15 March - First signs of progress in Sidcup High Street
I saw a rare species this morning. Men in yellow jackets working in Sidcup High Street. Three of them.
Hadlow Road is now scheduled to be open again in mid-April instead of the
beginning of March and now sports a short length of new paving.
There is no footpath at all outside the Box Shop
Sidcup and Co. and pedestrians are directed across the road. The council is
giving priority to its own business venture by paving outside Sidcup and Co.
before anywhere else though the amount of actual progress was
barely discernible
compared to last week.
Sidcup & Co. was accessible from the west only by walking in the road and was difficult
from the east too. There were three people inside when I looked, whether customers or
traders I didn’t stay long enough to discover.
Further west paving slabs have been dumped in the road and a man was moving them
from one position to another for no obvious reason. The traffic congestion at
Station Road was worse than ever but that was probably due to a northbound queue that
extended all the way to the railway station. I got there expecting to see
an accident or a broken down vehicle but if the queue was due to anything it wasn’t
apparent. Probably high traffic volumes and not a long enough green light at Longlands Road.
Page 14 of Bexley council’s Spring magazine says the project is due for
completion in “late summer”. It was originally scheduled to take eight months
beginning last January. A quarter of that time has elapsed with almost nothing to show for it.
More info at Bexley’s website.
All photographs taken within a few minutes of 11:00 a.m.
Last week’s pictures.