Creating car free space in Honor Oak

Great to see new businesses popping up on Brockley Rise in Honor Oak, but wondering if they have ever considered making it a car-free zone? The portion of shops, cafes and bars between Chandos and the laundrette has loads of potential, and as a road it seems to be used primarily by dormant buses. The car dominates pretty much everywhere around here, and think it would be great to have a small slice where pedestrians can roam free. Might make it a bit harder for some to access the A205 by car, but a price worth paying I think…

Dont think there ’ Dormant’ buses , they terminate there and always have done .

I made exactly that suggestion on Lewisham council’s recent consultation, I think it could be awesome with relatively low impact on drivers and a huge boost to hospitality businesses there. They did a v similar thing outside herne hill station which used to be a cut through and its turned in to a great community space. As it is, the pavement is already impassable at points due to the bus drivers toilet and the space already allocated to shops, I’d love if they just fully pedestrianised it and reworked the road layout on the main road to accommodate terminating busses, it’s quite a wide section of road. Would also love to see something done to join up HOP station and the cafes and restaurants on the high st in to more of a cohesive space.

That’s great that the idea is out there already! And that you’ve aired it in the right places. Great point about Herne Hill, the change there transformed the character of the area around the station - sure there’s loads of other examples as well. Also completely agree about the HOP station entrance - could easily direct all traffic to one side of the central reservation and create a broad walkway down to the high street.

Here’s hoping that they are considering ideas such as these - Crofton Park has had a nice face life, definitely time for HOP to have the same!

I’ve never found that I couldn’t roam free on Honor Oak Park. The pavements are wide on both sides and the two crossing points by the station are plenty enough.

While it would be lovely for HOP residents for the high street to be pedestrianised, it wouldn’t be fair on Brockley or Forest Hill residents. Shutting off Honor Oak Park would divert traffic via the B2142 or A205, which are are already congested and highly residential.

I agree, though the suggestion wasn’t to pedestrianise Honor Oak Park, but the section of Brockley Rise between Chandos and laundrette (where there is no through traffic). Suggestion for HOP was to just narrow the road from two carriageways to one over the bridge

Yeah, I suppose this bit could be closed without too much impact on traffic:

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Similarly, closing off one side of the HOP island could probably be done while retaining the same overall capacity for traffic flow (looking at the widths of the roads before, through and after the island):

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Might make it harder / less safe for pedestrians to cross through, as they’d be negotiating a crossing with traffic flowing in both directions?

Surely this measure would be a logistical burden in terms of taking deliveries for local businesses?

Yeah I’m sure you’re right. Though if I was a business on that strip I’d be inclined to accept the additional burden given the likely increase in footfall

I think it’s a good idea, and would probably help that parade of shops overall. The biggest challenge would be finding somewhere else for the buses to terminate and turn around.

I’ve wondered this for a while myself. I woul be interesting to know what the shopkeepers and restaurants etc feel about it.

There are currently some shortstay (20 minutes I think) parking spaces in addition to the bus stop, so the question for the business owners would be would this change increase or decrease business.

Assuming they felt it would be negligable or better, I’d be all for it, and I suppose you could have it access only for deliveries during certain hours, have a loading bay etc. Depends if the view is to have the road with tables \ chairs etc in it (would benefit Querce and Chandos for example at the moment if tey could serve people outside, less so in winter I suspect).

With a greengrocers, butchers, Querce acting as a fishmongers on Thursdays, a florist, hairdressers, wellness centre, convenience store, cafe and takeaways you’d think this could be a great time to do it and keep this section on the upward trend it appears to be on.

And Rise, the florist, the new greengrocer, the barbers etc would all benefit from greater footfall if the street became more of a destination shopping street. I would guess they’d be all for it, the images of northcote rd’s pedestrianisation would make me jealous if I were a shopkeeper.

The piece of road outside the Chandos is actually remarkably broad - already the A205 is 4 lanes and bulges considerably at this point. I’m no traffic planner, but looks to me like there’s space for buses to park and for a proper roundabout where they can turn around.

Though I think another big challenge could be having access to the MOT garage at the end…

I’m a little nervous about this proposal - mainly due to the fact that it doesn’t address how traffic coming out of (the one-way) Stillness Road will be handled.

At present it either turns left along the Brockley Rise parade, or right, past Stillness School.

So if the parade is closed to traffic, either it all diverts past the school (surely not a desirable outcome), or it all gets rerouted by closing off Stillness Road at Codrington Hill, and sending it all up past the foot of Blythe Hill Fields, along Codrington Hill and out by the Chandos.

Being a Codrington Hill resident, I know only too well just how busy this road can get as it is right now, so any extra traffic load is going to present real problems, not only for residents, but also for smooth traffic flow.

I’m all for opening up more streets to pedestrians, but any such changes have to be done with consideration to the impact that they will have on surrounding areas…

I think this is a great idea, however, as mentioned by others there are a couple of issues that need to be resolved before this could be implemented.
The biggest one is buses - one solution would be to turn the existing bus stop on Stondon Park at the back of the butchers as the terminus, however, not sure if there is enough space for 2-3 buses to park there. Other solution would be to keep the bus terminus on Brockley Rise but make it a shared pedestrian area with buses only. The bus traffic is not that heavy and most of the time the space would be for pedestrians only.
Stillness Road traffic could either be routed through Gladiator St and Codrington Hill to Brockley Rise or the section of HOP between the traffic lights and Brockley Rise made a two-way street.

Sorry, but routing traffic up Gladiator Street is an even worse idea than routing everything along Codrington Hill!

It’s a tiny narrow street - the only way it could handle the sort of traffic loads currently using Brockley Rise would be to make it one-way and limit parking on it - which I am sure would not go down well with the people who live there…

I think that there is a wider issue of traffic using Codrinton Hill, Stillness Road, Bexhill Road and Crofton Park Road as cut-through to Catford and Ladywell. If there was a sensible plan for closing some of them and making the whole area residents only there would be less of an issue with the above scheme.
There is a big issue with speeding up Bexhill Road resulting in a number of accidents over the past few years - the Council has been made aware of this.

Could they reverse the one way stretch of HOP rd that currently let’s cars in to the stretch of brockley rise that could be pedestrianised? That would let traffic out without diverting it I think …

Yes - I think this would probably be the best option - but then you have to decide how to handle the bus stand, as the 172 and P3 both use that little stretch of HOP to get to the parade…

I think there’s space for two-way traffic on that little stretch, so buses could still use to get to the parade

I’d reconfigure the main rd in front of the chandos for busses to terminate there so they don’t even need to access the parade, and then make the parade fully pedestrian, or look at making it two way as another poster says and having the parade of shops semi pedestrian with only busses passing through.