| Topic: | LTN’s - 20min Neighbourhoods — What I Learnt Last Night | |
| Posted by: | Colin Goodman | |
| Date/Time: | 05/12/23 07:01:00 |
| Went to Ealing Councils “Community Workshop for Ealings 20 Minute Framework for Ealing Broadway & South Ealing” last night Didn’t know about it did you? I’m not surprised as we only heard last minute via an obscure social media post; it was advertised as Sold Out via Eventbrite but this was wrong and there was plenty of capacity. In fact it was very sparsely attended!!! The buzzwords were “Primary Active Travel Route”; “Greener Active Travel Link”; “ Climate Change and Ecological Emergency Plan” and wonderful ideas such as Focus Zones, Placemaking etc Cut to the chase: this is the return of LTN’s only on steroids now. Plans under consideration (ie coming your way in a year or two) are to make South Ealing Road a Primary Active Travel Route. Questioned what this actually is the spin answer was where walking and cycling encouraged but, despite constant requests, the details of what this looked like couldn’t be shared. When I stated this can only be at the expense of car travel and “another as Chiswick High Road disaster” the very nice young lady could only go crimson and I got no response really. Exactly the same when talking about the Uxbridge Road junction around The North Star All of these plans are formulated via the online responses numbering 1,100 which is a 1.25% sample of the effected population in these areas When asked where the people rolling these ideas out lived they were rather sheepish in confirming they didn’t live in these areas, some actually not even Ealing rather the well known cycling stazi of Islington!! The regeneration aspect for these areas is of course laudable and welcome. However clearly this will be at the expense of heritage and your freedom of movement by means you may choose freely The final classic snippets were nobody from Planning in attendance or involved, no consideration apparently in respect of high density high rise blocks with this just being about infrastructure. So totally disjointed which to the average Joe must appear mad as don’t you plan your infrastructure around the expected built environment as a whole??? In short — there’s a nightmare heading our way |