The local news media has been reporting that the a little twerp called Councillor Craske,
is planning to spend £1·8 million on traffic improvements for Sidcup. These plans
include a reduction in the number of traffic lights. Councillor Peter Craske (cabinet
member for transport), as far as we can tell, has no qualifications whatever in road
design or safety and has a track record of gullibly accepting everything his
incompetent staff put in front of him for signature; the changes to
Abbey Road, Belvedere being a recent example.
If Craske does for Sidcup what he has done for lower Belvedere then look forward to a
year of traffic chaos followed by regular accidents.
I rarely go to Sidcup any more but I do get a report from someone who drives
through it twice daily and it claims the situation is much improved after some
of the earlier council idiocies were removed, such as the traffic lights it was
so keen on in the first place. When, around ten years ago, Bexley council (under
an equally stupid Labour administration) first decided to interfere with traffic
flow in Sidcup I took my Transport Research Laboratory consultant friend around
town for his verdict. I remember his response well. He said “whoever did this was
either malicious or incompetent”. I have been able to quote that to a
number of Sidcup residents over the years and without exception they have come back
to say the verdict was wrong. Those Sidcup residents thought that Bexley council’s
road planning department was “malicious and incompetent”.
All the evidence points that way.