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News and Comment May 2024

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3 May - Delay by design

At the last Full Council meeting Leader Teresa O’NeilI expressed her frustraton at the disruption to travel in the borough caused by a plague of utility road works. I think she might do better to look at her own policies over the past 18 years.

This morning I needed to be in Pett’s Wood by nine o’clock, a distance of exactly ten miles from home or 10·3 via Sidcup High Street to avoid the stupid width restrictor on The Green. I left at eight o’clock precisely and the first six miles to Sidcup took 49 minutes. Once across the boundary with Bromley it was plain sailing, four miles in 14 minutes.

The really slow going began at the northern end of Penhill Road where there was a queue to enter it. Local readers will recognise that I was taking pretty much the route of the SL3 Express bus. It would have taken at least 25 minutes to get from Penhill Road to Sidcup. The scheduled time from Bexleyheath Library to Chislehurst station.

There were no utility works, no cones, no temporary traffic lights. The problem is increased traffic and junctions designed to restrict flow. Five minutes might have been saved if Rectory Lane was closed off.  That corner gets blocked because traffic cannot turn into the Lane because of traffic emerging from it. For those unfamiliar with the area, it is a single track road with passing places. I have not driven down it since 2012 when I struggled to get through it in my then new tiny Kia Picanto.

Black sacks were in evidence on Sidcup High Street again but were gone when I returned 45 minutes later.

 

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