Forum Topic

I remember many years ago a Hounslow Labour councillor saying in a minuted meeting that higher CPZ charges in Chiswick were justified 'because the rich bastards can afford it'. A friend of mine who was a local party member, sadly no longer with us, said 'That's us screwed for a generation' and she was not far wrong. Around that time the old Gunnersbury ward had been returning Labour members but the whole of the W4 post code area went Tory.They always played the 'cash cow Chiswick' angle very hard and it worked because there was an element of truth in it. As well as the higher permit charges, parking enforcement was much more rigorous in the area possibly because the attendants were based in the Town Hall. I'm not a Hounslow Borough resident but I get the impression that the council is now bending over backwards to include Chiswick and end this sense of victimhood. Permit charges are the same across the borough and Chiswick initiatives like the Dukes Meadow Footbridge have been given huge financial backing. The council are also very supportive of local community initiatives such as the markets.Although I think it is correct to say that most of the ANPR revenue collected in the borough comes from Chiswick, as local people are aware of the restrictions, that doesn't seem to bother them as much as the permit differential or blanket enforcement of parking did.The Hounslow bit of Chiswick voted Tory because it believed that it was a discriminated against enclave and it needed non-Labour councillors as a balance. If this belief has waned at the same time as the Conservatives are turning to the kind of politics that the vast majority of W4 residents find repulsive, then even the commitment of individual councillors, which must be acknowledged, will not be enough to save them.

Mark Evans ● 291d

There is an interesting article in the Spectator from Nick Rogers, the former Tory GLA rep for this area which endorses much of what you say. He goes into the roots of the Conservative failure which he traces back to poor candidate selection which then was compounded by a policy of talking down London.Sadiq Khan is not a man that should excite strong opinions, either positive or negative but he has worked steadily for the interests of London over his first two terms and Londoners clearly decided he deserved a third particularly as no viable alternative was available.He has expanded free school meals, boosted housing starts, increased social housing, continued improvements to our transport network, done everything he can to keep fares down and represented London well.The Tory attack lines against him were crude and underestimated the intelligence of the electorate which was sophisticated enough to recognise that issues like knife crime and travel are complex issues that can't be solved by slogans.Khan was swimming with the tide due to national voting trends and this was probably the main reason for the size of his victory. Andy Street's defeat showed that if your party is performing poorly across the country, doing a good job is no protection.It was interesting to learn that Nick Rogers is no longer a member of the Conservative party and I suspect that it will see more departures after an inevitable lurch to the right after the next General Election. Our local councillors will be aware that a Braverman led party (or worse a Boris/Farage coalition) will not win council seats in Chiswick. Many of these councillors have done good jobs and a switch to independent for the next local election may be their only option to continue doing so.

Jeremy Parkinson ● 293d

" it does seem a bit rich for him to blame Sadiq Khan for a project that was originated and aggressively pushed through by Boris Johnson's transport advisor"Ron should be blaming Cllr Peter Thompson who is leader of the Hounslow Conservatives as he was the leader of the Conservative/Independent coalition when the cycleway programme was launched.  I doubt the Conservative administration in Hounslow paid any attention to this at the time but if they had, they could certainly have raised objections to the route.Indeed the decision to change the route away from the A4 west of Chiswick roundabout to the A315 was made while Cllr Thompson was leader of Hounslow. I'm not saying he would have been consulted on this but it was absolutely something strongly lobbied for with TfL by the then head of transport in Hounslow (Chris Calvi Freeman).Gilligan had little direct involvement.  He was appointed by Johnson in 2013.  He was involved with internal TfL planning so resources were prioritised to work on C9 plans not as a top priority but part of the next phase of cycleways after the ones in central London.  Gilligan had been gone for over a year by the time the C9 consultation came out in 2017 so had no involvement at all in the decision making process over the next few years.He was involved in the programme of 'temporary' cycleways as a result of the pandemic and that has influenced the eventual detailed design of C9 but not the outcome.  If the temporary design hadn't happened then I think it was likely the original design would still have been built, just delayed.  Just as the construction is going on at the moment for the section between Kew Bridge and Brentford town centre.  It reflects the original design but is 2-3 years later than intended because of the pandemic.

Michael Robinson ● 299d

To provide some balance to Guy's quotes, some of which come from research by Rachel Aldred who runs the Active Travel Academy at Westminster University (with an obvious bias in favour of LTNs and road restrictions), there is this research in which Rachel admits her research has shortcomings (the url reveals the general gist though it's worth reading the article for the full picture):https://newsfromcrystalpalace.wordpress.com/2023/11/21/blocked-off-roads-new-rachel-aldred-report-on-ltns-admits-research-shortcomings-many-limitations-that-traffic-counters-dont-count-all-traffic-and-why-theyre-not-relevant/It includes obvious points such as this one on longer journeys:“It may still be the case that despite relatively little changes in boundary road traffic, those car journeys which continue to be made as before take longer simply because cut-throughs are no longer available." And jaw dropping inaccuracies such as not counting slow traffic (that slow traffic being an inevitable consequence of displacement from LTNs): "As News From Crystal Palace reported in November last year: The mystery of ‘traffic evaporation’ in Low Traffic Neighbourhood figures may have been solved – by a campaigner in Enfield. It turns out that the traffic surveys done by Enfield council for their post LTN data applied a filter so that it did not count any vehicles moving at less than 10km per hour."And this on the effect on boundary roads:"“Finally, it is important that boundary roads are not forgotten. “They do experience often substantial traffic burdens, and just over half the boundary roads in this study saw increases over the monitoring periods (with just under half seeing a reduction)."These and other inaccuracies were exposed on Twitter; I suppose Guy hopes readers of this forum won't know this.Here's another about how cycling czar Will Norman cherry picks data to suit. The heading of the article is "Sadiq Khan’s cycling tsar ‘distorting’ statistics to justify millions on bike lanes" (Sorry it's behind a pay wall): https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/10/21/cycling-sadiq-khan-transport-for-london-enfield-tsar-cyclin/Meanwhile, Times journalist Andrew Ellson trawled through the government's review saying, "I've now read all 79 pages of the govt's LTN review. There is plenty I could say about it but for now I thought I'd focus on unpicking the survey evidence that suggests LTNs are more popular than not. My analysis has found this conclusion to be very misleading":Andrew Ellson's review is here: https://www.socialenvironmentaljustice.co.uk/newpage#AndrewEllsonNotes1Finally, re the above link, the campaign group Social & Environmental Justice is a very good source of background information on LTNs including by exposing biased research:https://www.socialenvironmentaljustice.co.uk/IntheNews [Cue a pile-on of criticism including references to cherry trees.]

Joanna Biddolph ● 303d