£55,000 could be spent on “dangerous” Greenwich road
Greenwich Council could spend £55,000 on changes including a pedestrian crossing on Vanbrugh Hill near hundreds of recently constructed homes after 165 people signed a petition.
The petition was submitted earlier this year after numerous reports of vehicles driving the wrong way down the road to jump queues placing crossing pedestrians at risk.
The petition states difficulty in crossing the road to reach Maze Hill station: “A further issue is the difficulty in crossing Vanbrugh Hill to get to Maze Hill Station because – in addition to reckless driving – there is no safe designated crossing point in the Calvert Road / Annandale Road section of Vanbrugh Hill”.
Greenwich state they will now look at options including signs and a possible pedestrian crossing.
They also acknowledge that a financially constrained TfL cannot alone foot the bill. They do intend to use money from TfL’s Local Implementation Plan funding (which Greenwich is almost last of any London borough for topping up TfL’s annual funding utilising funding obtained from new developments and parking income) but note that if not possible, other options will be “explored”.
“The cost of the works to be funded by TfL LIP funding for 21/22 and is estimated to cost approximately £55,000. Subject to TfL Settlement figure after December 2021 or alternative funding sources will be explored.”
Previously it was common to read in Greenwich Council reports it was TfL funds or nothing – which was always untrue.
As I’ve recently covered, Greenwich have been failing to collect money from developers from the Community Infrastructure Levy. Initial investigations have found £1.7 million owed and more is likely given Greenwich are bottom of any London boroughs for receiving income in 2019/20 despite being far from bottom for new development.
Not only has income from new development not collected, how they choose to allocate it raises questions as they often opt to ignore the impact of additional residents upon local streets and subsequent infrastructure need.
Finally, there’s potential to use income from parking offences alongside moving traffic offences. Both are ringfenced to transport projects after administration costs.
For many years Greenwich had a skeleton staff for parking enforcement which saw income millions below budget expectations for at least a decade. A typical paragraph in annual reports is seen below:
Greenwich now looking into the matter doesn’t ensure anything will definitely happen despite at least a recognition of issues. TfL may not be able to fund and Greenwich may “explore” then refuse to take any action. One to keep watching.
The development you have chosen to illustrate is not a normal developer-led scheme, I can’t remember the details – sorry – but does not illustrate your argument and you shouldn’t say so.
Bollards – I wish you would grasp that many residents lobby for more and more of them.
However – yes to the need for dealing with the bottom of Vanburgh Hill. In the past TfL have come up with a scheme to demolish the pub and the (now newly rebuilt) social club in order to do away with the offset crossing. So watch out for grandiose and expensive schemes,
What you do need to take on is the police inaction throughout that area to implement various thing including the requirement to enforce the 1990s lorry ban.
The development still provides income to the authority and additional needs from new residents need to be taken into account.
It doesn’t matter really if a few people ask for more pavement clutter if they’re ineffective and obstructive. IME far more people see them as waste, obstructive to vulnerable pedestrians in wheelchairs and buggies and no substitute to enforcement against cars parking on pavement which RBG are still pretty awful on. Random bits of wood don’t solve that in 99% of places.
There’s no money for grand schemes. I do recall when I suggested closing one end of Rodmere Street to make it easier for pedestrians it was said it couldn’t be done. That was a very cheap change, it has been done and the area now safer.
Yep the police need to step up too.
RBG are again spending on vanity projects. Annandale Road has recently had new street name signage (it was fine before) to include the wording “Royal Borough of Greenwich” BUT the sign states SE2 NOT SE10 … who the hell checks this kind of stuff let alone passes it for payment ?
Residents ask for more than bollards. I’ve been asking for better crossings elsewhere, improvements to existing crossing, as have many on this site as being a pedestrian on Charlton/Peninsular way is laughable. Yet one or two people apparently claim for bollards (can we have some stats please other than ‘bloke down the pub says so’ maryoreis) and Greenwich leaps into action. They are awful with a pushchair, I hate negotiating some of the roads in SE7 that have random bollards – Charlton Church lane and the bollards on the narrow pavement is a prime example.
Traffic on Vanburgh and Maze Hills has of course increased substantially as a result of the Hills and Vales LTN. This traffic feeds onto the lower road earlier than it used to before which makes the decision to allow huge lorries along there all the more baffling.
Just who is it exactly that is allowing overweight vehicles to go along a banned route? The police or RBG? Or both? Either way the lack of enforcement is a disgrace and has to be rectified sharpish.
55k to fix something that is dangerous and broken illustrates just how bad Woolwich works over budget by14 million really is