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News and Comment January 2020

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21 January - Buses, Bikes and Bashford

Transport Committee
The Transport Users’ meeting ended with buses, roads and which piece of Bexley the Council plans to dig up next. For the record it is the Mayplace Road junction near the bus garage. You can expect delays until April with five weeks of total closure. Once again to the delight of all local businesses, the place to go shopping is Bluewater.

The worst performing bus routes remain the 229, 469 and 269 but the 469 has improved marginally. The B14 is not up to standard either and tends to run early. The operator is being given suitable guidance.

TfL said that some of their financial restrictions have been lifted such that roads might be maintained properly again and 2,000 fully electric buses are in the pipeline - over what period was not stated. From next October all buses will meet Euro 6 diesel standards or better it.

Bexley Council is to purchase two e-cargo bikes (from the TfL Healthy Streets grant money) to allow it to shuttle around goods to the community fridge for example, pollution free.

The cycling representative said that in the early stages of the Albion Road reconstruction his organisation had advised the Highways Manager Andrew Bashford that the dedicated cycling track was potentially dangerous. His words had been ignored. “Nothing was done.”

Two years on he knew of six serious cycling accidents that had put people in hospital and currently one is still off work a month later. “It was quite concerning.” In all cases no other vehicle was involved but there were problems with poorly designed and unmarked dropped kerbs. “They are not the intended safe routes.”

Another legitimate cycling complaint was that the Thames Path closure was given no publicity beyond an obscure Pedestrian Prohibition Order among the Public Notices in December. The detour is three miles along busy dual carriageways and the closure might last six months, The Erith to Woolwich cycle route is effectively closed and people setting out on such a ride would have no notice of it.

Mr. Bashford did a Sadiq Khan and blamed everyone but himself, TfL included, for the problems in Albion Road. The Chairman promised an early meeting between cyclists and Council staff to hopefully resolve both issues.

Bus stopMr. Bashford routinely lists the major road works going on in Bexley at the Transport meeting. This time he said the three years of disruption in Abbey Wood was coming to an end - which it is - and the Bexley Village gateway improvements were complete. Public Realm improvements in Falconwood were in progress.

As Abbey Wood residents will know, the Felixstowe Road improvements were scheduled for completion very nearly two years ago. They are currently four months behind the revised schedule and still unfinished with no progress over the past four or five weeks. Mr. Bashford said that this was due to ongoing negotiations with the adjoining land owners.

At the end of the meeting I was able to speak to the TfL bus man and tell him about the wrongly identified bus stop outside Abbey Wood station. It has been like it since 27th February 2019 and systematically ignored or refuted by TfL’s customer service agents. It says it is in Lensbury Way and the bus numbers are not correct for Abbey Wood station. It also spells Harrow Manorway wrongly. He said something about customer service agents which I had better not repeat here.

Note: I consider Andrew Bashford to be one of Bexley-is-Bonkers founder members. In 2009 he told me that one of his road designs was in accordance with the recommendations of Transport Research Laboratory reports 641 and 661. I think the aim was to baffle me with science and thereby shut me up. However what Mr. Bashford did not know is that my son was at the time TRL’s chief road vehicle safety consultant and co-chairman of an EU committee on the subject. When he saw what had been done in Bexley he said that the road design did not even begin to comply with the recommendations. He was unsure whether incompetence or malice towards motorists was involved.

I concluded that Mr. Bashford had knowingly lied to me and decided that Bexley’s lies should be exposed. It has kept me busy ever since.

Bexley Council however does not agree with my views, they promoted Mr. Bashford.

 

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