The road network has been put under more pressure by the traffic management scheme, forcing all traffic to take a detour using our busiest residential roads. They are part of a connected system. Disrupting this has been a disaster for local people, particularly those who are older with disabilities and many others who find it hard to get around on foot or on a bicycle. Many others who use cars to provide services, repairs, care and vital visits are subjected to hold ups.
For example, Burney Street Practice, where many residents are registered with a GP, is closed due to the pandemic. Detours to the Wallace Health Centre branch, involve a car or taxi making a long detour, for those who cannot walk so far. What would have taken a few moments in the past is now a four or five mile round trip with uncertain delays as result of congestion on the A2, Greenwich South Street and High Road, as well as Creek Road, or alternatively, the A2, Maze Hill and Trafalgar Road. (No, we aren’t exaggerating – this is a true story.). Taking the same journey on foot while pushing a buggy or walking young children has been a nightmare for months because of the construction of the cycling superhighway on Creek Road.
Displaced traffic has spread to Maze Hill, Westcombe Park Road, Humber Road, Vanbrugh Hill and other roads making up the east Greenwich network, such that Greenwich proposed a further set of street closures that will only make the situation worse.
To the south, traffic diverts via Blackheath Village, via Hare and Billet Road to Lewisham Hill, returning via Lewisham Road.
Even if walking for pleasure is enjoyable for the fit, unencumbered and able, most of us also walk out of necessity. Greenwich Council may not know this, but 43 per cent of people in the borough have no access to a private car. Even those of us who own cars rarely use them for local shopping, visits to the post office, dry cleaners, library and so on. Once we reach the boundary of the LTN we’re in all the traffic, new pavement layouts, misuse of pedestrian areas by cyclists, and walking right by the slow, queuing traffic on Blackheath Hill, Trafalgar road, Maze Hill, Church Street, College Approach, Creek Road … we could go on … that is producing additional, dangerous particle pollution. We all breath the same air, with the important proviso that creating congestion in select locations just made it much more dangerous for everybody using the pavement, waiting for buses or living right by the road.
Royal Hill’s array of food shops, cafés and pubs are a lifeline. But Royal Hill is now the main through-route in the traffic management area and lacks essential Covid-19 protection. Pavements are narrow outside James Wolfe Primary School. The road outside should have been turned into a school street but instead, young child and their carers face dangerous traffic and overcrowding on the pavement. Why turn this street, with its local shops, cafes and pubs, in the centre of a so-called ‘traffic reduction area’, into the new short cut to the South Street-A2 junction?
For example, Burney Street Practice, where many residents are registered with a GP, is closed due to the pandemic. Detours to the Wallace Health Centre branch, involve a car or taxi making a long detour, for those who cannot walk so far. What would have taken a few moments in the past is now a four or five mile round trip with uncertain delays as result of congestion on the A2, Greenwich South Street and High Road, as well as Creek Road, or alternatively, the A2, Maze Hill and Trafalgar Road. (No, we aren’t exaggerating – this is a true story.). Taking the same journey on foot while pushing a buggy or walking young children has been a nightmare for months because of the construction of the cycling superhighway on Creek Road.
Displaced traffic has spread to Maze Hill, Westcombe Park Road, Humber Road, Vanbrugh Hill and other roads making up the east Greenwich network, such that Greenwich proposed a further set of street closures that will only make the situation worse.
To the south, traffic diverts via Blackheath Village, via Hare and Billet Road to Lewisham Hill, returning via Lewisham Road.
Even if walking for pleasure is enjoyable for the fit, unencumbered and able, most of us also walk out of necessity. Greenwich Council may not know this, but 43 per cent of people in the borough have no access to a private car. Even those of us who own cars rarely use them for local shopping, visits to the post office, dry cleaners, library and so on. Once we reach the boundary of the LTN we’re in all the traffic, new pavement layouts, misuse of pedestrian areas by cyclists, and walking right by the slow, queuing traffic on Blackheath Hill, Trafalgar road, Maze Hill, Church Street, College Approach, Creek Road … we could go on … that is producing additional, dangerous particle pollution. We all breath the same air, with the important proviso that creating congestion in select locations just made it much more dangerous for everybody using the pavement, waiting for buses or living right by the road.
Royal Hill’s array of food shops, cafés and pubs are a lifeline. But Royal Hill is now the main through-route in the traffic management area and lacks essential Covid-19 protection. Pavements are narrow outside James Wolfe Primary School. The road outside should have been turned into a school street but instead, young child and their carers face dangerous traffic and overcrowding on the pavement. Why turn this street, with its local shops, cafes and pubs, in the centre of a so-called ‘traffic reduction area’, into the new short cut to the South Street-A2 junction?
