Data confirms failure of Dulwich LTNs

When One Dulwich met Cllr James McAsh last year, he said there would be no further updates to the Dulwich Streetspace Data Dashboard. But, to our surprise, an update appeared on 1 February, comparing June 2022 figures with June 2023.

It confirms that the Dulwich LTNs are a failed experiment.

Firstly, the Dulwich LTNs have not reduced traffic but simply displaced it. As the opening statement on the Dashboard says, traffic across Southwark has been rising since the end of the last COVID-19 lockdown and, in April 2022, was already “above pre-COVID levels on the TfL network near Dulwich”.

So if some roads have been closed to traffic, where have all the cars, vans and lorries gone? The new data makes this very clear. In June 2023, traffic on East Dulwich Grove, a Dulwich LTN boundary road – a major bus route, with three schools, a health centre and a nursery, and thousands of children walking and cycling along it – had increased by 35.8% since pre-Covid/pre-LTN.

We’ll just repeat this. According to Southwark’s own data, traffic on East Dulwich Grove has increased by 35.8%.

Because East Dulwich Grove was already a busy road before the LTNs, this 35.8% increase represents thousands more cars/LGVs (Light Goods Vehicles), rising to a peak of 16,960 as an average daily vehicle volume over five days in December 2022.

At the point where East Dulwich Grove meets Lordship Lane, traffic increased in just twelve months by 23.5%. This is in Goose Green ward, where Cllr James McAsh – the Council cabinet member for the climate emergency, clean air and streets, and decision-maker on the LTNs – is the local councillor.

News isn’t much better within the Dulwich Village LTN. Between 2022 and 2023, traffic on Townley Road, closed for 2.5 hours a day, increased by 14.6%, while cycling dropped by 23%. On Burbage Road, cycling dropped by a massive 57%, down to just 400 cycles in the week of 19 June 2023, which is lower than before the LTN went in.

Figures for Croxted Road – another Dulwich LTN boundary road – are all over the place. In January and June 2023, there was apparently a large drop in traffic during the morning weekday peak (8am to 9am). But in February, March and May 2023, traffic was the same or above the June 2022 level.

The clue to this variation may lie in the opening statement on the website, where Southwark points out that Automatic Traffic Counts (ATCs) “occasionally fail to collect data or under-report volumes”.

This is obviously what happened in January and June 2023. On 16 January 2023 the number of cars on Croxted Road was recorded as zero. Despite these obvious reporting anomalies, June 2023 was the month Southwark chose to represent the true picture of traffic on Croxted Road.

It’s time for this failed experiment to stop.

We all know the pain and misery that have been caused by the Dulwich LTNs. One Dulwich has argued for a long time that 24/7 road closures directly discriminate against those who depend on their cars for basic mobility, especially the frail and elderly, and those with disabilities.

But this huge displacement of traffic on to roads that were already busy also underlines that Southwark is failing in its basic statutory duty under the Traffic Management Act 2004 to ensure that road networks are managed effectively, to improve safety, and to minimise congestion and disruption.

In Dulwich, as this latest data update shows, we have a road network that is no longer fit for purpose.