The latest shocking figure of over £278,000 racked up in fines on just one Peckham road in six months does little to disprove claims that the council is using Low Traffic Neigbourhoods (LTN) as a cash cow.
It takes time to win over the hearts and minds of your residents, to get them to change over to a car-free life in order to save the planet. So simply imposing restrictions on them seems to be the way Southwark is going – and it helps when a bundle can be made in the process.
They are not the only ones – most London councils used emergency active travel funding to make streets safer for cyclists and pedestrians during the pandemic, closing swathes of roads under their control. And on top of that Mayor Sadiq Khan jumped in to close more of the roads under Transport for London’s control.
Bitter battles have ensued and communities are divided with those in support and those against. But there are a large portion of people in the middle ground agreeing with the environmental messages, but arguing that it must been done with the consent of the local community.
Consultations have come and gone, most notably in Dulwich, in which two thirds of people asked for the system to be scrapped, but the council still went ahead with it. Indeed, a consultation is not a referendum – the council does not have to go with the result. However, as we come closer to an actual local election it is such an issue as this that will be on the forefront of people’s minds.
With rising fuel costs, added to rising costs generally, many may have already given up the idea of car ownership altogether, but nothing is that simple and exceptions need to be made for those who need to drive.
In April last year we revealed that Southwark Council raked in £2.5 million in fixed penalty changes from LTN cameras in Dulwich and Walworth in its first three months of issuing the fines. Soon after a blue badge holder exemption was announced and many of the motorists who were issued with more than one fine were not asked to pay the full amount. This all points to a system that is far from ideal.
So why so months later are we clearly seeing so many people still being fined in Goldsmith Road, Peckham?
Surely there is a genuine problem with the signage for so many motorists to risk a fine to simply drive down one road?