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nick said:
Got a leaflet through the door today with changes to be implemented by "winter 2024"


The leaflet and opportunity to comment etc is here:
haveyoursay.tfl.gov.uk

Tulse Hill Gyratory Safety Scheme

What we are doingWhilst we continue to consider large-scale improvements at Tulse Hill, we plan to make some improvements at Tulse Hill Gyratory to improve the safety of pedestrians crossing the zebra crossings. This will include Tulse Hill, Norwood Road, Christchurch Road and Hardel Rise.â¯...
haveyoursay.tfl.gov.uk haveyoursay.tfl.gov.uk
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From a quick read - it seems to be an "austerity" option - painting SLOW on the tarmac in a few places and putting visors on some lights. Although I would welcome the board's on the downhill stratch of Harden Rise - as that is always fun to cycle down whilst east bound cars from the A205 try to cross the lanes
 
dub said:
If that's true that's really upsetting. We should be doing more to encouraging businesses to exist past 6pm in WN and TH not less. Incl. 24hr services on the Thameslink.
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It is indeed true. They've stopped the live music for now, installed double glazing on the big pub windows and made the outdoor area by the side of the pub for smokers only.

The Effra Social had the same thing earlier this year. ONE neighbour moved in and relentlessly complained the noise to the point where the bar started to worry about its future. For several months the music had to be so quiet that people keep asking me to turn it up. All the bass bins were unplugged (and remain so) and the company spent a fortune on soundproofing.
 
Yeah it's very basic. Just the bit between the two triangle islands on Hardel Rise. Some wider pavements and some bollards. Won't stop the drag racing up Christchurch, and does nothing for the co-op corner.

1727866355127.png
 
IIRC the original residents meeting with TfL about fixing/removing the gyratory was in 2013, which means that it’s taken 11 years to do exactly nothing (except lowering the speed limit to 20, which was a wider change not specific to the gyratory.)

Since then two people have been killed by drivers in the gyratory area and a number of others seriously injured, plus many other minor incidents.

But it still doesn’t meet the supposed threshold for speed cameras. We need a few more people to be killed before the junction is considered dangerous enough to have cameras :rolleyes:

The new changes are better than nothing and should slow traffic a bit on the west side of the gyratory, but the main dangers remain the coop corner and the downhill bit by the Tulse Hill Hotel, where drivers floor it as fast as they can, despite the 20 limit.

Both bits need speed cameras.

I understand TfL are about to adopt/start using a new type of speed camera which is more sophisticated/accurate, and this may come with a policy change on how the locations are decided. Which could be an opportunity for the gyratory. Not sure what’s happening with this tho.
 
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It's good to have that blocked off, but it precludes making a good protected cycle crossing of Norwood Road. Anyone coming from the nice protected LTN has to either brave the gyratory and south circular, or battle through traffic on Norwood Road before turning off. There's road space for something like:

1731492137863.png

Which, in combination with a safe crossing of the S.circ at Elmcourt -> Lovelace Road, would provide a safe route all the way up to the protected route on Rosendale Road (soon to be extended all the way to the crossroads at The Rosendale pub)
 
Crispy said:
It's good to have that blocked off, but it precludes making a good protected cycle crossing of Norwood Road. Anyone coming from the nice protected LTN has to either brave the gyratory and south circular, or battle through traffic on Norwood Road before turning off. There's road space for something like:

View attachment 450808

Which, in combination with a safe crossing of the S.circ at Elmcourt -> Lovelace Road, would provide a safe route all the way up to the protected route on Rosendale Road (soon to be extended all the way to the crossroads at The Rosendale pub)
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That junction is a mess. Hopefully they won’t just leave it as it is when they close Palace Road / Leigham Vale.

I’ve long believed that the best option all round would be to protect Hitherfield School with a no through road parklet / raised pedestrian area on Leigham Vale. That would stop most of those trying to cut through Probyn, unless they usually park to the east of Hitherfield, as well as allowing children to leave the school safely. The school street which they have doesn’t seem to have any benefit for most children coming to or from the school.

There are countless initiatives in the area and Leigham Vale, which has a large primary school, is never restricted.
 
Trouble is Leigham Vale is a boundary road for the LTN. If you close it, then that boundary traffic has to move further South to York Hill and Knollies Road, which are even less well suited to that amount of traffic.

1731505815732.png

The current pavement build-out could be improved and enlarged, with better protection from the road maybe. It's not like anyone has to cross.

They should get rid of parking on the railway side of LV actually. If it's a boundary road, it's silly for so much of it to be effectively one-way. Replace the useless pavement and parking with an uphill-only cycle track and you get loads more room for vehicles and pavement enhancements on the housing side.
 
Crispy said:
It's good to have that blocked off, but it precludes making a good protected cycle crossing of Norwood Road. Anyone coming from the nice protected LTN has to either brave the gyratory and south circular, or battle through traffic on Norwood Road before turning off. There's road space for something like:

View attachment 450808

Which, in combination with a safe crossing of the S.circ at Elmcourt -> Lovelace Road, would provide a safe route all the way up to the protected route on Rosendale Road (soon to be extended all the way to the crossroads at The Rosendale pub)
Click to expand...
This is a good idea. Though I'm not sure there's currently anything in the pipeline to deliver it. Lambeth has the Healthy Routes programme which is currently trying to fix the bits between Streatham and Gipsy Hill, including a crossing over the South Circular between Hillside Road and High Trees and some bits on the High Trees estate. Might be worth suggesting it to Lambeth Cyclists to get it added to their list, and maybe local councillors.
 
Brixton Hatter said:
In terms of Leigham Vale, the forthcoming return of the Streatham Wells LTN will reduce traffic there.

Also, if you scroll down to the bottom of the PDF (see link below) of those plans published yesterday, there are some plans to remove some of the parking on LV and add traffic calming measures:

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For the short time that the Streatham Wells LTN was on place, traffic was massively reduced on Leigham Vale and the Headteacher at Hitherfield was very disappointed when it got suspended.
It really needs to come back
 
Why should it take a by-product of other calming measures to protect Hitherfield School?

Reducing parking on Leigham Vale is going to increase vehicle speeds. As it stands, parked cars on the railway side are providing barriers yet people still manage to break the speed limit. Take those away and you’ll have one lane of free flowing traffic in either direction.

I can’t see anything better to protect the school than making a barrier at the school itself.

Even if the school street restriction were moved from Hitherfield Road to Leigham Vale, it would be an improvement.
 
Smick said:
Why should it take a by-product of other calming measures to protect Hitherfield School?
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It's not a byproduct of other measures though its an actual aim. By filtering Valley Rd you stop the rat running of Leigham Vale as well.

Would be all for filtering Leigham Vale but unfortunately it's just not realistic.
 
Smick said:
Why should it take a by-product of other calming measures to protect Hitherfield School?

Reducing parking on Leigham Vale is going to increase vehicle speeds. As it stands, parked cars on the railway side are providing barriers yet people still manage to break the speed limit. Take those away and you’ll have one lane of free flowing traffic in either direction.

I can’t see anything better to protect the school than making a barrier at the school itself.

Even if the school street restriction were moved from Hitherfield Road to Leigham Vale, it would be an improvement.
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We tried to get a school street on LV but the council won't allow it because LV is supposedly classed as a 'distributor' road. But the LTN should fix a lot of the traffic problems.

The plans I linked to above include various measures to slow traffic, including new speed bumps and chicanes:

Screenshot 2024-11-14 at 08.52.48.png

Screenshot 2024-11-14 at 08.53.17.png
 
As far as I am aware, Valley Road was considered a distributor road, or some other elevated status of road, but was downgraded for the Streatham Wells LTN. Routes and flows can be re-directed. The only thing I can think for leaving Leigham Vale untouched is that fire engines and police use Leigham Vale, but they also use Valley Road and that didn't stop them.

I cannot see any existing LTN south of Brixton which is more deserving than Leigham Vale would be.

Leigham Vale is a basket case of a road, with frequent snarl ups, traffic queueing, shouting motorists, and also was during the Streatham Wells LTN at school drop off and pick up times. Hitherfield PS has over 600 pupils and is separated from Leigham Vale by a narrow footpath. My daughter is now in secondary, but walks home along Leigham Vale and I sometimes go out to meet her and walk the last bit with her. Two people cannot pass each other on the footpath beneath the railway bridge, I often walk onto the road, and get horns and bad looks, as I am going against the Hitherfield pedestrian flow. Chicanes aren't going to improve anything as each parked car is already a chicane.

As I said, raise the road to footpath level, benches and greenery either side, enough room for an emergency vehicle to get through. All residents on Leigham Vale have access to their homes by car. If you want to drive from Tulse Hill to Leigham Court Road, or vice versa, you do it via Streatham Common North or Streatham High Road.

I do not accept Lambeth's rationale for implementing LTNs everywhere but not here. I think that there are neighbourhoods which have more influence in the council and the planners work backwards from the neighbourhoods they would like to protect, find justification first of all. I think they are negligent in their implementation.
 
Smick said:
If you want to drive from Tulse Hill to Leigham Court Road, or vice versa, you do it via Streatham Common North or Streatham High Road.
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That would make for a very large LTN, probably too large.
Here in red with others in blue (including the suspended Streatham Hill one). S.Vale dashed line.

1731589703132.png

It's a poor standard of road design for the purpose but it's probably the least bad choice simply due to haveing half as much housing as the alternatives.
 
Crispy said:
That would make for a very large LTN, probably too large.
Here in red with others in blue (including the suspended Streatham Hill one). S.Vale dashed line.

View attachment 450954

It's a poor standard of road design for the purpose but it's probably the least bad choice simply due to haveing half as much housing as the alternatives.
Click to expand...
Ok, so the very large idea isn’t ideal, but Leigham Vale loses out. Why Leigham Vale losing out?

It can’t be ignored. It’s a shockingly bad road, with or without SW LTN in place. And it has 600 primary school kids going to and from school each day and, as with my daughter, kids from other schools walking through.
 
This is the downside of LTNs as a concept when applied to a road layout that wasn't built with it in mind. Where there aren't pre-allocated boundary roads designed to that spec, some other road has to lose out and in this case they chose the road with the fewest people living on it.

(The potential E-W routes between Norwood Road and Leigham Court Road are all residential. Just by using address number as a rough count of properties, . Knollies+York Hill has ~250, Lansdowne+Broxholme or Canterbury has ~180, St. Julian's Farm Road has ~150, Leigham Vale has ~120.)

1731593262346.png

For contrast I like to take a whistful look at the Netherlands, where they have sensible road hierarchies and town planning :(

1731593570967.png
 
But the Streatham Wells LTN did make Streatham Vale a while lot better. Bringing that back would help a he'll of a lot.

As mentioned, LTNs aren't perfect & South London's railways make them difficult to implement.

Unfortunately the father out you get the harder they are to implement especially because of higher car usage.
 
Everything in the Netherlands seems to work so well. It's like a less shit UK.

I was driving on their motorway in February of this year and was surprised that their daytime speed limit is 100 km/h. I was expecting a higher limit than the UK. I then realised how easy everything was at that speed. Never needing to brake urgently, not closing up on HGVs or buses quickly, sensible spaces between everyone.

If I were given the chance to relocate for a better quality of life, it would definitely be to the Netherlands.
 
With the increas in traffic down my road I now have difficulty finding somewhere to park ( which is very annoying after a 12 hour shift finishing at 7am) I have had my rear bumper hit, wing mirror and a large scratch down the side of my car.

Cars ignore the 20 limit (lets not go there with the motorbikes). Delivery bike riders still squeeze through gaps that just are not there. Huge arguments over right of way. Etc etc.....

None of this was a problem 5 years ago before LTNs and the ridiculous blanket 20.
 
I also noticed that some traffic measures are being introduced on palace Road.

All that means is that those in palace and lanercost with have a large detour around the gyratory.
 
oldandjaded said:
With the increas in traffic down my road I now have difficulty finding somewhere to park ( which is very annoying after a 12 hour shift finishing at 7am) I have had my rear bumper hit, wing mirror and a large scratch down the side of my car.

Cars ignore the 20 limit (lets not go there with the motorbikes). Delivery bike riders still squeeze through gaps that just are not there. Huge arguments over right of way. Etc etc.....

None of this was a problem 5 years ago before LTNs and the ridiculous blanket 20.
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The thing is with the 20mph limit, I feel, as a car driver, that I don't stick to it very rigidly, but would never go over 25. When the limits were 30, I might be doing 32-35. So, while the 20 limit isn't strictly adhered to, it has brought down average speeds overall. The food delivery riders are definitely a problem. Those bikes are likely to weigh as much as a moped, given the weight of the batteries, they can go faster than a 50cc moped, and they don't have any numberplates so they are used in a way which can't be controlled.

I also noticed that some traffic measures are being introduced on palace Road.

All that means is that those in palace and lanercost with have a large detour around the gyratory.
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That's the point. Make it difficult to make car journeys, easier to make bike journeys and to walk.
 
I'm not sure what's happening with the gyratory but it absolutely cannot take more traffic in the West Norwood lane, the rest of it flows fine but that lane is often two lines backed up.

Some other measures would need to be put in place to make that work.
 
nagapie said:
I'm not sure what's happening with the gyratory but it absolutely cannot take more traffic in the West Norwood lane, the rest of it flows fine but that lane is often two lines backed up.

Some other measures would need to be put in place to make that work.
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The West Norwood lane is then impacting all the others because the traffic for the left lane is backed up along Hardel Rise, leaving cars from Tulse Hill unable to join, so sticking on an indicator and waiting in the lanes to go to Thurlow Park Rd. And that isn't helped by the buses needing to turn right after the bus stop at the TH Hotel. To get to Thurlow Pak Rd, you need to go into the far left lane, which is left turn for Herne Hill, and then move right at the last moment.

I am sure that someone cleverer than me could make the green light longer, or do something else that would take off some of that pressure.

I think the Palace Road restrictions are mainly targeted at people coming from Leigham Vale who turn left onto Palace Road, then into Probyn Road, to travel towards Streatham Hill on the South Circular. I wouldn't envisage a huge additional volume of traffic from Palace, Lanercost, Kingsmead etc winding up at the turn onto Norwood Road.
 
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