Consultation response to
Holmesdale Road & Albert Road
Healthy Neighbourhoods
Who we are
Croydon Healthy Neighbourhoods
Consultation response to
Our LTN will prevail
Why are we so confident that our Low Traffic Neighbourhood in Upper Norwood will win in the end? It’s simple. The tide of history has changed.
The onslaught of car dominance over people started in the 1950s. In cities, trams and trolleybuses were removed. Buildings were bulldozed to make way for roads. In rural areas the rail network was decimated.
Continue reading “Our LTN will prevail”Submission to Scrutiny & Overview Committee
Dear Committee Members
This email is on behalf of Shape Better Streets, a resident campaign for traffic reduction and active travel in the LTN area you will be discussing next week. We broadly support Cllr Ali’s decision to reinstate the LTN in modified form.
Continue reading “Submission to Scrutiny & Overview Committee”Some questions for the Scrutiny Committee
The fate of Auckland Road as a Healthy Street experiment is about to come under scrutiny. It is almost unbelievable that there would be any opposition to a Healthy Street, but sadly these questions need to be answered.
Continue reading “Some questions for the Scrutiny Committee”Auckland Road in Utopia
It looks like Auckland Road will become the backbone of an experimental ANPR controlled Healthy Streets scheme. But instead of a watered-down 2nd generation Low Traffic Neighbourhood, how would we design it if we genuinely wanted to demonstrate what a people friendly neighbourhood could really look like?
Croydon Council has talented highway engineers who must be praying to do more than just put in ANPRs. What would they deliver if they worked in the Netherlands, Denmark, or Germany?
Continue reading “Auckland Road in Utopia”LTNs and Equalities
Opponents of LTNs, in this area and elsewhere, frequently assert that they have adverse impacts on the groups in our society who are legally protected under equalities legislation. This blog takes a dispassionate look at the evidence and finds these claims at best unsubstantiated, and in some cases completely unsupported, on the balance of evidence.
Continue reading “LTNs and Equalities”Want your own LTN?
Fed up with rat-run traffic making your neighbourhood unsafe? Here’s a few ideas about how to petition the council to install a Low Traffic Neighbourhood or other filtering options.
Bla bla bla climate change
It is yet to be seen whether climate change will become a deciding factor in the future of Crystal Palace LTN.
As Greta Thunberg recently pointed out:
Continue reading “Bla bla bla climate change”Telraam traffic counters coming to Crystal Palace
A local initiative is taking off to inform the debate around traffic management and policy in Crystal Palace. Volunteers are installing a number of stand-alone traffic counters using Raspberry Pi devices running Telraam software. This is an open source traffic-counting system that has been developed by a team in Belgium specifically to promote citizen science-led traffic policy.
Continue reading “Telraam traffic counters coming to Crystal Palace”Open letter to Councillor Muhammad Ali
1 February 2021
Dear Muhammad
CRYSTAL PALACE AND SOUTH NORWOOD LTN
Residents and supporters of our campaign were dismayed to read your announcement that the current LTN measures will be taken out before the implementation of the planned new experimental layout, and, indeed, before there is any clarity about the timetable on which it will be implemented. I am sure you realise, but I must put on record, that a return to being a high traffic neighbourhood will have a devastating impact on well-being and quality of life for residents, particularly many with protected characteristics, and reverse the enormous progress which has been made in encouraging active travel.
Continue reading “Open letter to Councillor Muhammad Ali”Theory of relativity
For centuries, we were quite happy to think that time was constant until Einstein spoilt everything by advancing his theory that time was relative. But it has taken the advent of our local LTN for oppositionists to posit that a road that takes 5 minutes 10 seconds to cycle is causing 40 minute delays to car journeys.
So we thought we should provide some context. Here you can see how people are adapting to the new safe environment that is Auckland Road (and Lancaster Road):
The case for/against the LTN
Issues that have been raised by the consultation on the LTN and proposals that have been made to address them.
Continue reading “The case for/against the LTN”Congestion in the Fresh Air Suburb
Congestion = Pollution. Supporters & opponents of the LTN agree.
Continue reading “Congestion in the Fresh Air Suburb”Planters into chicanes
Whatever might be in store for the LTN, one thing for sure is that the planters will become redundant. Here’s a proposal to make use of them that requires the least effort or transport costs. Some members of our community clearly like their planters, so this proposal offers continuity for them to care for and decorate ‘their’ planters.
Continue reading “Planters into chicanes”It wasn’t a vote
Some of our local representatives seem to have been caught up in the meme that the opponents of the LTN ‘won the vote’. If they had been paying attention, rather than getting caught up in OOR hysteria, they should have spotted that it was a consultation. So looking beyond the simplicity of the numbers let’s see what this consultation actually revealed.
The most striking feature was that 75% of residents were so unconcerned about the LTN that they did not think it was worth responding.
Continue reading “It wasn’t a vote”Why restrictions need to be kept at the bus gate
Supporters of the LTN broadly support the proposals in the officers’ report to the Traffic Management Advisory Committee, though some would prefer that the LTN was preserved in its current format with planters.
However, almost unanimously, we believe that permitting local residents to drive through the bus gate undermines some of the objectives of the LTN.
Continue reading “Why restrictions need to be kept at the bus gate”Claims made by the Open Our Roads campaign – Myth & Reality
The Open Our Roads campaign can only support its ludicrous demands to open roads which are, in fact, already open, by resorting to claims for which they can produce no evidence. Here we take a look at a few of them.
Continue reading “Claims made by the Open Our Roads campaign – Myth & Reality”Letter to TMAC councillors
Traffic Management Advisory Committee 12 January 2021
Dear Committee Members
This email is on behalf of Shape Better Streets, a resident campaign for traffic reduction and active travel in the LTN area you will be discussing next week. We broadly support the proposals in the officer paper.
Continue reading “Letter to TMAC councillors”Evaporating traffic
The phenomenon of evaporating traffic is so interesting that we devote a sub-section to it on our Resources page. Opponents of LTNs all over the world like to claim that restricting traffic in one area just displaces it to another. This may well happen over a short period, but quite quickly, enough people change their mode of travel so that overall traffic reduces and in some cases it even happens on the boundary roads.
But now for something completely different.
This post is going to look for a more mysterious form of disappearing traffic, as it has apparently occurred without intervention, nobody has spotted it nor divined where it might have gone.
Continue reading “Evaporating traffic”Devastating debunking of LTN raison d’être
It is the season to be magnanimous so it is only fitting that we should admit that opponents of the LTN have finally supplied the killer blow to our attempts to demonstrate that traffic patterns over the last 10 years prove the need for the LTN.
Continue reading “Devastating debunking of LTN raison d’être”New TfL data shows significant increase in walking and cycling since the pandemic started
Evidence that the Streetspace programme is working is confirmed by today’s release of traffic data by TfL.
Continue reading “New TfL data shows significant increase in walking and cycling since the pandemic started”LTN: proof it’s needed; proof it’s working
Shape Better Streets has delivered a 37 page submission to Croydon Council’s Consultation on the Crystal Palace and South Norwood Low Traffic Neighbourhood Scheme.
Continue reading “LTN: proof it’s needed; proof it’s working”Active Travel Briefing for LB Bromley Council meeting, 7 December 2020
We write on behalf of ‘Bromley Living Streets’ and ‘Bromley Cyclists’, which are respectively local groups of the national walking charity ‘Living Streets’ and the ‘London Cycling Campaign’.
Continue reading “Active Travel Briefing for LB Bromley Council meeting, 7 December 2020”Cypress School Pupil Survey
Pupils from Cypress School recently took part in a survey on how they got to school. This took place after the Walk to Schools week and no doubt the safer streets within the LTN must have had an impact. An amazing 272 pupils took part; a large and significant survey.
Continue reading “Cypress School Pupil Survey”Healthy Streets for All
Just before Covid struck a group of local residents held a meeting to determine how to make Norwood’s streets safer, quieter and cleaner.
Continue reading “Healthy Streets for All”Active travel in the LTN – July & November 2020
This brings together resident data about active travel at two locations in the LTN:
- on Sylvan Hill, where there is data for both July and November
- at the Sylvan Hill/Auckland Road crossroads, where there is data only for November.
Submission by Bromley Cyclists (London Cycling Campaign)
To: Croydon Council’s Consultation on the Crystal Palace and South Norwood
Low Traffic Neighbourhood Scheme
When we learned of the furore over this scheme on the Croydon/Bromley border, we sought to get to the bottom of it. We talked to a range of players, opened a social media channel for discussion, studied the situation on the ground, and explored cycling links northward through Crystal Palace Park and southwards to Croydon.
Continue reading “Submission by Bromley Cyclists (London Cycling Campaign)”How the traffic came and took over our neighbourhood
Rise in traffic in London and Croydon
It looks like a fairly modest increase in traffic over the last 27 years in London. Less than 1% per year. But still an additional 3.5 billion miles.
Continue reading “How the traffic came and took over our neighbourhood”LTN causes traffic chaos
It’s become quite fashionable to post images of congestion caused, not by too many cars, but by the LTN. This page will present date/time stamped photos of local streets at times when one might expect greatest congestion to occur: commuting, school runs, Saturday shopping. Now this isn’t to say that there is no congestion, just that it is nowhere near as bad as some suggest, AND hasn’t there always been jams around the triangle?
First of all, we must confess that it is not all good news. This next photo shows how the LTN has caused eeeeeeeeeeeenormous tail backs all the way to Cape Town:
Continue reading “LTN causes traffic chaos”Motorists pay for roads. Cyclists don’t.
We often hear this refrain from the ‘road lobby’ – people who think they are entitled to drive on all roads, come what may. So before considering what is behind this meme, let’s check its accuracy.
Continue reading “Motorists pay for roads. Cyclists don’t.”