Mayor’s Streetspace Plans Thrown Out By Court  

There has been an important judgement in the High Court after a Judicial Review was launched by taxi drivers. They challenged the blocking of Bishopsgate in the City of London to taxi drivers by the use of a “bus gate”. Mrs Justice Lang declared the Traffic Order used was unlawful. In fact she quashed the Streetspace Plan and the associated Interim Guidance that has been used to implement many recent road closures and said there was a failure to comply with the Equality Act. She also said that the Mayor and TfL took advantage of the pandemic to push through ‘‘radical changes” and that the “decisions were not a rational response to the issues which arose as a result of the COVID epidemic”.

This judgement may be very relevant to the legal challenges taking place in several London boroughs. See  https://abdlondon.wordpress.com/2021/01/21/streetspace-plan-for-bishopsgate-overturned-in-high-court/ for more details.

Note that several campaign groups are raising funds for legal challenges and some will be heard in February. Please do support them if you can. Go here for a list of active groups: https://www.freedomfordrivers.org/london-road-closures.htm

Lee Green LTN Monitoring and Commonplace Comments

The promised survey of residents that was planned to take place in December has been abandoned. It will now be combined with a full public consultation in March, so residents of the borough will have to put up with current road closures for many more months.

Even that date might change if the epidemic and associated lockdowns persist. Clearly any measures of traffic and air pollution taken at present are not going to be representative of normal circumstances, so some delay is not unreasonable. For the same reason we have postponed issuing another survey ourselves.

But Lewisham Council have published a lot of information recently on Commonplace about the data they have collected so far including the opinions posted on Commonplace. See https://lewishamcovidresidentialstreets.commonplace.is/proposals/lewisham-lee-green-ltn-monitoring for the voluminous data. Here are some of the key points:

There has been a dramatic fall in traffic within the LTN, no doubt because of the pandemic. But traffic on some surrounding roads has been disrupted by road works and the impact on such roads as the South Circular is very unclear. But this sentence from the report is very telling: “Brownhill Road may report lower traffic flows but is explained by the fact that increased congestion has allowed less cars to pass through”!

Lee Green LTN Commonplace Responses

They also report on the responses from residents and the chart shows that there is clearly a large majority of residents who do not wish the LTN scheme to be made permanent. So much for the claims that LTNs are popular with residents.

Bus and Other Traffic Journey Times

Bus traffic journey times have clearly increased substantially particularly after August 2020, i.e. after the LTN was introduced and people returned from summer holidays. Freight and other traffic also appear to have been impacted.

TfL reported that general traffic levels are still lower than at the same time last year based on the latest data, but the report says “The highest traffic flow increases were recorded on the roads surrounding the LTN most notably on Brownhill Road, Lee High Road and Burnt Ash Road.

Air Pollution

The report suggests that air pollution across the LTN has been following the same general trend across other parts of the borough and across London, i.e. reductions due to improved vehicles. The report also suggests that the LTN has “had very little or no impact on the surrounding air quality” which is not that surprising as air pollution rapidly blows around. However there is insufficient data provided to give any real indication of the impact on the boundary roads.

The data provided is so patchy and lacks proper analysis that it does little to corroborate or refute the reports of residents about how they see it on the ground. The comments they put on Commonplace may be a better indication of the failure of the scheme to improve the life of residents.

Council Not Giving Up and More School Streets

It is very clear that Lewisham Council are not giving up on their plans to cut traffic by closing roads. They still hope that the public will come to accept the closures already in place, and they certainly plan to implement similar schemes in the rest of the borough in due course.

In the meantime they are pushing ahead with the implementation of more “School Streets” where roads are closed to traffic during school opening and closing times. This can be enormously inconvenient for some residents and will deter delivery drivers from delivering in the roads. There are 10 such streets already implemented and another 16 are planned in Haseltine Road, Rathfern Road, Myatt Garden, Rokeby Road, Kilmorie Road, Beachborough Road, Thornville Street, Athelney Street, Moorside Road, Thorpwood Avenue, Coopers Lane, Pragnell Road, Amyruth Road, Culverley Road, Beacon Road and Doggett Road. There has been no public consultation on these plans.

We Need Your Help to Continue this Successful Campaign

This campaign opposing the road closures in Lewisham has been very effective at raising public awareness and has helped to get some of the closures removed. However, we need to continue a very active campaign for the foreseeable future, even possibly until the next council elections. At present the work to promote this campaign and keep in touch with supporters just falls on a few people. We need more people involved, particularly to relieve me of some of the workload.

THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT!

I have lots of other responsibilities so the amount of time I can spend on Lewisham issues is limited. If you are willing to assist please contact me via email or phone (if you send an email please include a phone number). If telephoning it’s best to call during office hours, but if I don’t answer please leave a message and I’ll call you back.

We can defeat these road closures but we need more active supporters!

Roger Lawson

See the Contact Page here:  https://www.freedomfordrivers.org/contact.htm