Ignoring community opposition and expert views means Greenwich is replaying the failed and disruptive 'Hills & Vales' experiment
Despite a highly negative reaction to the proposed 'options' for a 2-mile LTN, RBG continues to plan on introducing the scheme. Cabinet member Cllr Averil Lekau, answering the Scrutiny Panel's enquiries on 7 December, agreed only to defer the decision. She has never acknowledged that Transport for London, which has pledged funding for the scheme, requires local support prior to implementation. And new Government Guidance requires 'confidence that a scheme is capable of carrying the support of a majority of the community before introducing it'. Department for Transport, Implementing low traffic neighbourhoods, 17 March 2024.
Pushing ahead with the scheme replays the same refusal to acknowledge public opposition that infected the 2020 scheme. The only LTN to have been implemented, in West Greenwich, it was removed in February 2022 due to assumed displacement impacts and public opposition, as well as complaints from the emergency services that emerged via Freedom of Information Act requests.
Boundary roads, already carrying between15,000 to 33,000 vehicles per day, together with vital bus routes, will be expected to take the strain of diversions for drivers needing access to homes in the huge new traffic-excluding area.
The planned East Greenwich section of the scheme - imposing a road barrier along the line of the railway - was first rejected in a commonplace survey in 2021 by thousands of local residents. And a West Greenwich 'Traffic Management Scheme', installed without consultation in 2020, was removed in February 2022. Traffic monitoring in West Greenwich found that the scheme imposed additional stress on residential boundary roads - particularly Blackheath Hill - as well as internal displacement that doubled local traffic overall and increased vehicles on supposedly LTN streets Royal Hill and Blissett Street.
To reduce assumed displacement to East Greenwich, the scheme was modified in August 2021 to open Hyde Vale during peak hours, endangering children attending James Wolfe Primary School. attempting to funnel through traffic down one route containing a primary school during peak hours represented an abysmal climbdown by the Council. It also exposed the lack of genuine traffic expertise and failure of a dogmatic and unrealistic attitude towards vehicle use.
The West Greenwich (or 'Hills and Vales') LTN scheme was removed in February 2022, following sustained local opposition to both the main scheme and the 2021 modification, complaints by the emergency services of critical delays in reaching residents' home, and overall borough wide rejection of other LTN schemes in Commonplace 'consultations'. At the same time, the socially unequal impact of the scheme - which forced more traffic, congestion and pollution on low income older people and families became better understood.
Transport Consultants Steer Group, were asked to provide a 'West Greenwich LTN Monitoring Report and Proposed Westcombe Park LTN Modelling' as part of the package of officers' papers supporting the RBG's Cabinet decision in February 2022 to remove the scheme. The title of the report means that the Council removed the scheme in a decision that included a collateral decision to replace it.
In February 2022, West Greenwich residents had already rejected an LTN no less than three times (twice in November 2019 when two schemes were issued for consultation, and again in January 2022 when an online Commonplace survey was issued on the preservation of the scheme and its modification).
The Steer Report summary findings were that between 2019 and 2021:
The Steer Report was heavily qualified. And a major caveat was that, with up to 20 percent reduction in all traffic caused by pandemic conditions, Blackheath Hill's (A2) displacement share was, in real terms, a staggering additional 17 per cent. Viewed proportionately, this meant an increase of 4,700 vpd on average. The Steer report recorded a 2% increase on 2019 which has been widely touted as denying displacement from the LTN. However, traffic rates just prior to the introduction of the scheme in August 2020 do not seem to have been used in the Steer analysis. This would have shown the true impact of the general 'pandemic' traffic reduction. At the same time 'increases' demonstrated on other roads in the area resulted from more contemporaneous monitoring immediately before and after the LTN introduction.
Steer explained that increased traffic on Maze Hill and the Westcombe area cannot all be attributed to the LTN. There was no monitoring of the earlier closure of Park Avenue ('the road in the park'). In its analysis, Steer found that more traffic was likely to be attracted to big box Peninsula retailers via West Greenwich, as well as home deliveries. Neither factor supports displacement from West to East Greenwich.
Steer conclusions also point to 'more fundamental changes people have made to how they travel following the pandemic, 'key road schemes' such as the cycleway extension on Trafalgar and Woolwich Roads, as well as local development.
On 23 February 2022 the Council made a decision as follows: 'To approve the removal of the West Greenwich LTN (and the return of the streets to how they were before the trial) by allowing the existing Experimental Traffic Regulation Order (ETRO) to expire on 25 February 2022; and to authorise Council officers to begin the process of developing an alternative LTN traffic scheme for West Greenwich (Option 3 in the Main Report).'
This self-contradictory decision may not be lawful. However, the Council continued, more or less covertly, to seek funding for traffic improvements. In mid-2022 enquiries disclosed that a new 'study area' had been created over the whole East-West area on which we have reported more fully.
Both areas are quiet and relatively free of traffic. The Council has steadfastly declined to provide hard evidence of traffic movement justifying the schemes now in the process of being decided upon. It is not yet known what scheme was put forward to obtain TfL 'active travel' money that was ultimately granted earlier this year.
In May 2023 the council said the money was intended for improvements to pedestrian and cycle infrastructure. A press release also detailed expenditure on 20mph speed limits, controlled parking zones and school streets, emissions-based charges and ‘sustainable’ travel – including improvements to pedestrian and cycle infrastructure.stated and lower traffic speeds. And a 'Stage 1' consultation, earlier in the year, showcased traffic-calming measures such as raised tables.
None of these measures is in the new package. But a 'Stage 2' consultation, launched at the end of August, asked for residents' views on drastic vehicle obstruction schemes over a wide area, cutting access to homes, schools and businesses, and forcing local drivers to use overburdened 'boundary' routes on the A2, Trafalgar Road and Woolwich Road, and Greenwich South Street. (See more on our home page on 'options' put forward and the community's responses.)
Misleadingly divided into two areas and dubbed 'Neighbourhood Management', the Council originally claimed they were combatting 'serious congestion and safety problems' over the area, none of which has been substantiated.
The plans include bollards, bus gates and up to six ANPR cameras across the area to fine drivers for breaching barriers. The Commonplace commentary admits that the barriers are intended to discourage 'motorists' from using cars by obstructing them. The consultation focussed on five new road blocking 'options' stretching across East and West Greenwich. The consultation ‘options’, did not include leaving things as they are, or improving pedestrian and bike access.
Consultants PJA have been exposed as ignorant of the area's road layout and topography. Around eight north-south roads rise through 130 feet between Trafalgar Road and Blackheath, making cycling difficult for all but the most able. PJA's baseline study of the area noted: “steep inclines [are] likely to be a key barrier for people to walk and cycle. This is a key consideration for the area.” Baseline analysis and traffic study (East), August 2023. There has been no further recognition of the problem, or others like it.
The Stage 2 consultation options were uniformly rejected by a large majority of respondents living in or around the affected areas.
Any combination of options will cause long southerly detours from the Sun and Sands roundabout to the notorious Blackheath Hill junction with Greenwich South Street and from the Angerstein/Woolwich flyover to Greenwich Town Centre. Detours will increase mileage and congestion.
The giant scheme threatens to restrict vital journeys over a wide area, and contribute to repeated and disabling gridlock when the A2, Blackwall Tunnel approaches, and A206 (Woolwich Rd, Trafalgar Rd, Greenwich High Rd and Greenwich South St) are affected by accidents, road works and other emergencies.
Greenwich has not evaluated or anticipated impacts, including traffic generated by the Silvertown Tunnel. But the transport strategy document admits there will be increased traffic generated by planned 'last mile' delivery hubs in the Peninsula area. And council consultants have already highlighted big box retail developments, such as IKEA, all council promoted and consented, as the source of increased East Greenwich traffic.
Private car use is already in long term decline. The impact of ULEZ is yet to be fully assessed: but evidence is emerging of reductions in pollution. LTNs are becoming a toxic brand everywhere – cause community division between privileged internal streets, and people living on the boundary roads designed to receive displaced traffic. The Department of Transport decided in May that LTNs ‘do not benefit the community as a whole’. All LTNs were blocked from the Department’s recent fourth round of Active Travel Fund payments.
Greenwich and Lewisham businesses and residents living and operating on boundary roads experience serious congestion, additional pollution and lack of safety, but were excluded from information and consultation about the plans. Boundary road residents are being ignored, even as 'serious congestion and safety' are being deliberately made much worse for them.
Traffic from large areas of the huge terrain in East Greenwich south of the railway line, will be forced into Charlton, where residents and businesses knew nothing about the plans until GGTF circulated leaflets.
The plans are openly admitted as making it more difficult to drive with the aim of making residents' lives 'happier and healthier' via active travel such as walking and cycling. Residents have already voted in huge numbers against the scheme. But the original impetus for the 2020 scheme from local amenity groups aimed to counter peak hours traffic in the affluent 'Hills and Vales' area where house prices regularly top £2m.
The 2019 Local Implementation Plan recorded the highest active travel rates in the borough in West and East Greenwich. It is not clear why the area, already under severe traffic pressure has been singled out for intensive LTN treatment.
There has been no joined-up thinking on the future of our overburdened 'boundary' roads, or on the accessibility and efficiency of our bus services on which so many depend. Traffic generated will greatly increase boundary road journeys in comparison with the 2020 scheme.
The current proposals reverse the abandonment of LTNs across the north of the borough from West Greenwich to Woolwich, all strongly opposed by residents and councillors - described at the time by a councillor as ‘the perfect storm’.
Pushing ahead with the scheme replays the same refusal to acknowledge public opposition that infected the 2020 scheme. The only LTN to have been implemented, in West Greenwich, it was removed in February 2022 due to assumed displacement impacts and public opposition, as well as complaints from the emergency services that emerged via Freedom of Information Act requests.
Boundary roads, already carrying between15,000 to 33,000 vehicles per day, together with vital bus routes, will be expected to take the strain of diversions for drivers needing access to homes in the huge new traffic-excluding area.
The planned East Greenwich section of the scheme - imposing a road barrier along the line of the railway - was first rejected in a commonplace survey in 2021 by thousands of local residents. And a West Greenwich 'Traffic Management Scheme', installed without consultation in 2020, was removed in February 2022. Traffic monitoring in West Greenwich found that the scheme imposed additional stress on residential boundary roads - particularly Blackheath Hill - as well as internal displacement that doubled local traffic overall and increased vehicles on supposedly LTN streets Royal Hill and Blissett Street.
To reduce assumed displacement to East Greenwich, the scheme was modified in August 2021 to open Hyde Vale during peak hours, endangering children attending James Wolfe Primary School. attempting to funnel through traffic down one route containing a primary school during peak hours represented an abysmal climbdown by the Council. It also exposed the lack of genuine traffic expertise and failure of a dogmatic and unrealistic attitude towards vehicle use.
The West Greenwich (or 'Hills and Vales') LTN scheme was removed in February 2022, following sustained local opposition to both the main scheme and the 2021 modification, complaints by the emergency services of critical delays in reaching residents' home, and overall borough wide rejection of other LTN schemes in Commonplace 'consultations'. At the same time, the socially unequal impact of the scheme - which forced more traffic, congestion and pollution on low income older people and families became better understood.
Transport Consultants Steer Group, were asked to provide a 'West Greenwich LTN Monitoring Report and Proposed Westcombe Park LTN Modelling' as part of the package of officers' papers supporting the RBG's Cabinet decision in February 2022 to remove the scheme. The title of the report means that the Council removed the scheme in a decision that included a collateral decision to replace it.
In February 2022, West Greenwich residents had already rejected an LTN no less than three times (twice in November 2019 when two schemes were issued for consultation, and again in January 2022 when an online Commonplace survey was issued on the preservation of the scheme and its modification).
The Steer Report summary findings were that between 2019 and 2021:
- there were increased flows on north-south routes between the A2 and A206 in the Westcombe area
- weekday bus journey times worsened
- traffic reductions occurred on all roads except the A2 (Blackheath Hill)
The Steer Report was heavily qualified. And a major caveat was that, with up to 20 percent reduction in all traffic caused by pandemic conditions, Blackheath Hill's (A2) displacement share was, in real terms, a staggering additional 17 per cent. Viewed proportionately, this meant an increase of 4,700 vpd on average. The Steer report recorded a 2% increase on 2019 which has been widely touted as denying displacement from the LTN. However, traffic rates just prior to the introduction of the scheme in August 2020 do not seem to have been used in the Steer analysis. This would have shown the true impact of the general 'pandemic' traffic reduction. At the same time 'increases' demonstrated on other roads in the area resulted from more contemporaneous monitoring immediately before and after the LTN introduction.
Steer explained that increased traffic on Maze Hill and the Westcombe area cannot all be attributed to the LTN. There was no monitoring of the earlier closure of Park Avenue ('the road in the park'). In its analysis, Steer found that more traffic was likely to be attracted to big box Peninsula retailers via West Greenwich, as well as home deliveries. Neither factor supports displacement from West to East Greenwich.
Steer conclusions also point to 'more fundamental changes people have made to how they travel following the pandemic, 'key road schemes' such as the cycleway extension on Trafalgar and Woolwich Roads, as well as local development.
On 23 February 2022 the Council made a decision as follows: 'To approve the removal of the West Greenwich LTN (and the return of the streets to how they were before the trial) by allowing the existing Experimental Traffic Regulation Order (ETRO) to expire on 25 February 2022; and to authorise Council officers to begin the process of developing an alternative LTN traffic scheme for West Greenwich (Option 3 in the Main Report).'
This self-contradictory decision may not be lawful. However, the Council continued, more or less covertly, to seek funding for traffic improvements. In mid-2022 enquiries disclosed that a new 'study area' had been created over the whole East-West area on which we have reported more fully.
Both areas are quiet and relatively free of traffic. The Council has steadfastly declined to provide hard evidence of traffic movement justifying the schemes now in the process of being decided upon. It is not yet known what scheme was put forward to obtain TfL 'active travel' money that was ultimately granted earlier this year.
In May 2023 the council said the money was intended for improvements to pedestrian and cycle infrastructure. A press release also detailed expenditure on 20mph speed limits, controlled parking zones and school streets, emissions-based charges and ‘sustainable’ travel – including improvements to pedestrian and cycle infrastructure.stated and lower traffic speeds. And a 'Stage 1' consultation, earlier in the year, showcased traffic-calming measures such as raised tables.
None of these measures is in the new package. But a 'Stage 2' consultation, launched at the end of August, asked for residents' views on drastic vehicle obstruction schemes over a wide area, cutting access to homes, schools and businesses, and forcing local drivers to use overburdened 'boundary' routes on the A2, Trafalgar Road and Woolwich Road, and Greenwich South Street. (See more on our home page on 'options' put forward and the community's responses.)
Misleadingly divided into two areas and dubbed 'Neighbourhood Management', the Council originally claimed they were combatting 'serious congestion and safety problems' over the area, none of which has been substantiated.
The plans include bollards, bus gates and up to six ANPR cameras across the area to fine drivers for breaching barriers. The Commonplace commentary admits that the barriers are intended to discourage 'motorists' from using cars by obstructing them. The consultation focussed on five new road blocking 'options' stretching across East and West Greenwich. The consultation ‘options’, did not include leaving things as they are, or improving pedestrian and bike access.
Consultants PJA have been exposed as ignorant of the area's road layout and topography. Around eight north-south roads rise through 130 feet between Trafalgar Road and Blackheath, making cycling difficult for all but the most able. PJA's baseline study of the area noted: “steep inclines [are] likely to be a key barrier for people to walk and cycle. This is a key consideration for the area.” Baseline analysis and traffic study (East), August 2023. There has been no further recognition of the problem, or others like it.
The Stage 2 consultation options were uniformly rejected by a large majority of respondents living in or around the affected areas.
Any combination of options will cause long southerly detours from the Sun and Sands roundabout to the notorious Blackheath Hill junction with Greenwich South Street and from the Angerstein/Woolwich flyover to Greenwich Town Centre. Detours will increase mileage and congestion.
The giant scheme threatens to restrict vital journeys over a wide area, and contribute to repeated and disabling gridlock when the A2, Blackwall Tunnel approaches, and A206 (Woolwich Rd, Trafalgar Rd, Greenwich High Rd and Greenwich South St) are affected by accidents, road works and other emergencies.
Greenwich has not evaluated or anticipated impacts, including traffic generated by the Silvertown Tunnel. But the transport strategy document admits there will be increased traffic generated by planned 'last mile' delivery hubs in the Peninsula area. And council consultants have already highlighted big box retail developments, such as IKEA, all council promoted and consented, as the source of increased East Greenwich traffic.
Private car use is already in long term decline. The impact of ULEZ is yet to be fully assessed: but evidence is emerging of reductions in pollution. LTNs are becoming a toxic brand everywhere – cause community division between privileged internal streets, and people living on the boundary roads designed to receive displaced traffic. The Department of Transport decided in May that LTNs ‘do not benefit the community as a whole’. All LTNs were blocked from the Department’s recent fourth round of Active Travel Fund payments.
Greenwich and Lewisham businesses and residents living and operating on boundary roads experience serious congestion, additional pollution and lack of safety, but were excluded from information and consultation about the plans. Boundary road residents are being ignored, even as 'serious congestion and safety' are being deliberately made much worse for them.
Traffic from large areas of the huge terrain in East Greenwich south of the railway line, will be forced into Charlton, where residents and businesses knew nothing about the plans until GGTF circulated leaflets.
The plans are openly admitted as making it more difficult to drive with the aim of making residents' lives 'happier and healthier' via active travel such as walking and cycling. Residents have already voted in huge numbers against the scheme. But the original impetus for the 2020 scheme from local amenity groups aimed to counter peak hours traffic in the affluent 'Hills and Vales' area where house prices regularly top £2m.
The 2019 Local Implementation Plan recorded the highest active travel rates in the borough in West and East Greenwich. It is not clear why the area, already under severe traffic pressure has been singled out for intensive LTN treatment.
There has been no joined-up thinking on the future of our overburdened 'boundary' roads, or on the accessibility and efficiency of our bus services on which so many depend. Traffic generated will greatly increase boundary road journeys in comparison with the 2020 scheme.
The current proposals reverse the abandonment of LTNs across the north of the borough from West Greenwich to Woolwich, all strongly opposed by residents and councillors - described at the time by a councillor as ‘the perfect storm’.
