In the last few months there has been a sharp increase in traffic in the Herne Hill area. This has been particularly felt on the intersection between Croxted Road, Rosendale and Norwood Road with reported queues of traffic down to the South Circular on some mornings.
We have answered dozens of pieces of correspondence about this from residents worried about this alarming rise in congestion at certain times in the day and its ongoing impact on air quality. These are the steps we are taking in response.
1. We are working with Southwark to assess the impact of the Dulwich Low Traffic Neighbourhood’s (LTN) latest stage which involves timed closures on Burbage Road. This is outside of Lambeth but we are looking at this carefully with Southwark colleagues to see what can be done. There have already been modifications made to the scheme which have dealt with issues arising from its earlier phases.
2. The bottle neck that occurs outside Rosendale Road during the school run in the morning is set to be remedied. The Streetscaping work to allow healthy travel, through walking and cycling, requires a series of additional works. These include double yellow lines around the bridge nearest the school opposite the Lairdale Estate and making the entrance to the Peabody Estate safer to improve sight lines for cars turning out of the estate. This should allow two lanes of traffic down the road easing the overall congestion, whilst keeping the protected cycle lane. These works are currently scheduled to begin in the second week of the Easter Holidays – the week commencing 12 April.
3. There have been a series of wider pieces of work we have been doing on other sources of delay around the area. These have included the closure of traffic on the Herne Hill bridge works on Coldharbour lane and the South Circular, all of which contribute to congestion. We are working closely with Helen Hayes MP to help coordinate getting these completed as fast as possible to stop them contributing to the rising traffic flow.
4. We are working on a revised school streets plan for Rosendale School with the community groups who lead the delegation to full meeting of Council earlier this year. So many parents from the school have written to us worried about their children’s safety. As well as increasing the number of crossings through Streetscaping we are hoping to see if a revised School Street plan can lower traffic in a targeted manner.
5. We will be looking at further restrictions on Heavy Goods Vehicles in the area. There are further works planned as part of the TFL funded Streetscaping programme for the rest of Rosendale Road which give an opportunity to address this. We will also support community campaigns on this to prioritise local traffic.
6. Air quality in the area is a repeated concern so we have requested air quality monitoring by the Council and are working with Southwark to coordinate data collection.
There is a very worrying wider context to these problems. Traffic on the South Circular has been rising with some measures showing it nearly doubling at peak times compared to 2019. As a result of the pandemic use of public transport has decreased and the overall net number of car journeys in South London appears to be on the rise.
Given the context of the clean air crisis which London was facing along with the wider climate emergency this is deeply concerning. We will continue to work on all of the above and any other available measures to control traffic, improve healthy travel and maintain healthy air quality in the area.
Please do contact us if you want to raise any concerns or share an experience about traffic in the area.
Thurlow Park News 