I suggested blocking of the FH end years ago. The evening rush hour often back past Benson Rd. The pollution and noise that brings to the residents is not acceptable.

Problem I think DR ( except the SC portion ) is treated by the authorities as a normal residential road , whereas especially in the rush hour the through traffic volume is very high.

I am very much against allowing motorists ( many of whom are not even residents in the road ) park on the pavement.

Andrew mentions unfair to people who use their caf for their business. This I would think applies to very few and maybe they should look to move or be prepared to pay to park on the road.

andrewr, as an engineer you will be aware that no measurement is without bias. And it seems that your rounding shows that. I measured part of HOP to 216cm and part of Devonshire Rad as 210cm. But please, this is getting us no where. I was responding to your post where you said:

[quote]
I see no reason why people shouldn't be authorised to park on those [Devonshire Road] verges, in suitably marked boxes, so as to leave room for cars to park and pedestrians to push their buggies on the pavement. ... I'm actually very surprised that parking has been permitted on the pavement in parts of the hill in Honor Oak Park where the pedestrian width seems inadequate.
[end quote]

Using your measurements, we are talking about a difference of 20cm here! I was merely asking why you thought the Honor Oak Park pavement seemed inadequate for this but it is ok on Devonshire Road.

My own view is that the pavements are not wide enough to support this and I suspect we may have to agree to differ on this.

The root cause of the pavement parking is surely the use of Devonshire Road as a rat run. I feel that this is what could be more usefully addressed. And, as it happens, I agree with the idea of a survey - I just think it should be focussed on journeys taken instead, this to address the Park and Ride nature of the congestion.

But motorists ARE allowed to park on the pavement by default. If everyone parked on the road, the Westwood Park situation would apply and the road would become impassable! Blocking roads is almost never a good solution - it simply forces traffic, including that of residents, to do even more miles further congesting other roads instead. The Forest Hill Society have discussed with TfL limiting the right turn into / out of Devonshire Road. Even this is not considered acceptable because of the displacement of traffic onto other roads.

Of course they are allowed to park on pavement by default as the council refuses to send wardens down.

Not sure why DR should suffer because a possible solution would push traffic onto other roads.

Agreed with brian. There are plenty of other places where roads have been blocked in the area, presumably to prevent rat running. Mostly on the other side the tracks though...

What I don't understand is why people still rat run down this road. Since they changed the phasing of the lights at Forest Hill, the traffic does move along the South Circular, even if it is a bit slow. It never really grinds to a halt. I'm pretty sure rat running doesn't save any time - by the time you have waited to pull into Devonshire (depending on where you try to join) inched your way along, slowing over the humps, waiting for oncoming traffic to pass, then waited at the end to enter the South Circular, I'm pretty sure I'll have beaten you to it going slowly but smoothly along the main road.

In any case, I don't have the nerves of steel required for driving down Devonshire.

Since this thread was started the Council have been enforcing parking on the road so that pavements are not blocked. Though this is welcome news for pedestrians and especially those with buggies, this has made traffic congestion much worse though - there have been multiple threads on this subject.

It is interesting to note that since Thames Water have blocked part of Devonshire Road (just North of Boveney), the road is much quieter, there are more parking spaces available and there is no noticeable adverse effect from displaced traffic, in fact there would seem to be less disruption to traffic flow on Honor Oak Park itself. This is my view from the HOP end.

There are even parking places since the road work began. I'm in favour of blocking it off which will give residents some peace and quite too!

Hm, I am not convinced about the condition of Devonshire Road. I have seen cars parked on the pavement again in the last fortnight, so it seems that there is a little resurgence of this.