19 January - Miscellaneous Transport issues
The following is a few oddments of possibly useful information gleaned from
last week’s Transport meeting. The Network Rail report may come tomorrow.
The criticism of TfL and consistently poorly
performing bus routes has already been reported.
Someone suggested bypassing TfL and approaching the bus providers directly but
you can be pretty sure that some form of red tape would inhibit that. TfL has
blamed the Thames Road road works for its poor performance, “even on routes that
go nowhere near it” according to Councillor Richard Diment. “Baffling.” He added
that three routes are being taken over by Go Ahead this weekend 269, 99 and another unstated. (It’s the 401)
Councillor John Davey went back to “sorting out the SL3 stops in Bexleyheath” which
may be a reference to Lion Road again. He has said before that he thinks that
stop is redundant. Also the “statistics fiddling” resulting
from running the SL3 short of its destination. He then moved to the Hail and Ride
section in his ward where “the named stops bear no relation to the actual
stops”. He blamed narrow roads to which one might ask “and who is responsible for that?”.
The Chairman revealed that the TfL rep from the last meeting had contacted him
directly about stopping the SL3 in Bexley “and TfL said No”. He is “not dropping
it but will await the official response from the petition”.
The first words on roads were that the government has still
not confirmed the
size of the grant for next year. £100,000 of it will go on the street lighting electricity bill.
Councillor Sally Hinkley said the Agenda referred to five more pedestrian crossing
sites. “Where are they?”. “Not off hand” the most senior roads man replied,
however he did go into some detail with the Yarnton Road flooding problem.
Southmere Lake, Peabody, Thames Water and one way valves were all implicated.
Sally then referred to Page 42 of the Agenda which is helpfully blank (†) but
it is something about an ongoing investigation into collisions in Erith Road,
Barnehurst Road and Woolwich Road. The roundabout at the northern end of Nuxley
Road was featured more than any other site. Accidents apparently caused by cutting
straight across the painted roundabout and a few “tail end shunts”. Sally said
the police were pushing for a proper Nuxley Road roundabout raised above the road but the
Highways Manager doubted it would allow a bus to turn into Nuxley Road and we have
seen quite enough impassable roundabouts in Bexley already. (Ruxley, Wickham Lane, Albion Road.)
Councillor June Slaughter
referring to another non-existent page asked if contractors who made a mess of our roads
could be fined but she was told the procedures allowed only for £200 so it wasn’t worth the effort.
If they are chased through the Courts the award goes to the Treasury not Bexley,
so it is all a waste of time. The same goes for fly tipping fines.
Councillor Diment, referring to Government grants, said we should be wary of
Government announcements of new grants which are in fact the same as last year
but with a different name. It is not new money. “None of the money announced by
this Government is actually available yet.” Neither have they announced the
conditions attached to the grants.
The discussion on
CPZs already mentioned here revealed once again that the
Highways Manager now regards the Consultation as an informal survey. There will
be some devious reason for that, probably to do with not having to publish every
objection. Indeed there was fairly direct reference to exactly that. On a more
positive note there were references to marked bays and signs which are in my opinion essential in ‘my’ CPZ.
Councillor Diment said he will be reaching his decision as quickly as circumstances allow
while Councillor Davey put in a plea for the explanation to residents to be in
plain English, otherwise “I will get hundreds of emails”.
Replacing the EV Chargers abandoned by BP Pulse will, once approval is obtained,
be pursued through another company.
The big potholes on the Penhill roundabout may be fixed at the end of this month
but no one was very sure.
† This was not the only reference to a page that I do not have and one must
wonder if the Councillors’ Agenda is different from the publicly accessible one.