Traffic jams London road / Dartmouth road

Long tailbacks along Dartmouth road and London road due to temporary traffic lights at forest hill station intersection. Expect delays for s few days at least. Pavement/road works.

It’s at times like these, with the stationary traffic chugging solidly from 7am outside my window, that I realise how many people shouldn’t have access to a car stereo and/or a volume button

Any idea what pavement/roadworks are being done?

I can guarantee that it’s not the one that we’d all like to be able to cross the road in a single sequence

Ah you read my mind…

It’s BT work next to Pedder.

I doubt if the plastic fencing blocking the road will survive for much longer. Definitely an all-time top ten Forest Hill jam.

How disappointing and how enjoyable this traffic is for us residents!

Although that’s not the intention, I’m 99% sure that’s what is happening. There are four phases: (1) Green for London Road Eastbound: (2) Green for A205 Westbound; (3) Green for Dartmouth Road Northbound into A205; (4) Green for ALL pedestrian crossings.

Let’s hope it catches on although suspect the jams would be used as an excuse forever!

TFL is saying it’s gas works (SGN) and has an end date of tomorrow, allegedly!

Apparently the temporary traffic lights are stuck on red so things are particularly bad today…

It’s chaos today!

The traffic is being operated by one man with an old fashioned Stop & Go sign and he doesn’t seem to be getting the timing right. The queue along the South Circular coming into Forest Hill from Catford seemed to be longer than either the queue down London Road towards the station or along Dartmouth Road. To make matters worse for those who need to use buses the Forest Hill Station bus stop by the estate agents has had to be closed but not all the bus drivers are warning passengers at the previous stop that the next stop is closed. So I ended up having to walk from the Forest Hill Pools stop to the butchers. And then the Forest Hill Fire Station stop on Stanstead Road going towards Brockley/Catford is also closed because of roadworks which once again bus drivers aren’t warning passengers about.

At 3.30 this afternoon the queue into Forest Hill from Catford was back to Kilmorie Road, and the driver on the 185 I was on was suddenly told to divert via Brockley Rise and I presume Honor Oak Park and Honor Oak Road through to London Road cutting out Forest Hill with no thought for the requirements of the passengers that were already on the bus. It wasn’t fun having to struggle with a full and heavy shopping trolley from Kilmorie Road to Sunderland Rd when you have arthritis in both knees!

Stuck on red right now… nothing moved for my whole walk back from Sainsbury’s

#gettheshoppinginforlonesomechristmasbecausetomorrowisgoingtobemental

Yesterday it was stuck on red. Our bus driver eventually ran the red light; otherwise she would have been stuck there forever.

Just to come back to this. The barriers have been cleared and things are back to to normal i.e. dreadful for pedestrians, and dreadful for any town centre.

For pedestrians the disruption to traffic was an interesting couple of days, because we briefly enjoyed single-phase pedestrian crossing in all directions at the junction between London Road (A205) and Dartmouth Road, and the crossing to WH Smith and Forest Hill station.

I may have misled in my post above describing four phases. A better way of putting it is a four part sequence, one of which was a single-phase pedestrian crossing period.

Also, half the road was blocked, which was nice (lots more space for distancing), AND the waiting traffic was further away from the pedestrian crossing by the station, so pedestrians didn’t have the vehicles (+ noise + fumes) in their face as they crossed.

I wonder whether any of our representatives took a look at this? Or the Highways ‘team’? I wonder if MP Ellie Reeves has heard back from Mayor Khan, in response to her letter regarding the need to redesign this crossing.

@DevonishForester - @clausy @LeoGibbons and I (& others) had a call with TfL last week where we raised this (improving the crossing) again.
The long and short of it is that they have no money at present but we have asked to work with them to get this prioritised for the next round of funding. I don’t expect this will be a short process but we are pursuing it.

Here is the reply Ellie Reeves received The A205 Pedestrian Crossing Problem at Forest Hill Station