Hi James. Glad you're well :)
Your post is really interesting. Most of us probably have different cognitive maps of Grove Park, Mine is the Fauconberg FR CPZ area, the station, SCR north of the railway, the Park — with occasional forays to SOTG and Hammersmith. But yes — where we live, it is inevitable that we will be strongly oriented across the A4 to the other side of Chiswick, from which these proposals will increasingly cut us off. And this is a problem: it is dangerous to over-emphasise the idea of 'Grove Park'. We don't all see the neighbourhood the same way.
You know my background. So if I missed out on what was going on, and if the almost 600 people who signed the petition also missed out on what was going on, it raises — at very least — a question about how well this was all communicated. I honestly thought it was about the Grove Park shops — and it now seems that even this has fallen away.
It is clear that this project doesn't need to be railroaded. The only reason to do so would be to meet a deadline for an unexpected source of government funding deadline. It may have merits. But it needs to be thoroughly discussed, because it will reshape our daily lives.
The other extraordinary thing is that, if this is all about walking and cycling, how little cyling is actually discussed in the report. Yes the word 'cycling' occurs 102 times. But look further and you will find nothing substantive. The report reads as it it was reverse-engineered at a late stage, dotting it with the words 'and cycling' here and there to window-dress it for a funding application
I mostly cycle now (though I identify little with cycling advocacy groups) — and if I thought about it, I'm sure I'd have things to say about how cycling could be improved in GP. But was this what the report was about? What have I missed?
As to how we expect to be consulted, the models we know are the CPZ and CS9 consultations. I'd have expected a meeting in St Michael's Elmwood Road and an Area Forum dedicated to the topic. I'd have expected people with questionnaires on Fauconberg Road, a tent on the sidewalk, just as there was on CHR when the CS9 consultation was happening. So we know the CS9 and CPZ models of consultation — very clear and open and you couldn't miss them.
But this is not what happened. And this adds to the sense that this is deeply undemocratic. A project that redraws our daily lives so dramatically demands sensitivity. And there is none of that here.
Brendan McCarthy ● 2336d