It’s all very well for the vast majority of contributors here, the residents of Southfields Ward and others to demand the re-opening of Fishers Lane, but almost all don’t LIVE in Fishers Lane unlike the first poster here; I too live in Fishers Lane, have done for over 30 years, and I am fully in agreement about keeping the road closed at the top end (except for the buses and cyclists).People need to understand the facts before just demanding the re-opening of the road just to make their own lives easier. Fishers Lane had become one of the best rat-runs (or worst, depending on your perspective) in west London, especially in the morning and evening rush-hours, and at weekends. The definition by the way is “a small street that connects larger roads and that drivers use to get more quickly to the place they are going”. A significant proportion of the traffic using Fishers Lane wasn’t local – it was traffic finding the best route from central London to the M4 and beyond. In the process it clogged up a quiet residential road; the southbound queue to get out on to the High Road was often so bad that it actually went beyond the tube line bridges. This in turn caused the northbound traffic to back up too, sometimes to the Health Centre and beyond. We’ve had to put up with idling engines, horns blaring, loud music from cars and even physical confrontations at the tube line bridge. Woe-betide if we residents actually wanted to park our own car in all this chaos – hooted at, flashed at, and even sworn at!Outside of the congested times the road then switched to something akin to the starting straight of a race track with traffic accelerating both northbound and southbound to speeds often in excess of 50mph plus; even the buses go more than the 20mph limit Any suggestion about a one-way system involving Turnham Green Terrace and Fishers Lane is totally infeasible. Double Decker buses (the E3 for example) and delivery lorries could not get under the bridges in Fishers Lane, and the cost to change them would be prohibitive!Solutions certainly need to be found to the traffic problem in Chiswick, but re-opening Fishers Lane isn’t the answer. Why do locals want it open anyway – probably because it’s their cut-through too?? The road needs be respected as a quiet residential road, a safe north-south cycle route, a pedestrian route from north Chiswick to the High Road, and a route for the 272 where it’s not constantly delayed. The volume of cyclists in the road has certainly increased in the last few months since closure.Many Fishers Lane residents desperately want this closure to stay - with better signage, proper enforcement and coordination between Hounslow and Ealing Traffic Planners. Equally, Turnham Green Terrace must be reopened. That has to be the only pragmatic solution – it’s a commercial road, which thrived before the pandemic, helped significantly from passing traffic. It will die as a unique part of Chiswick if not.
Ben Cooper ● 2187d