Yes, this bit…
For Southwark Council, this patch of tarmac is paved with gold.
All you need is some signs and a traffic camera.
Since the Emergency Traffic Measures came into effect, Southwark Council has ensured that these few metres – where Townley Road and Calton Avenue converge at the traffic lights to join East Dulwich Grove – have raised, at a conservative estimate, over £200,000 from drivers who either missed or misinterpreted the warning signs, or alternatively mistimed their journey.
If you are driving back to Herne Hill from East Dulwich and decide go up Lordship Lane and then take a right turn along Townley Road to run between Alleyn’s School and their playing field, you might miss the warning signs at the beginning of the stretch. But if you do, as you reach the last few metres before the traffic lights at East Dulwich Grove, you are doomed unless you decide to enrage the tailback of traffic behind you by doing a three-point turn to beat a retreat.
Because this is the sign you see:
By the time you have registered what it says, you are trapped.
Within a week or two, the post brings a Penalty Charge Notice that graciously allows you to pay a mere £65 for prompt settlement. The detail of the contravention is stated as “using a route restricted to certain vehicles”.
In some parts of Dulwich around the Village, similar signs have raised even more. The northbound camera in Dulwich Village by the corner of Pickwick Road has raised £695,300.
These figures, revealed in response to a Freedom of Information request recently tabled by a neighbour, only take us to the end of March. No doubt the council’s tills are still ringing. For the wider Dulwich area, Southwark admits to having raised over £1 million during this period.
One consequence is significant traffic displacement. Our local LTNs have caused sharply divided opinions and vigourous debate. Some closures seem more pragmatically sited than others. But the annoying feature about this particular trap on Townley Road – readers may of course disagree – is that the prevention of traffic taking this route seems to serve no obvious purpose in reducing street pollution, unless it is to cut down on cars, vans and trucks driving past Alleyn’s School at busy school times. Thus, weekends are excluded. But not, mark you, school holidays or even lockdown when the school was empty.
Over time, the penalties do of course work to deter traffic at this point during those stated times, if that is the intention: once stung, one avoids the area scrupulously. So you just find an alternative way home, along busier roads.
As an Alleyn’s parents, we hate these as well. Unless you live literally across the road, or are an obsessive cyclist to go rain or sludge with some sort of 1000-2000 pound electric bike-babycarrier, these restrictions make it impossible to drop off a kid safely, i.e. in front of the gate to be collected by a teacher. Note that electric cars are disqualified here alongside diesel.
I just received a fine having had no idea i’d even driven somewhere I wasn’t allowed to. There are 4 cars in front me in the photo on my fine. Signage is not clear enough and this is a clear money spinner for the council.
They got me twice within one hour, going to and from Dulwich Park. 🙁 They should put up MUCH clearer signage.
Croxted Road has become an environmental disaster area, and proof, if proof were needed, of how ill thought out these new traffic restrictions are. They need to be reviewed as a matter of urgency.
Not to mention the poor residents of Croxted Road, where traffic has now found itself.