Crunch day looms over traffic ‘experiment’

Previously quiet residential roads are now almost impassable, with the delays costing millions of pounds in lost time alone. But what price a life?

Many cyclists and pedestrians say they feel endangered by frantic traffic conditions, staff at nearby King’s College Hospital report that patients frequently miss appointments. Worse, the London Ambulance Service says lives are now at risk because emergency vehicles can no longer reach patients — or get them to hospital — on time, despite Lambeth promising this would not happen.

The gridlock consuming this previously functioning area at certain times of day — I live nearby and witnessed the drama unfold — has had other devastating effects. Local businesses say trade has been badly hit, some claiming a 50 per cent fall as customers are unable to reach them.

While the needs of many thousands legitimately driving through the area have been dismissed out of hand, those living on Loughborough Estate itself — the voters Lambeth claims to be helping — are paying the highest price. Vital trips of everyday life — to school, support centres, doctors, elderly relatives, friends, shops — that previously took a few minutes now take five times longer. Residents awoke to find themselves in a ghetto — cut off by traffic jams on all sides.

They are forced on long diversions into already congested Brixton where, Lambeth claimed only recently, it wanted to cut traffic and pollution.

The physical effects are distressing enough, but it is residents’ powerlessness in the face of a council determined to bulldoze through its own agenda that has caused the most damage.

Lambeth’s consultation was laughably flawed. It ignored vast areas directly affected and was so poorly publicised that many in the area knew nothing about it.

Further mistrust was sown when the word “experimental” was added only late in the process. At the Scrutiny Committee that finally passed the scheme (the full council didn’t see fit to vote on it), the chairman permitted three members of the public in favour to speak at some length. Then he robustly barred those wishing to speak against from taking to the floor. Even at this late stage, criteria by which the scheme’s “success” would be judged were utterly opaque.

So angry estate residents took matters into their own hands. They formed a campaign group — the aptly named “LJ Road Madness” — gave up their time to post flyers and called a public meeting. They expected 20-30 people, but hundreds turned up to express their anger, including cyclists insisting “not in my name”.

A petition, calling for the scheme to be scrapped immediately, attracted nearly 4,000 names in days — vastly outstripping the 455 who voted in favour in the “consultation”.

A mere 194 people inside the consultation area voted for the scheme, a drop compared with the thousands trapped in Lambeth’s new “ghetto”. Responses to date from Lambeth’s councillors — with brave exceptions — have been feeble.

The decision now lies in the hands of just one councillor, a councillor who championed the scheme from the outset and who will now decide whether one small group of residents should be allowed to give their neighbours, and the wider community across the capital, the finger.

So a crunch day for London indeed, but also for anyone fearing unofficial war has been declared on those who dare depend on a motor vehicle, and that’s most of us.

A crunch day for everyone who feels under threat from a similar scheme — and who believes that reform of the consultation process so that it’s seen to be independent, transparent and fair is long overdue.

@djrwilliams