14 May - Money wasting and money grabbing
The programme to replace the not even two years old failed blocks in
Bexleyheath began on 16th March and was scheduled to take eight weeks, which was last Friday.
A report from a reader who lives by the Arnsberg Way/Chapel
Road junction said the new surface looks a lot better than the light
coloured blocks so on a rainy Thursday morning I went to have a look.
I think the lady reader is right, the Woolwich Road junction (Photo 1) doesn’t
look at all bad now that Bexley’s award winning impractical fashion statement has been
abandoned there. Unfortunately the job must have over-run and there were traffic
queues on all approaches to the Mayplace Road West junction where an attempt was being
made to patch up the broken blocks.
New speed cameras are springing up everywhere and not just in Bexley. A reader
in Bromley has said a pair have been installed close to her house on the site of
a long abandoned Gatso device. She has lived there for nearly 40 years and does
not recall there ever being a serious accident.
The Bromley camera reported is not on a hill which is the preference in Bexley.
This is Bexley Road, Erith this morning.
It’s not the steepest hill around but gravity will help to keep the revenue flowing.
At two recent council meetings Bexley has rightly bragged that its road traffic
accident statistics are pretty good. Only two hit the headlines last year and
both had similar causes, a child ran into the road on a sudden impulse without looking.
Cabinet member Don Massey was at pains to point out that Bexley’s road design
was not a significant factor and no driver was prosecuted. He said he could not install a
pedestrian crossing outside Trinity School
where there have been safety issues because there was no money for it. But there is plenty of money for new cameras
where there does not appear to have been a history of accidents.
Maybe an FOI will elicit the justification for these revenue raisers.
After packing up a wet camera and heading to the bus stop I saw a van take camera
avoiding action, It went around the traffic island on the wrong side. Genius!
Maybe it will have registered -30 m.p.h. and any
determined boy racers who might exist in darkest Erith could adopt the same trick.