Wednesday 31 October 2007

Green Charter Crap #8

(Traffic and Roads)
We will carry out a comprehensive traffic restraint review, and will examine feasible methods of controlling traffic growth in the borough.

We will improve the street environment for pedestrians by ensuring the provision of unobstructed, well lit, well surfaced, and well protected footways.

We will make the street environment more accessible to all, in particular by providing dropped kerbs, tactile paving, and other facilities to meet the special needs of people with disabilities.

Translation: ‘We will continue to promote and encourage mass car ownership and use. One of the ways in which we can do this is by converting footways into car parks. When there is a conflict of interest between car owners and pedestrians we will put car owners first, even if this makes footways unusable by the blind or people in wheelchairs.’

The street in the photograph below is Stanley Road E4. Its pavements have been completely taken over by parked cars, rendering them at best unpleasant to walk on, and at worse totally obstructed. And since the road has been in this state for over a decade I think we can safely conclude that no councillor in the London Borough of Waltham Forest, least of all Councillor Bob Belam, gives a damn. The Green Charter is a fundamentally worthless document, which bears no relationship whatsoever to Council practice.