Pedestrian injured at notorious Greenwich junction

A man in his 50s was injured yesterday after bring hit by a motorbike in east Greenwich.

The incident occurred at the junction of Vanbrugh Hill with witnesses reporting a two hour wait for an ambulance.

For many months – in fact years – many have stated how dangerous the junction is, with vehicles travelling the wrong way down Vanbrugh Hill to name one major problem.

Enforcement of parking in the vicinity is also non-existent, as previous posts have highlighted.

Notorious

When you hear “notorious junction” in Greenwich you may be forgiven for thinking which one?

Lord knows there’s enough of them. TfL and Greenwich Council love to pass the buck when it comes to rectifying the issue.

This particular junction sees all approaches being Greenwich borough maintained roads which contravenes modern street design standards.

However, TfL do manage signals and there’s very short green phases for pedestrians to cross in the area.

Even Greenwich leisure centres aren’t helping with Better draping numerous advertising panels over railings near crossings obscuring pedestrians behind approaching the junction.

Vanbrugh Hill itself is a mess of a road, with poor driving seen on a daily basis.

A yellow box junction has been installed on the junction yet is so small it doesn’t prevent many issues.

Cars are often badly parked and drive down cycle lanes frequently.

Authorities can’t honestly plead ignorance given they’ve been warned many times. They will though, and they’ll keep passing the buck as they’ve done before.

Given the junction contravenes modern street design and Greenwich have ignored TfL requests for funding twice in two recent planning applications alone, it’s probably fair to expect little to happen from that direction.

TfL would need to change signal timings, while Greenwich spent money on enforcements and agreeing to modern design practices.

I fear it’ll take a few (at least) more injuries or worse until things change.