Category Archives: Parking

Lambeth looking to roll out 191 new parking bays for e-scooters and bikes

The excellent Brixton Buzz news site has a detailed report, based evidently on a press release from Lambeth, stating that the Council has decided to introduce 191 new dedicated parking bays for e-scooters and dockless bikes. The estimated cost is £97,150.

This amounts to an extension of the existing e-scooter trial, and seemingly echoes a similar scheme inaugurated earlier this year by Southwark Council.

The initiative is part of Lambeth’s Kerbside Strategy Implementation Plan approved by the Cabinet earlier this year, which has the goal of repurposing a quarter of the borough’s kerbside space for sustainable uses. [Snarky comment: In their little world, “sustainable” simply means not using fossil fuels, but clearly does not take into account the environmental, economic and indeed human impacts of extracting rare metals for lithium batteries, building heavy bikes in China, and shipping them over here in fossil-fuelled cargo ships.]

The proposed expansion aims to address concerns about e-scooters and dockless bikes cluttering footways: there has been some discussion about this on our street WhatsApp recently.

Lime bike on the pavement on Fawnbrake Avenue this morning

By introducing dedicated parking bays, Lambeth Council claims it will offer a more organised solution, reducing street clutter and making the environment more pedestrian-friendly.

Currently, 56 parking bays are operational as part of the trial in the borough. The proposed plan seeks to make the Experimental Traffic Management Orders supporting these trial schemes a permanent fixture in the borough.

The long list of proposed sites or such parking bays identifies, for the most part, new bays for e—scooters and dockers bikes, for which an ‘experimental traffic order’ will be made and eventually published.

Nearby sites for dockless bikes

Most of the streets listed  – Lambeth is of course a very big borough – will be of little interest to us here, but some streets named are quite close:

Deepdene Road (just off Ferndene Road, near Ruskin Park)

Bicknell Road (quite close to the bottom end of Ruskin Park)

Lowden Road (just behind Fawnbrake Avenue, where Jessop School is based)

Railton Road (two sites)

Brantwood Road (two sites)

Rymer Street (near Herne Hill station)

Hurst Street (near Herne Hill station)

 

The Brixton Buzz report is worth a careful read. But to some of us, the ambition of corralling all dockless two-wheelers in specific licensed sites has a fundamental weakness. What has made the dockless bikes such a rapid success is the fact that riders can leave them anywhere their journey ends. And for that matter, using the clever app, can often pick up a new bike at random locations. (I have a friend who, after a festive evening in Soho, can easily find a Lime bike within three or four minutes and ride it home to Nunhead. Rather her than me, but she has survived so far. And much cheaper than and almost as fast as an Uber.)

If the rider or the company is to be penalised unless the bike is deposited in some “official” location, I’m not sure how this will work. For example under the Lambeth scheme just announced, the nearest official site would be either in Brantwood Road or one of the streets near Herne Hill station.  Are London boroughs trying to make dockless bikes work in the same fashion as Santander bikes?

If I can find a similar statement of policy from Southwark Council, I will amplify this report accordingly. To date, Southwark has marked out two such sites on Half Moon Lane.

Dockless bike issues

Dockless semi-electric bikes are cropping up more regularly on our street – sometimes parked correctly, sometimes blocking the pavement. They are surprisingly heavy, and can be dangerous, e.g. to children,  if knocked over.

Our ever-helpful ward Councillor Deepak Sardiwal tells me that some Fawnbrake Avenue residents have been in touch with their understandable concerns over the proliferation of poor bike parking in the neighbourhood. He has shared with me the response he gave them, following a discussion with the council team involved. He explains that the council ultimately intends for the dockless bikes to be placed on kerbside space allocated for this purpose, as part of its new Kerbside Strategy. (I don’t know whether they intend to make dedicated kerbside spaces on every street…). Meanwhile I thought it might be helpful if I shared this position more widely.

Lambeth policy

The statement reads: “Lambeth recognises the conflict since Dockless bikes reappeared in numbers on the streets earlier last year. Currently, we have no legal lever to control them or licence them in the borough as no such legislation exists although it is expected in the coming years. In terms of confiscating the bikes and returning a fee, we have come to a temporary arrangement with the operators requiring them to move a bike within 2 hours of it being reported if it poses a clear obstruction. Our enforcement officers will also remove a bike if it is deemed to cause a danger or threat, in this case, we would charge the operator for the costs of confiscation and storage.

“We have recently come to an agreement with all the operators and developed a memorandum of understanding (MOU). This MOU and associated agreements will address Lambeth’s concerns on footway impediment and the serious accessibility issues they cause., whilst ensuring the bikes can still be used by the public.

“Once we have allocated kerbside space for the dockless bikes all bikes [presumably they mean all dockless bikes] in the borough will be required to be parked in dockless bike bays. If a resident sees a bike parked inappropriately, blocking the footway, falling, preventing or making it difficult to walk, please report this to the Operator, quoting the location and its serial number, This can normally be found on the QR code used to book the bike.”

I am trying to find out whether there is a number within Lambeth Council where we can report dangerously parked electric bikes.

CPZ PROBLEM

Temporary parking suspensions, announced through notices stuck on lampposts, trees etc, are legitimately used to reserve spaces for utility works, removal vans, skips and so on. But problems arise when our cars, innocently parked on these spots when owners go away on holiday or on business trips before the notice goes up, are deemed to be in contravention of the suspension if it comes into force in their absence and attracts a parking fine.

In response to a discussion about this issue on our street WhatsApp conversation, I offered to write to our councillors to see whether they could offer a solution. I have now emailed the two most active of our ward councillors, Jim Dickson and Deepak Sardiwal.

 

Here is the text of what I have written:

Dear Councillors

Several of my neighbours here have asked me if I could raise an issue with you, in the hope of finding a pragmatic solution. I’m guessing that you yourselves will not know the answer either, but perhaps you can ask the appropriate team for their advice. The problem, you will see, is not unique to our street and probably not to this borough.

We are in a CPZ zone, which works pretty well. From time to time, notices are fixed on lampposts or trees announcing that parking is suspended at specific nearby areas, for a variety of reasons – utility works, removal vans, skips etc. We are supposed to take note of these warnings and make sure not to park our cars there during the prohibited times. We all understand this, even though sometimes people don’t realise that the notice applies to parts of the street somewhat distant from where the notice is a fixed. But that is not what worries us at the moment. We are learning to be vigilant.

The real problem arises when car owners are absent both when the notice is affixed and when the ban comes into effect. This can happen quite easily. People can go away on holiday or travelling on business for two or three weeks (or even longer) legitimately leaving their cars behind, parked in such an area in all innocence. They can easily be away both when the notice goes up and when the ban comes into effect.

This gives rise to two problems. The parts of the road earmarked for use by, for instance, utility companies, skips, removal vans and so on will inadvertently remain blocked, thus frustrating the original purpose of the parking suspension. Secondly however, any cars parked entirely legally and in good conscience in that spot automatically become liable for a parking penalty without the owners knowing or having the opportunity to avert the situation. They can come back to find an expensive penalty notice on their windscreen.

But attempts to appeal the penalty almost always fail. And naturally the traffic enforcement officers cannot judge whether the car they are ticketing was just parked there carelessly the night before, or had been put there innocently in advance of the ban being announced.

This strikes us as unjustified. It causes great resentment towards the Council.

We have seen suggestions that parking authorities sometimes advise that, to avoid this situation, residents planning to be absent from the street for more than one or two days should empower family members or neighbours to move their cars if the need arises. But this is not a practical solution. It may even be illegal. Many people would not be insured to drive other people’s cars, or would be reluctant to do so for numerous reasons.

So we would like to ask if you could raise this with the parking teams and see whether they can advise on a possible solution, or arguments that could validly be advanced for making an exception in the case of an appeal.

Thank you in advance for looking into this issue.

Lambeth coyly reveals its policy on Electric Vehicle charging points

Neighbours may remember our report in June about an Electric Vehicle (EV) charging point being installed, with no clear warning or explanation, outside a resident’s house. He protested – not at the concept of an EV charging point, which of course no-one could really object to, but at the lack of consultation, given that a crumpled laminated notice replete with official jargon hanging from the lamppost just like another appeal for lost cats, could scarcely be regarded as consultation.

In response a senior officer of the council – having in due course ordered the demarcation of a dedicated EV parking slot outside our neighbour’s house – has just sent him a lengthy statement which explains their approach.

 

 

 

 

 

This is an attempt to summarise and simplify what they are saying.

Free bonus

Any reader with a thirst for more information and a capacity for council jargon can spend a happy hour or so ploughing through a report and appendices buried deep on the Lambeth website.

Meanwhile, here goes…

1. Lambeth assume that the EV market and user demands will rise and that the council should therefore cater for existing and potential EV users. But preserving normal CPZ parking bays adjacent to a new charging point could create difficulties and conflicts, hence the need for dedicated areas. The council assume that internal combustion engine (ICE) users and non-recharging EV users should still be able to find a permit space elsewhere locally (noting correctly that residents have no automatic right to park at their preferred length of kerbside).

2. Lambeth aim to increase the number of lamp column charge points across the borough, and as the EV market develops the council will need to keep their policy under review in supporting the increased demand for recharging. They say that not every lamp column would automatically be appropriate for a charge point installation. But even if almost all suitable lamp columns were to be converted into a charge point, they say, there would still be the risk that ICE vehicles could obstruct access to EV users wishing to recharge their vehicles – hence the need to provide dedicated EV charging bays, barred to other vehicles including even EV cars when they are not being charged. (Comment: if, at some future point, all cars were electric, demand for charging points could not be met simply by converting lamp posts, of course. What then?)

3. Lambeth have a general target to achieve. Particularly in roads with minimal off-street parking, no EV vehicle owner should be further than five minutes away from a charge point. Once this aim is met, additional charge points (e.g. in this case) can be provided to cater for known demands. (Er, how do they assess demand?) They rather defensively pointed out that a notice was erected explaining their intention – but our neighbour’s robust response to this feeble excuse points out, as mentioned above, that while there is general public support for the electric charging policy, Lambeth’s failure to properly communicate their policies and decisions typifies, unfortunately, the council’s tendency to impose policies with negligible explanation: “a half decent consultation programme would have dissipated a lot of the current unhappiness”.

The big unknowns

No-one seems to know whether the take-up of electric cars will accelerate or stagnate. Obviously there is no exhaust pollution from EVs, which is a huge benefit. But there is ample doubt about the wider economic and environmental benefits and costs, when you take into account the need for much additional electricity generation (by what means?), the painful cost of securing the rare ingredients for the batteries, which in addition cannot be safely recycled when they expire; and the gigantic environmental and financial cost of disposing of perfectly efficient modern diesel and hybrid vehicles in order to comply with government targets.

So I suppose Lambeth can be forgiven, in this sense, for keeping options open and proceeding step-by-step.

They are still rubbish at communication though.

Lambeth Country Show 2022 – parking restrictions and street closures

After a two-year break, like Glastonbury (er, perhaps not quite the same …), Lambeth Country Show is back this year, on Saturday 16 & Sunday 17 July. It will run from 12 noon to 8pm on each day (last entry 7:30pm). Click here for the publicity blurb.

The consequential street closures and parking bans near to Brockwell Park are pretty comprehensive. Even for those of us who live just a little further away from Brockwell Park, one inevitable impact is the complicated series of temporary traffic orders which impose one-way traffic systems on certain nearby roads and road closures, and parking suspensions too. And not just for the weekend of the Show.

Although the Country Show runs for only two days, the numerous traffic orders extend from 7 July until 24 July.

The list of temporary traffic and parking restrictions has been published in a recent issue of the South London Press newspaper. They are probably also published on Lambeth Council’s website but we haven’t found them there yet. On the other hand there are the usual laminated A4 notices attached to lamp posts all over the place, like this one spotted on Milkwood Road.

Traffic Order on Milkwood Road, 30 June 2022

It would be unbelievably tedious to list all the orders here. But the South London Press have also posted the full legal Order on their own website .

Impact on Fawnbrake and neighbouring streets

Just to pick out two or three details that might affect us living in this corner of Herne Hill:

  • In Gubyon Avenue there will be one-way traffic system for all vehicles in the direction towards Herne Hill
  • There will be one-way traffic on Milkwood Road between the bridge in Herne Hill and Gubyon Avenue
  • Vehicles driving on Herne Hill will be banned from entering Gubyon Avenue
  • Vehicles driving down Fawnbrake Avenue towards the centre of Herne Hill will be banned from turning right into Gubyon Avenue

However there is a sort of opt out. The Notice says that the “one-way traffic systems, bans and suspensions would only apply at such times as shall be indicated by the placing or covering of traffic signs and ‘no parking cones’”.

So, as ever, we will need to be sharp-eyed looking for such signs.

Electric Vehicle recharging bays in Fawnbrake Avenue

Who knew? It appears that Lambeth’s policy is to “introduce Electric Vehicle recharging bays adjacent to all of the lamp column EV charge points across the borough”. Rather like the markings on disabled parking bays. Which sort of makes sense. But these spaces can only be used by cars actually on-charge and, crucially, also have a permit for the Parking Zone in which they are located.

After all, an EV charging point embedded in the lamp post isn’t much use if a boring old diesel vehicle is thoughtlessly parked there for days on end, blocking your shiny new electric car desperate for a top up.

What isn’t clear – unless we have failed to drill down deep enough into the baffling depths of Lambeth’s website – is how many lamp column charge points, and thus reserved parking bays, we can expect to be introduced in this area.

Meanwhile another parking hazard has been introduced: presumably our parking enforcement officers now have access to software which will tell them (by reading the number plate?) if a non-electric vehicle is erroneously parked in a space reserved for an electric car  in which case they can issue a penalty notice without further ado.

There are 20 lamp columns on Fawnbrake Avenue, if we have counted correctly. There is already one electric charging point outside number 10, and now another one has arrived, with little fanfare or notice to the adjoining houses.

Shall we shortly have the whole street wired up for electric vehicles?

No-one is saying. What is clear on the other hand is that the system for siting these charge points – and the corresponding reserved recharging bays – is pretty opaque. Once the list of charge points (they proceed by successive batches based on no known criterion) is agreed by the councillors, a short period of “statutory consultation” is launched by council officers.

To be fair, it must be difficult to balance the requirement for electric charging points with the actual number of electric cars arriving on our streets. But as these points can only be used by electric car users who have a permit for our Parking Zone, and as there can’t be that many electric cars in this area, we won’t need that many points at this stage.  So, numbers of points and siting are important.

Meanwhile, how is one to know about this “consultation” process? Either by assiduously reading the very, very fine print of notices published biweekly in the South London Press (which few read) or by studying an A4 notice limply attached to a lamppost where the charge point, and thus the reserved Recharging Bay are to be introduced. As in the above photo of a notice outside number 86.

We all applaud the idea of electric cars, and would welcome a widespread installation of charging points, balanced to need, within sensible distance of our homes. If you have an electric car, and more and more neighbours are thinking along those lines, more charging points are obviously highly desirable. Ultimately the introduction of electric vehicles could be the most decisive intervention to reduce street pollution and would bring other environmental benefits. We are only at the beginning of this process, one assumes.

However, the siting of these points, and consequent loss of regular parking spaces, are matters of concern to all residents. Some would love to have one near their house and others not.

It is annoying for any person not yet the proud owner of an expensive electric car whose house has been arbitrarily chosen for such a benefit. And irritating for someone with such a car who would love to have EV point near them.

A well hidden appeal

Consult us, Lambeth!

So, a diplomatic public consultation seems essential to explain the formula for selecting posts for adaptation (and the consequent loss of a parking space) and gives those affected a chance to have a say.   The views of everyone else should be sought to ascertain who actively wants one.   A brokered solution should be possible that balances everyone’s views.  There also needs to be assent to the total number of points in the street as parking is already tight and we can’t lose too many spaces.

Simply writing “Have your say” on a document lodged deep out of sight in the Council’s website doesn’t do the trick.

Urgent! Watch out! Parking restrictions are back on our street

As some neighbours have learned to their cost, it is expensive to ignore these temporary parking restriction notices – not having seen them, or even innocently misinterpreting them, is no defence when you get a parking fine.

These new ones start at 08:00 hours on 20th January – tomorrow, Thursday! – and continue until 18:00 hours on Monday 24th January.

On these days, parking is suspended on both sides of the street  outside numbers 56 – 60, and equally outside numbers 81 – 83.

Nos. 56 – 60

The reason for the parking suspension is not clear: no doubt all will be revealed.

As the bays mentioned do not necessarily correspond to the house numbers, there is probably room for ambiguity in interpreting these rules, but I would be tempted to play on the safe side and avoid overlapping into road space close to these areas – we know that the parking attendants (sorry, Civil Enforcement Officers) will only be doing their job if they are hyper-diligent.

This is all a nuisance as it takes out quite a lot of parking at a time when the street is already busy with tradespeople’s vans and trucks. You may want to warn them as well as any other visitors and neighbours.

Electric cars – where can we charge them (and other problems)?

I’m afraid I have shamelessly lifted this article from a recent Spectator website. It attracted a very high number of interesting comments, which I cannot begin to reproduce.

But the many problems of electric vehicles – including not just the initial cost but also their weight, the environmental impact of the raw materials, their high demands on the electricity network and of course, as mentioned below, the obvious problem of where they can be charged especially in a crowded city – are beginning to dawn on people. True, some houses on Fawnbrake Avenue have been able to convert their front gardens to a parking space, thereby solving one of the problems. But a majority of residents don’t have that option. And lamp-post charging sets off a whole number of other complications.

 

“With their private jets and gas-guzzling mansions, delegates at Cop26 have been widely criticised for an elitist attitude towards the environment. Nothing better demonstrates the gulf between policymakers and ordinary people than over the charging points for electric cars. It is one thing to install a home charging point for your car if you own a large house up a crunchy gravel driveway – indeed, according to the property website Rightmove, owners of such properties have been fitting charging points with great enthusiasm, with a 541 per cent increase in the number of homes being advertised with such a facility over the past year.

But what do you do if you live in one of the 43 per cent of homes which do not have off-street parking? In fact, you don’t necessarily have to be of modest means to live in such a house – there are plenty of city centre homes, in Belgravia and such places to boot, which open straight onto the pavement. Owning a car in a city has not been easy ever since controlled parking and traffic wardens started to appear in the 1960s, but it is just about to get a whole lot more difficult. Even if you can find somewhere to charge an electric car the electricity is likely to be several times more expensive than plugging it in to your home supply.

That said, there have been some trials with on-street recharging points, which may be coming to a street near you soon. Under the Go Ultra Low City Scheme, 1000 on-street charging points were installed in London in 2019 – utilising existing lamp-posts. You are not going to get a rapid charging point from the electricity supply to a lamp-post – they are limited to 3.7 kW – but it is enough for an overnight charge. Reading, too, has been experimenting with fixing sockets to existing lamp-posts.

But there are still many problems to overcome. In Reading, many street lamps proved to be unsuitable because there are installed on the nearside of the pavement, which would have required a cable to be dangled dangerously across the footway. Pedestrians face enough obstructions without having to step over an electric cable every few yards. That problem could be overcome by excavating small channels beneath the pavement so that a cable can be run across without tripping people up. One company, Greenmole, in association with Liverpool John Moores University and the University of Salford has been installing just that: channels which lead from a motorist’s own home to the roadside, to enable charging. It comes at a price – such an installation will cost you around £3000. But there is a bigger problem, too: very few people have a reserved parking place directly outside their home – even where parking permit schemes exist they tend to allow parking on a street-by-street or area-by-area basis, not to individually-designated parking spaces.

As more electric cars come into use, there are going to be intense battles over this. Should homeowners be allowed to claim parking spaces directly outside their homes so they can charge their vehicles more easily – and if so, what should they be charged for the privilege? After all, the public highway is supposed to be a facility for all, not for bits effectively to be privatised for the exclusive benefit of nearby property-owners. In any case, reserving parking spaces outside homes is not going to help everyone. If you have a house, say, divided into three flats, who, if anyone, gets to bag the single streetside parking space?

One thing is for sure, until the problem of charging electric vehicles on the streets is solved, properties with off-street parking are likely to command an even greater premium than they already do. The Battle of Cable Steet is long remembered as the struggle between communists and fascists in the 1930s. The Battle of Street Cabling has yet to come.”

Parking in Dulwich Park – again

Over on Twitter, one or two people commented on our recent story about Southwark’s proposed parking charges in Dulwich Park. They said rather smugly that no-one should take their cars there anyway, and that walking is more environmentally correct.  Conventional fair comment, but not everyone is fit enough to walk two or three miles to visit a park or a gallery.  Oh, I suppose they can always summon a Uber …

A nicer and more balanced opinion has appeared from one of our neighbours here in Fawnbrake.  To save scrolling down, I’ll reproduce it here too:

“Another reason to visit the park regularly is to attend the many Dulwich & District U3A groups that meet in Rosebery Lodge. Many Herne Hill residents are signed up for these. Personally, though by nature lazy, I get out the bike and cycle to my group, so am feeling rather smug about the planned charges. But this is not an option for everyone and the absence of a good bus service makes it more difficult. But I do commend cycling. And from where I am in Fawnbrake you can always avoid the climb up Kestrel (and Ruskin Walk on the return) by taking the slightly longer way round along Milkwood Road. And from Half Moon lane turn into quiet Winterbrook Road, where soon the Japanese cherries will be flowering – a real delight.”

Rosebery Lodge, Dulwich Park