of west bound traffic at the main CHL/HHR and CHL/LR lights - and as most premises here are "light-industrial", I think the position of that closure was daft. Making Southwell Rd no-entry from Padfield might have been a better solution to improving life for those residential blocks south of CHL.
My altered behaviour now makes me use Denmark Rd all the time for outbound journeys to the south - or if it's blocked at the junction with CHL / when CHL is solid westbound, I may divert via Warner Rd / past Crawford School back onto CHL to Camberwell and turn up Denmark Hill instead. It adds distance (and takes me past a school!). I say this just to illustrate that some of my journeys are now displaced onto roads that I never used to drive on before. Some may call this "rat-running", but frankly i'm just a local who is based in the "red-lined" area just trying to get out and carry on my business.
The 15K estimated extra cost includes;
- direct staff cost (people spending longer time in vehicles than before),
- opportunity costs (the fact that this dead time can no longer be used to generate revenue from customer site visits)
Of course both of these figures can be influenced by the rate of pay and charge out price for a given engineer/skill set - but I'm not prepared to go into that on public forums.
- direct transport costs. The business doesn't own its own vehicles, we pay the AMAP rate for staff/contractors to use their own, so increased distance directly translates to increased cost. Adding just 0.5 mile deviation to a single trip equates to 0.23p (based on 45p/mile). It sounds a petty/insignificant amount, but by the time it gets added to every journey, those few pence become £6-7 / week or £300/year... per person.
I would add that our mileage expsenses are potentially useful data for this excercise, but given that we dont receive all claims within a short enough time period, I couldn't provide actual stats till after the consultation closes. At the moment I'm extrapolating from my own mileage expenses.
Travelling to and from jobs (and parking!) is one of the major costs for our business - and it seems to be getting increasingly hard to control.
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critical1
All views expressed are definitely my own.
"Road changes such as these experimental closures always take time to ‘bed in’ and settle down – true reflections of their impact would take at least three weeks after the closures begin." <--- Lambeth
Lambeth need to open these roads up, pointless exercise for a pointless farm pop up experiment... The support LJAG had at their forum was abysmal and indicative of the level of community support they have failed to foster. Can LJAG do any better I cant see how, without radical rebranding of what they are about.
Soon to come is POP Loughborough watch this space...
Lambeth need to open these roads up, pointless exercise for a pointless farm pop up experiment... The support LJAG had at their forum was abysmal and indicative of the level of community support they have failed to foster. Can LJAG do any better I cant see how, without radical rebranding of what they are about.
Soon to come is POP Loughborough watch this space...
bimble
floofy
Without even talking about the whole gentrification issue at all..
I wonder what it will be like here during the construction of these 3 things, all of them Coming Soon to the very centre of LJ. And then afterwards once they are filled with new residents and workers. All 3 of them directly on (or a few steps away from) Coldharbour Lane.
I wonder what it will be like here during the construction of these 3 things, all of them Coming Soon to the very centre of LJ. And then afterwards once they are filled with new residents and workers. All 3 of them directly on (or a few steps away from) Coldharbour Lane.
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CH1
"Red Guard"(NLYL)
You have to get into current regen thinking.
Industrial sites are for housing.
Shipping containers are for yuppies.
And churches can go to hell (unless the developers are peculiarly pious like Parrit Leng)
prunus
Tick tock.
"Road changes such as these experimental closures always take time to ‘bed in’ and settle down – true reflections of their impact would take at least three weeks after the closures begin." <--- Lambeth
Lambeth need to open these roads up, pointless exercise for a pointless farm pop up experiment... The support LJAG had at their forum was abysmal and indicative of the level of community support they have failed to foster. Can LJAG do any better I cant see how, without radical rebranding of what they are about.
Soon to come is POP Loughborough watch this space...
You do seem very, indeed, critical of the closures. Can I ask: what results from the scheme would cause you to consider them a success?
critical1
All views expressed are definitely my own.
1: Have the a true consultation and act on them honestly. LJAG & Lambeth keep ignoring the 700+ part of the petition that said no to the closures(it was handed in on time and made part of an official deputation yet very little mention of it), they keep saying 68%(181) as a justification.
2: Stop LYING
3: Proper representation and engagement with the local community.
4: A democratically elected and accountable organisation.
5: The same could and should also apply to Lambeth, considering they are already supposed to be!!!
LJAG & Lambeth had a great opportunity to really make a difference yet this is what they do. On a broader point it seems indicative of Lambeth culture that the cockup everything they do.
I attended the Minet Library meeting and even Kate Hoey MP stated Lambeth Cllrs are only in it for the money especially the cabinet members and that they create posts for themselves to cream off even more. Cllr Paul Gatsby was even asked what his managerial qualifications were to which he went silent and could not respond, says it all for someone who is supposed to be an elected political representative.
I truly do wonder what LJAG is really representing by these closures and await the next step in the insidious gentrification of LJ.
When will the Cllr responsible Jennifer Brathwaite make a decision to reverse these closures, will it be a death, serious accident, or business closures, this is one strange experiment with us being the guinea pigs. Cllr Jennifer Brathwaite has already being warned, yet refuses to do anything, not even giving straight answers, why?
There is no success on flawed implementation, the only thing that they can do is remove it, that is a successful conclusion. You cant make a silk purse out of a pigs ear.
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bimble
floofy
On this , the observation that maybe school holidays have helped reduce traffic on CHL from 17th Oct till now :
Here's what I (finally!) got from George Wright as an answer to my questions about their absurd little air quality assessment plan.
You can see at the bottom he's saying that traffic counts on CHL have "juts (sic) been carried out ", the email was sent on 26th, as in Monday, which sounds like they've been done during this school holiday period to me.
Which would be some top quality really useful researching, again.
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