Where’s the data?
Here we are, right up against the closing deadline of the Dulwich consultation (11 July), and we don’t have any data on traffic or air quality. We have no facts showing how the measures have affected local roads.
How can we respond to the survey, we keep saying, if we don’t have this crucial information?
But it seems we got it all wrong. All that pressure on everyone to fill in the survey was just because the Council wanted to know how we feel. How do you feel about your road being closed? Do you feel there might be more cyclists around? Do you feel an elderly person you’ve never met might like the changes? Do you feel the shops are benefiting? Do you feel that the Council is probably meeting its 2030 targets for air pollution?
It's an interesting approach. In nearly every other area of life, we expect to moderate our feelings by facts. This is especially true if our limited experience prevents us from understanding the whole picture. That’s why we need facts and data, so that we can make informed decisions.
It’s also ironic, given that, so far, our councillors have denied us the right to feel anything at all. Anything we have reported – congestion, increased pollution, ambulance delays, late carers, lost trade, missed hospital appointments – has all been gaslighted away. We’re told we don’t understand, we’re mistaken, we’ve got it all wrong.
So what’s going on here? We were, after all, promised all the data in the recent public meetings in June.
It may be that council officers are completely overloaded – too few staff trying to deal with too many tasks. If so, that’s a pretty big indictment of the whole process. The Council shouldn’t have introduced experimental road measures if it didn’t have the capacity to gather and analyse the data.
A more cynical view is that this delay in producing the data is calculated. If the survey results can be presented to show that most respondents are in favour, Southwark might not produce the data at all – or at least produce only a sanitised version that supports the measures. If, on the other hand, the survey shows that most people are unhappy, and have given detailed reasons why, Southwark can tailor the data to show that they’re wrong.
Data, after all, can be selectively reported, as we know from all the work we’ve done over the past year analysing Southwark’s figures, from the claim that traffic through Dulwich Village junction had increased by 47% (Fact Checker 14 June 2020) to the OHSD Phase 2 report.
So what data should we expect to see?
In the May 2021 newsletter, the Council said they were gathering data to monitor the impacts of the schemes. This will include pedestrian and cycle counts, traffic counts, bus performance data, traffic light data at junctions, air quality data, accident data, penalty charge notice data and school travel survey data.
‘Scheme objectives will be carefully assessed against the data collected,’ Southwark says in the Dulwich Streetspace Monitoring Plan. This plan, one of the few documents on the main Dulwich Review site, explains that air quality is being measured using diffusion tubes at various locations.
Traffic is being analysed in a number of ways, but mainly via Automatic Traffic Counts (black strips on roads that count the number and speed of vehicles and bicycles) and Active Travel Monitors (the Vivacity ones that look like cameras high on lampposts, which analyse people walking and cycling). We’ve also recently come across Tracsis ANPR (Automatic Number Plate Recognition) cameras on East Dulwich Grove, which we understand have logged the number of vehicles on two specific days at the end of June/beginning of July the whole length of the road from Lordship Lane to Herne Hill.
We need all this data – detailed data on traffic and air quality – in order to judge the effects of the experimental measures, not just on our own roads, but on the area as a whole. Without it, we can’t tell if the Council is meeting any of its objectives.
In the meantime, please record your feelings by filling in the survey. The deadline is 11 July.