17 January (Part 1) - Which of Bexley’s bright sparks could be so incompetent?
There
were two references to electric vehicle charging points at last night’s
Transport Users’ Sub-Committee meeting. Councillor Stefano Borella
(Labour, Slade Green and North End) without whom very few useful questions would
be asked, brought up the subject of electric vehicle
charging points supposedly being introduced by the Mayor of London. The TfL
representative said he was pushing for more rapid charging points (50
kilowatt and over DC units) across London because the priority was serving taxis and commercial
vehicles which cannot afford to be out of use while charging for long periods. A
50kw charger will give a decent range extension in half an hour or less.
Some money had also been made available to Councils for car charging and Bexley was
in the process of getting 13 units but the TfL man did not know if any more would be forthcoming.
Councillor June Slaughter (Conservative, Sidcup) asked the
Chairman if the [7 kilowatt AC] unit which had been hiding under a black sack
in Hadlow Road for the past two months was ever going to be commissioned.
Cabinet Member Peter Craske provided the answer.
“There have been some issues with it; the installation of electricity to the
actual bays. Some work started on some of them before Christmas and it is
carrying on now so we will probably have to wait until they get around to it.
Traffic Orders will have to be issued to get the work done.”
So Bexley Council gets some money from the Mayor to install 13 double headed 7
kilowatt charging points each of which will by definition require two 32
amp power supplies and the penny doesn’t quite drop that they will need a beefy
electricity cable to connect them. Only now are they getting the Traffic Orders that
will allow the roads to be dug up. How could they be so silly? It took an electrician three hours to install a unit technically
more advanced that that seen here in my garage.
Having such a device at home means I have no real need of street charging points in
shopping centres. EV discussion forums I follow suggest that the handful of
units found at Tesco etc. are fairly useless. You cannot be sure the bay will
not already be occupied by another electric vehicle and worse, something between
50 and 100% of bays will be ICE’d. That is occupied by Internal Combustion
Engined vehicles. The latter need to be severely fined.
The 13 locations chosen last year were Bellegrove Road, Welling; Blackfen Parade, Blackfen; Danson
Lane, Welling; Erith Road, Barnehurst; Methuen Road, Bexleyheath; Nuxley Road,
Belvedere; Picardy Street, Belvedere; Sandford Road, Bexleyheath; Sherwood Park
Avenue, Blackfen; St. John’s Road, Sidcup; The Oval, Blackfen; Walnut Tree Road,
Erith and Waterside, Crayford. (Hadlow Road mentioned by Councillor Slaughter is
not included on the original locations list.)
Photo from Councillor Richard Diment’s Twitter feed. I went to
Nuxley Road to photograph my own local charging point but failed to find it. Maybe it’s one of those awaiting a traffic order.