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TfL Road Plan 2014-2022
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Mr_Numbers


Posts: 513
Joined: May 2012
Post: #1
05-11-2014 11:42 AM

TfL has published its plan for £4bn of road works over the next eight years, including a map of where these projects will be.

http://www.tfl.gov.uk/travel-information...d-projects

Obviously the vast majority of them are in southeast London.

Sorry - just to clarify: when I said "the vast majority", statistically-speaking I meant "none".

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lacb


Posts: 627
Joined: Mar 2005
Post: #2
05-11-2014 12:17 PM

LOL. Yes a striking gap in the SE.

It is easy to miss but our sector has not been *completely* forgotten. Item 15 is the Elephant & Castle roundabout. Hurrah.

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Mr_Numbers


Posts: 513
Joined: May 2012
Post: #3
05-11-2014 12:31 PM

Ah. Yes, quite right. I missed the L'Enfant de Castille. And the work at the Oval Triangle SE11 will be of enormous help to drivers, cyclists and pedestrians in Forest Hill, HOP, Sydenham, Catford and Lewisham. I feel embarrassed to have complained... Laugh

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michael


Posts: 3,255
Joined: Mar 2005
Post: #4
05-11-2014 01:57 PM

I replied to the email sent to me (subject line 'Information for London road users' - I thought they meant the A205):

Quote:
Would it be possible to rename TfL - "Transport for North and West London"?


They only emphasised the point by using a map centered on Blackheath.

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Sherwood


Posts: 1,412
Joined: Mar 2005
Post: #5
05-11-2014 02:35 PM

A curious pattern. Does Boris not want votes from SE London?

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michael


Posts: 3,255
Joined: Mar 2005
Post: #6
05-11-2014 02:56 PM

Why would the future MP for Uxbridge care about votes in South East London?

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lacb


Posts: 627
Joined: Mar 2005
Post: #7
05-11-2014 03:18 PM

Indeed. But a curious pattern nonetheless. I don't see Hackney turning blue any sooner than Lewisham, say.

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michael


Posts: 3,255
Joined: Mar 2005
Post: #8
05-11-2014 03:42 PM

I don't think this is politically motivated, it is simply the normal priorities of London's transport system - whether that is tubes, roads, motorways, cycle super highways, cycle hire schemes, Thameslink - south east London is always the lowest priority.

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lacb


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Joined: Mar 2005
Post: #9
05-11-2014 03:55 PM

Well, ok, am happy to run with that. So then there should be a transport justification - is there generally less demand in the South East or is the transport here already better?

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Tim Lund


Posts: 255
Joined: Apr 2008
Post: #10
06-11-2014 10:45 AM

Run with what, lacb? That SE London is neglected, but this should not be seen as party political - which Michael seems to think - or that there should be a transport justification, and that maybe there is, and here in SE London there is less need for road schemes? Maybe, but it would be interesting to see the numbers. Is anyone else interested?

I'd also be interested in looking at total transport spend, so not just on roads, and the impact on how quickly people can get about - e.g. London Overground. But as a matter of good practice, let's not forget about spend on buses and cycle provision. Looking at the big picture, are we hard done by or not? If we got the Bakerloo line extension, and they got all those road works, would we be happy?

Some of us may feel that, because we get less road spend than the rest of London, then TfL should be renamed "Transport for North and West London", but some others would like to move on from the blinkered Thatcherite vision of Road to Prosperity to a more sustainable, evidence based approach to policy making.

This post was last modified: 06-11-2014 10:46 AM by Tim Lund.

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michael


Posts: 3,255
Joined: Mar 2005
Post: #11
06-11-2014 12:13 PM

"blinkered Thatcherite vision..."
Not me. I want to see investment in roads including better cycling facilities (cycle super highways fail to go beyond the Elephant in the room), I want to see better pedestrian crossings, I want to see reduced pollution from traffic jams in our town centres, and I want to see safer roads for all users. That is what a good proportion of the schemes are about.

I would also like to see improvements to the existing bottlenecks in South London like Catford, the bridge at Southend Lane, Crystal Palace, Greenwich town centre, Rotherhithe tunnel.

"is the transport here already better?"
Well let's judge by the accident rates in 2013 (https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/sy...s10014.xls)

Lewisham has the 9th worst accident rate of the 33 London Boroughs. 14% of reported accidents take place in South East London (Southwark and eastwards).

TfL's response is for 1 out of 49 of the schemes (2%) to be in South East London. And I probably wouldn't be complaining if there was evidence of greater investment in buses, trains, tubes, bike hire, or other schemes. We are left behind in all of these time and time again.

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Tim Lund


Posts: 255
Joined: Apr 2008
Post: #12
06-11-2014 05:57 PM

Looking further into those schemes, as I should have earlier, I see that many of them are linked to installing the cycle super highways, so I apologise if I suggested that people living in other quarters of London - and Michael - were in a Thatcherite time warp. OTOH, cycling activists tell me that one reason we're not seeing cycle super highways extending here is because our local authorities just aren't very keen on cycling. Lewisham is far from the worst - that honour I think goes to Greenwich. So, if we want to see more road projects, it would probably help to have local amenity societies backing organisations such as Lewisham Cyclists and the London cycling campaign, rather than sending out rather negative messages about cycling such as this. I suspect such engagement will impress TfL rather more than the level of humour used in your recent communications with them.

Accident rates are reasonable enough as part of transport in London can be judged, but if taken on their own can be misleading; notoriously, a major reason for the decline in deaths and serious injuries on our roads over the last 100 years is that fewer vulnerable users - pedestrians and cyclists - are on them.

Taking Michael's figure of 14% of reported accidents taking place in our SE quarter of London, I'm led to wonder what proportion of London's population live in these boroughs. It's easy enough to look up, thanks to the GLA data store. 13%, as it happens. Over to Michael for the the chi squared test for statistical significance.

This post was last modified: 06-11-2014 05:59 PM by Tim Lund.

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michael


Posts: 3,255
Joined: Mar 2005
Post: #13
07-11-2014 10:27 AM

Tim,
I'm glad you got beyond the knee-jerk reaction to the idea of 'road investment'. I don't think any complicated statistical analysis is required to tell us that with 13% of the population and a similar percentage of the road accidents in the capital, that 2% of the investment in road improvements is not a fair share for South East London.

In fairness most of the road enhancements are in zone 1 which is shared by more users than the population would suggest, as many people commute to central London and then use the roads (on foot, bike, bus, taxi, private car, or vans). But knowing that the ratio of accidents to population in central London is likely to be higher due to high usage by non-residents, this means that the other areas of London have less accidents per population than SE London (I'll leave you to work the numbers to prove or disprove).

But beyond zone 1 there is a massive discrepancy between the investment in the four quadrants of London, or at least the other three have about the same and SE has none.

As for promoting cycling by amenity societies, you may be aware that the Forest Hill Society this year organised two weekend cycle rides. Improving cycling on local roads is less easy to change, but it has certainly been a consideration whenever discussing road issues. One of the ideas that came out of the planning workshop we organised was an enhanced footpath and cycle route next to the railway (parallel to Dartmouth Road), but it really needs some investment to make sightlines and widths safe.

But that shouldn't mean that cycling on pavements is an issue that cannot ever be discussed (but possibly not on this thread if we can avoid it).

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lacb


Posts: 627
Joined: Mar 2005
Post: #14
10-11-2014 02:58 PM

Quote:
Run with what, lacb?


... with exactly what you said:

Quote:
That SE London is neglected, but this should not be seen as party political - which Michael seems to think - or that there should be a transport justification, and that maybe there is, and here in SE London there is less need for road schemes?


Yes precisely and I also would also like to see the figures which is why I asked the question:

Quote:
is there generally less demand in the South East or is the transport here already better?


Hope that clarifies. Anyone have access to the necessary data?

Have also wondered whether the lack of employment in SE postcodes could be a factor too and this would mesh with Michael's comments re central zone. Have seen data for that (http://data.london.gov.uk/dataset/daytim...on-borough Lewisham population drops during the working day) but not how that correlates to transport usage.

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michael


Posts: 3,255
Joined: Mar 2005
Post: #15
10-11-2014 04:22 PM

Quote:
is there generally less demand in the South East or is the transport here already better?


Other data from GLA tells us that Lewisham has the longest average journey to work (46 mins compared to a London average of 36 mins), probably because nobody works in Lewisham. We also have the highest use of rail (9%, that's 2% above any other borough except City of London - apparently).

On buses, Lewisham is the 5th highest use of buses after Hackney, Haringey, Southwark, Lambeth, and Islington. On car use Lewisham fits the London average, but Bexley and Bromley are highest users of cars for travel to work.

In terms of serious accidents on the roads the worst boroughs are Westminister, Southwark, and Lambeth (182, 157, 154 casualties per year). The next level down are Barnet, Lewisham, Camden (123, 105, 105). Five of these boroughs contain key transport corridors to central London, Lewisham doesn't.

I'm not sure that this proves too much. I think it hints that transport is not better in South East London - resulting in our long journeys to work from Lewisham and more chance of being seriously injured on the roads than most other boroughs.

My conclusion is that we don't already have better transport, nor do we have less demand, but we do have roads that are less safe. But I think I arrived at that conclusion before I looked at any stats, none of which justify a lack of investment in major road schemes in South East London.

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lacb


Posts: 627
Joined: Mar 2005
Post: #16
11-11-2014 08:49 AM

So, to summarise, we don't know of a rationale why TfL should have largely ignored SE London. Perhaps the political bias hypothesis is not so easily discounted then.

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Mr_Numbers


Posts: 513
Joined: May 2012
Post: #17
20-11-2014 09:38 AM

But on the positive side, they're spending a chunk of money on radio ads to tell us how great their road plans are. Unfortunately they couldn't find a way of jamming radios in southeast London so we couldn't hear these ads.

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michael


Posts: 3,255
Joined: Mar 2005
Post: #18
29-01-2015 04:27 PM

It turns out that there are some projects planned for South East London. It remains unclear why these don't make it into the map or list of road projects to 2022, I suspect because they are relatively minor projects by comparison.

But the list does include:

Quote:
A205 Devonshire Road junction with London Road outside Forest Hill Station – Junction layout improvements to allow for better pedestrian crossing facilities. These works are likely to be carried out in Spring 2018.

A205 Catford Road junction with Thomas Lane & Canadian Ave – New road layout to include improved pedestrian crossing facilities and reduced vehicle queuing with the aim to improve bus journey time and reliability - These works are likely to be carried out in early 2016.

Other projects can be found in the comment sections at http://talklondon.london.gov.uk/travel/m...h#comments

So we finally have a date when the main junction in Forest Hill will be improved for pedestrians, and it is only 3 years away!

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