Goose Green Newsletter - September 2020

This is one of our regular newsletters. They are posted online and emailed out to Labour Party members and anyone who signs up here.

Electing a new council leadership

On Monday 7th September the Labour Group (which includes all Southwark Labour Councillors) will host its AGM. Cllr Peter John has not stood for re-election as Leader so we will soon have a new leader of Southwark Council. A hustings was organised for local Labour Party members on 2nd September and Labour Group will have a further hustings on Saturday the 5th. It would be interesting to hear from Labour members who attended the hustings about who they preferred for the post.

The council’s AGM will be on the 16th September. Posts elected there will be in place until next May.

Low traffic neighbourhoods

Like many local authorities around London and the country, Southwark has implemented a number of ‘low traffic neighbourhood’ (LTN) measures, including in Goose Green.

What is an LTN?

The idea behind an LTN is to encourage cycling and walking, and discourage car use. This is achieved by closing some roads to motor vehicles, and making others accessible from only one end - thereby removing it as a through-route but maintaining car access. The latter measure has been, or will shortly be, implemented in five locations in Goose Green: Melbourne Grove north (near Grove Vale), Melbourne Grove south (between Tell Grove and Ashbourne Grove), Derwent Grove, Elsie Road and Tintagel Crescent. There are others nearby in Dulwich Hill and Dulwich Village wards.

Why now?

LTNs have existed for many years but they have become much more common in recent months. Why? Social distancing rules mean that fewer people are using public transport. Journeys which were previously taken by bus are now taken by car, by bike or on foot. But increased car traffic makes the other two options less safe, less pleasant and therefore less appealing. LTNs attempt to rebalance this and encourage ‘active transport’ - which is much healthier and much more environmentally friendly.

The process

Normally when the council alters the road layout it would first go through a lengthy consultation - like in the case of the controlled parking zone. However, covid made this impossible. Reduced staff capacity and limitations created by the lockdown and social distancing rules made it hard to run any consultations effectively. And, in this case, there was a need to act quickly: as lockdown lifts new habits will set in so if the roads become inhospitable to pedestrians and cyclists this will be harder to change later. So most councils, including Southwark, opted to implement the measures as ‘emergency’ orders. This means that they can be in place for up to 18 months. After this, they may become permanent, but that will depend on how successful they are.

What do residents think?

Despite restrictions on council-wide consultations, we councillors did put out a survey. It was only circulated digitally but, given this, the response was relatively good. We shared the results in the last newsletter but they are here again for reference. In summary: residents on these four streets were overwhelmingly supportive of the measures.

However, we have also received complaints and criticisms of the measures - primarily from those living on nearby streets.

Evaluation

It is inevitable that there will be initial problems caused by the LTN measures. Many road users are still unaccustomed to the measures and try to go through streets which they can no longer use as a through-route. This means that the traffic on the streets they can use has risen. This is exacerbated further by the general increase in car traffic that we have seen across London.

The hope is that when everyone becomes used to the new roads, the number of cars (and the associated pollution) will prove to be lower than it would have been without the measures. At the moment, it is too early to tell.

We will also evaluate the impact from an equalities perspective: even if the community benefits as a whole we still want to know who are the ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ from the measures.

Charlie wrote an article on this topic in the SE22 magazine. If you did not receive it then you can read it online.