Councils reverse road closures

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I drove to the office today.

Coming back took me 56 minutes. It was a 35 minutes journey before COVID-19.

Many small roads around North London are now closed to private cars traffic (cyclists and busses only), making the route longer, and more congested because everyone is now being funnelled into the few remaining routes.

To be clear, I am in favour of closing city centers to private cars (in spite of the personal inconvenience this involves for me).

But people arent even back into their offices yet, and traffic is already impossible.... any talk of workers coming back to their offices in London is totally disconnected from reality.

Public transport in London was running at well over capacity before COVID-19, there's no way that ex-car drivers and ex-Uber users can get to work on public transport if we were all to go back to our offices.

In short... not complaining about the road closures, but decision makers should face reality.... we're never going to go back to our offices in the same way that we did pre-COVID-19. There's simply no way we can all get there now....
 
These measures should only be implemented in congested urban areas where air pollution is an issue , not in seaside towns like Bournemouth where there is plenty of fresh air ( except within the council chamber where there is too much hot air ) .

Elsewhere , HMG are getting it wrong again , trying to herd people back into city centre office space while this mode of working has been proved over the last six months to be outdated , inefficient and harmful to the environment.

Instead of encouraging people to commute to work , causing unnecessary pollution and congestion , they should be encouraging more home working , cutting down on needless travel which eats into people’s time and finances , and look at redeveloping unwanted office space into residential spaces , hotels , shops or otherwise knocking them down and building affordable homes .

Change is inevitable, the government should be sighted on this and work towards it , not fight against it .

The sandwich makers will relocate to new markets or find new clientele : cities should encourage visitors to come and see their attractions : get rid of commuter traffic , knock down unwanted offices , create free parking spaces , revitalise the cities for shoppers and visitors ; otherwise they will become wastelands .

 
A copy of my latest letter to the Council :)


I refer to the above notice. I will not be paying this ticket and request that it is cancelled immediately. As you can see clearly from the images my vehicle is a commercial vehicle. I quote Lewisham Councils own website regarding this Pedestrian Zone. I also attach my delivery note showing I was delivering to the Pedestrian Zone to which there is absolutely no other vehicular access.




“Catford Broadway/Brookdale Road pedestrian zone

The only vehicles allowed in this pedestrian zone are delivery vehicles and those accessing private parking areas.”


I look forward to hearing from you and if it is not cancelled I would request a Court date as soon as possible as I will not be letting this drop. I deliver to this area on at least a weekly basis and it is a complete waste of time and money. I suppose I will be getting a ticket every time as your camera operators do not seem to have the mental ability to identify a large Commercial Vehicle and / or know the actual regulations for the area they are supposedly enforcing.



Funnily enough its been 2 weeks and still not heard anything :)
I have several instances where the local authority (mainly planning department) make accusations & issue threats. When the facts are pointed out to them I have never received any reply or even acknowledgement of my letter/email. Perhaps they are above apologies.............
 
I’ve dealt with every level of local authority and they live in a completely different world to those of us in the private sector; it’s easy to fail when someone else is always picking up the bill...
 
OPM (Other People's Money), the easiest thing in the whole wide world to spend.
 

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