Transport for London wants to re-configure the Fiveways junction on the A23 Purley Way, turning it into “Fourways” by diverting Denning Avenue away from one of the worst traffic choke points in south London.
Fancy a McD’s drive through? Jammed traffic on the A23 bridge near Waddon station. TfL has no real solutions
How this will reduce the number of vehicle movements in and around the Purley Way is unclear, since TfL has so far failed to produce any details of the proposals and Croydon councillors, headed by Kathy Bee, Labour’s cabinet member for transport, has refused to share the information they have been given by City Hall.
But Bee and sources at TfL have confirmed that the Tory Mayor’s transport department at City Hall is seriously considering a major piece of road re-routing to take Denning Avenue – the road through the Waddon estate to South Croydon – away from a notoriously jammed and polluted junction.
This Denning Avenue proposal has emerged barely nine months after an expensive public consultation was held by TfL. This was misleadingly entitled “Fiveways Croydon”, but it focused entirely on the A232 junction with the Purley Way by Waddon station, a couple of hundred of jammed yards up the four-lane road, and offered no real solutions to the daily traffic misery at Fiveways itself.
It was this consultation which suggested just two options for the A232’s route into Croydon, including the “Boris Flyover” which threatens to bulldoze through parts of Duppas Hill Park.
Bee and Croydon Council’s report on the proposals are due to be considered at a Town Hall session this week. The council prefers TfL’s second option, which will widen Epsom Road and open it for two-way traffic.
Fiveways and the A232 junction with the A23. TfL wants to re-route Denning Avenue away from the junction, to join the A23 further north
But it has now emerged that as well as suggesting sacrificing public parkland for a flyover to knock a couple of minutes off journey times from Sutton to the Hammersfield supermall in central Croydon, TfL wants to blight dozens more homes in Waddon by re-routing Denning Avenue away from Fiveways.
“If anyone needed confirmation that TfL’s first consultation was flawed and offered no solutions for that stretch of road,” a concerned source at City Hall told Inside Croydon, “then this is it.”
Croydon South’s Tory MP, Chris Philp, has been silent on the issue (perhaps he doesn’t realise that the scheme falls within his constituency?), and the Conservatives’ £73,000 London Assembly Member for Croydon and Sutton and Kenley councillor, Steve O’Connell, couldn’t even be arsed to make a representation to the original TfL consultation.
As the man who notoriously wants to speed “the Surrey wallet-share” towards his mates’ property scheme at Hammersfield, O’Connell probably doesn’t care much for the loss of parkland, homes and businesses in the TfL road schemes. O’Connell will be standing for re-election to City Hall next May.
Croydon Council’s response to the original TfL consultation, which offered “a pig in a poke” of no real choice at all, and certainly no public transport improvements to reduce private car use, came in for comment from the public at last week’s council meeting.
It was there that Bee let slip that TfL was now looking at further road-building plans at Fiveways. “Considerably more work has been conducted around Fiveways itself,” Bee told the meeting.
Labour’s cabinet member for transport has also said, “TfL has produced revised designs for Fiveways Corner itself, which work with both proposals and bring the potential for greater improvement to the pedestrian environment and public realm.”
Bee has clearly seen TfL’s plans for Denning Avenue and Fiveways, but is withholding the full detail. Invited by Inside Croydon to elaborate on the proposals for the people of Croydon, the £43,000 per year elected local councillor has taken the lead of Tony Newman, Labour’s council leader, and has refused to respond.
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Making Denning Avenue one-way eastbound would remove the traffic light cycle for those exiting on to the junction, thus reducing the time on red at the other four corners. As it stands that wouldn’t be such a bad idea.
What isn’t apparent is how traffic from Waddon gets to the A23 northbound or to Stafford Rd without going (literally) all round the houses.
That’s assuming the houses are left standing, Nick… There may be a reason why Councillor Bee is refusing to share the details of this scheme with the public.
Reblogged this on sed30's Blog and commented:
Nightmare!
I cant see a problem at all with building in to a part of the park. Only someone being very picky could complain that it would ruin their enjoyment of what is a characterless piece of green land as you will see.
Its a far better option than forcing people out of their homes.
Really you couldn’t make it up! Someone, either in the Council or TFL, needs to get a fundamental understanding of what the problem is before looking at solutions. We’ve said all along the Fiveways consultation was flawed, misnamed and all geared to keep the Westfield bus moving. No one wants to talk about a real long term co-ordinated solution to the traffic problems in Croydon. If you want good road links into Croydon to service Westfield, extend the M23 all along the Brighton Rd from Hooley and be done with it. Stop all this tinkering around the edges which simply shifts the traffic elsewhere within the borough.
That ship sailed (or sank) years ago. There’s nowhere for a motorway’s volume of traffic to be deposited, as the necessary south circular upgrades were cancelled.
Ok, you could argue that there is already a motorway’s volume of traffic each morning, just spread out over 15 miles of red lights.
But I regularly motorcycle up through 4 miles of queues on the m23 and dual a23…road capacity on its own is pointless without the flow.
And the cost would be…stratospheric? Mind numbingly vast? You’d be talking the combined capital budgets of all south london councils for 20 odd years (assuming nothing, absolutely nothing else was delivered. No schools, no leisure centre upgrades, no other road work improvements).
Cross rail is being funded by a 2% extra nndr surcharge on medium and large businesses in the capital for 25 years.
I reckon south London businesses would be needing to pay about 1% extra surcharge for an m23 extension, over the same sort of period.
And it would just shift the queue a few miles north…
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When it comes to the council and fiveways. I’m always reminded of the words ” P**s up and brewery ”
Not sure if anyone can remember about 23 years ago. Their idea of a flyover, that would start halfway up Purley Way. By the old Phillips building. and finish by Mcdonald’s. Well over a one hundred feet high..