Thursday, November 20, 2008

Traffic in Richmond park

Richmond park has come up with a way to limit the increasing Traffic in Richmond Park: The way forward for Case 17165.

In a nutshell, they're talking about closing the Pen Ponds (photo from Richmond Upon Thames Daily Photo) and putting a land train in place.

I find this just short of hypocritical and short sighted:
  • hypocritical -if they want to restrict traffic to Pen Ponds, why then do they have a diesel-powered snack-food and ice cream van selling their wares there? (and also I wonder, why does it have a German licence plate?)
  • short sighted -they've closed Robin Hood gate and displaced a lot of traffic onto adjoining roads, specifically the A205 is now quite terrible and the A3 was never improved either.
While I understand the reasons to restric traffic in the park, the "not in my street" approach is creating increased congestion on fewer streets each time a gate is closed, a street is made one way or transformed into a cul de sac (latest one to my knowledge is Well Lane in Sheen, which I find strange and not motivated)

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2 comments:

rob's uncle said...

Re: 'In a nutshell, they're talking about closing the Pen Ponds '

'car park' omitted?

In the document they say the aim is to reduce visitor pressure on the grassland, not to reduce traffic in the park.

idiomatic said...

The other documents, and the closure of Robin Hood gate show clearly that traffic reduction is a goal of the Park administration.