How is one show (Peter Pan on Ice) allowed to turn the whole area into a gridlocked nightmare for a whole month? Every night since the show started Crystal Palace Park Road, Westwood Hill, The Parade and for all I know the other side of the park have been utterly gridlocked for hours.
Surely the people putting the show on should have some obligation for helping to avoid this or for paying the police to divert Peter Pan Traffic through a certain route.
What do the police think? Does anyone care?
This is going to be going on until early December!!!!!
Every night since the show started Crystal Palace Park Road, Westwood Hill, The Parade and for all I know the other side of the park have been utterly gridlocked for hours.
Are you sure it's not the emergency roadworks for the knackered water main outside Homebase on Penge High Street?
The temporary traffic signals which are controlling 3 flows of traffic were stuck on Red yesterday and part of today, with a copper waving vehicles on.
As a nearby resident, I must congratulate Thames Water and Bromley Highways for yet another monumental traffic management c**kup
davegr wrote:I'm assuming it's the show. It all started the day the show opened.
I think it's time for traffic lights at the bottom of Westwood Hill and at the end of the Parade where it meets Sydenham Hill.
Are you on drugs?
Westwood Hill is already stuffed due to at least four sets of pedestrian controlled lights between Newlands Park and Wesley Hall, and has not been helped by the Zebra crossing stupidly placed on the railway bridge; if another set of lights arrives at Cobb's Corner, I will never go into Sydenham again!
I think Illuminance is correct. The jams have been largely caused by the roadworks outside Homebase. It was particularly disappointing, therefore. that no work whatsoever went on at these roadworks over the weekend.
The fact that one small hole in the road can bring traffic to a halt throughout the area surely shows how already wildly overcrowded our streets have become.
If you told a local 15 years ago that evening rush hour traffic would stretch up Westwood Hill to the traffic lights and beyond by 2006, they simply wouldn't believe you. And if you were to be told that in ten years time constant gridlock, similar to that experienced over the last week would become a constant everyday feature of local life throughout each day, what would you think?
Non-believable? I don't think so. The evidence is staring at us in the face as more and more cars join our roads every year. No amount of tampering around with the road system, changing a junction here, adding or removing traffic lights is going to make one iota of difference to traffic flow in the medium to long run. Even if you manage to unblock one traffic bottleneck, there are plenty more cars to fill the gaps.
Of course, we should keep our streets unblocked by speeding up gas and water main repairs. Anything else is merely rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
Until you tackle the root problem, our local roads have only one future - more traffic jams.
I have only just recently started to walk to Sydenham station some mornings and I thought that driving through Cobbs corner was bad but walking there is even worse! If you are walking down Westwood Hill aiming for the station, once you go past St Bartholomews church you have to cross over to the wrong side of the road until you are past the roundabout and then risk life and limb crossing back over to the station. On the way home, the same happens in reverse. All the people coming out of the station who want to go up Westwood Hill have to cross over the zebra crossing on the bridge (which in turn holds up all the traffic). Naturally everyone wants to take the quickest route and so all this un-necessary crossing over is the only way to do it. Returning from the station, the logical way is to stay on the station side and walk up past the greyhound, but then you are forced to walk half way up kirkdale before you can cross back over past the estate agents and then up the right hand side of Westwood Hill. There are barriers all round that corner with the estate agents so you can't take a short cut.
The whole thing is insane.
juwlz,have you thought of walking down longton grove-jews walk-out onto kirkdale,and then safely crossing at the zebra crossing near the gym,the reverse on the way home?
Thanks for the suggestion. I would consider that, but it seems to be considered by long term residents of my street that the quickest route to the station involves cutting down Beaulieu Avenue, which brings you out at the Westwood Hill end of Jews Walk. Theres probably not much in it so maybe I'll time it!
For those above who want to "re-order" the high street or improve pedestrian access why not get involved in the Sydenham Road Community Street Audit (see separate thread) or attend the Sydenham Road Meeting on 7th December at 7pm Naborhood Centre?
There's a large sum of money available to remodel our locality. Don't just let off hot air on a website - do something in the real world!
Thanks for all the replies. It does seem appalling that either a gas or water company (apologies Peter Pan) can dig up the road with apparent impunity and take forever to get the work done.
I feel sorry for anyone who has to use a car or bus in Sydenham between 5pm and 8pm at the moment. Does anyone know who to get in touch with concerning problems like this?
dave,if you think this is bad,you should have seen the traffic jams caused by the gas mains replacements on sydenham rd last yr[or was it the year before?]THAT was chaotic!!
not sure who you can contact about it all,if you can anyway?
