Stop and reopen Road closures and car lanes lost under Covid19 in Greenwich and London

Stop and reopen Road closures and car lanes lost under Covid19 in Greenwich and London

Started
4 September 2020
Petition to
Mark Hodgson (Head of Highway Greenwich Council) and
Signatures: 717Next Goal: 1,000
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Why this petition matters

Started by Filiberto Perilli

The closure of Important side roads such as Crooms Hill, Point Hill, Hyde Vale, Maidstone Hill, Winforton Street ,The Avenue (Greenwich Park) and South Row (Lewisham's) in particular is creating insurmountable barriers to the movement of vehicles and it will leave only two main roads left open: Shooters Hill and Trafalgar Road-Woolwich Road to allow effective traffic flow together with Maze Hilll and Vanbrugh Hill.  

The whole blockades  are in fact a traffic dumping operation moving vehicles from some places into others. Those left open will be prone to more serious congestions than already are due to the constant spillage traffic of the old , outdated , expired sell by date Blackwall Tunnel that seriously need to be replaced by a new modern crossing of the Thames  with  a bridge at Woolwich Ferry or the completion of the agonizing project of the Silvertown Tunnel. 
Slowing and obstructing vehicles in such an already congested area where is difficult  to move because the Thames on one side and Greenwich Park and Blackheath Common on the other create more pollution in fact for the disproportionate longer journeys that are in turn caused together with the extra starting and stopping, changing gear and the utter repetitive braking that releases even more metal pollutant from their braking systems as everyone is entangled in more ferocious traffic.
Those roads closures beggar belief. They are like erected 'Berlin Walls' impassable with motor vehicles even by local residents, public buses or not polluting electric cars or vans, emergency services or Police.
The Major and the Council wants us to walk, cycle or use only public transports when we talking about a quite vast hilly area and not even buses will be able to move at peak hours from point A to B of the opposite ends of the large borough and you try to move like that with little children/kids, heavy loads, or elderly, injured, etc. 
And we are not all single, want to be professional athletes or bikers that we can ride or walk at will.
We are in the middle of a serious pandemic that could last years that has already caused the most serious drop in the GDP of the UK in 300 hundred years where we are staring down the barrel of mass unenployement as a conseguence.
Therefore we need to put wings on people's back not weights onto their feet when making roads impassable for the dedicated workers that want to make a living, parents that takes kids to schools , people that want to go and buy food for their families or going to the village for a meal, sometimes miles away thus supporting local business and not killing them with unsensitive road closure also implemented without any broad consultation with a yes or not vote on the matter.
Local residents and everyone that could have been affected or penalized in a way or another must have been consulted and engaged as per central government original guidance but it did not happen; nor a proper campaign of information with proper media warnings of the massive changes to arrive were made pubblic prior to this 'secret operation' of yours whereas it has been instead chosen to leave motorist suddenly stranded and discriminated against others. 

Not even electric vehicles are allowed through when we must support this green revolution and the huge industry and future jobs behind it and some heavy industry like that  must always be preserved as a strategic asset in case of war or conflicts in a ever dangerous world.

Yours are actions of a highly unrensponsible, reckless government, things that we thought to happen only in autocrat countries but have happened and are repeating here instead in this so-called democracy; devised by an algorithm or AI?

To add despair to misery the Council and TFL  are closing more roads and putting in freshly dugs Bike Lanes and monster paved areas. Even existing essential bus lanes and their dedicated bus stops are being obliterated/sacrificed to make way to this folly.

Why? Why this  brutality, this mad rush that make resemble your actions a savage enterprise when you are about to unleash onto us also the second phase of the Ulez that is just few months away; again coming in too without any prior consultation of the people whatsoever.

Motorist do pay Road Tax and heavy fuel taxes every year to get the right of way onto the Highway and you are relinquishing it with a 'VIP ticket' to the ones that pay little for it in comparison i.e. bikers, that are also the only ones allowed through your new 'Berlin Walls' together with pedestrians.

If this is the case you must discount or scrap the Road Tax or Fuel Duties at the very least.

We swallowed without flinching endless polluting and car damaging road bumps, few road closures here and there to please local residents and help Police catch speedway cars, the Congestion Charge, the bike lanes encroaching onto already narrow carriageways, the Ulez, the monstrous paved areas cutting onto those too but now enough is enough.

Stop this madness. Care for to the people that give to you the hard earned taxes as needing to move around otherwise you undermines our earning and livelihoods and our ability to pay the wages of everyone in government being local or central; instead you pretending not to ask or listen at all when devising an utopian, vanity project such as of Covid19 Road closures that sides together with questionable endless bike lines that no one uses positioned onto existing highways or megalomaniac pedestrian pavements encroaching onto the roads where no one is ever seen walking.

You are failing your scope  of reducing traffic and its pollution with the compelling evidence under everyone's eyes because more solid traffic jams and the longer journeys that you are causing = more pollution not less as you claim to do and achieve.

Reopen the roads , stop all the fundings and guidances for these Covid19's schemes and never again a public road closure or loss of any car lane, therefore including hereby also any enlargement of the Ulez or new congestion charging schemes, new bike lanes and monster paved areas that encroach onto existing highways and unneeded new bus ways unless all affected residents, road users and businesses in the borough and the adjacent ones or the whole region get consulted with a vote of yes or not on the matter; otherwise these are just despicable, autocratic acts that must not longer repeat and exist. 

 

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Signatures: 717Next Goal: 1,000
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Decision-Makers

  • Sadiq KhanMayor of London
  • Mark HodgsonHead of Highway Greenwich Council
  • Andy ByfordTFL Transport Commisioner
  • Denise HylandGreenwich Council Mayor
  • Boris JohnsonPM