Cllr Mike Smith at Robson Road junction
As part of West Norwood’s Outer London Fund scheme it will soon be much easier to safely cross Norwood Road from Tesco to Sainsburys. Residents and businesses have made it very clear to Lambeth’s engineers that the Robson Road junction must be improved.
Transport for London is responsible for all traffic lights in London and originally demanded a staggered crossing . Thanks to Val Shawcross, councillors and residents groups TfL has now accepted the clear and simple set of crossings designed by Lambeth’s Highways team. Works to the junction are due to be completed in a couple of months.
The design for the new crossings is shown in the diagram below.
View larger image here.
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I am thrilled that the lights and crossings have been made safer and easier for pedestrians at Robson Road and I understand the work is not quite finished but the lights for vehicles need to be re-thought. Coming out of Robson road and with the road now only a single lane up Norwood High Street to the south, the lights stay green for 6 (yes six) seconds allowing three, and if cars go over on red four, cars to turn right or left. This causes an horrendous tail back down Robson road which is never easy to negotiate at the best of times with buses narrowing the road. The conjestion on Robson Road is worse than before they put in the double yellow lines to allow passing. If the idea is to push traffic onto other roads i.e. Chesnut Road and Idmiston Road then the scheme is working.
Further to this, the traffic down Knights Hill to the same junction has become intolerable. Again this may be because the work isn’t completed yet, but I believe it is because the road narrowing again to just a single lane past the Old Library and the lights changing much quicker than before is causing terrible traffic jams all the way down Knights Hill virtually from Crown Point particularly at rush hour times but even on Saturday and Sundays there have been queues to way beyond Chapel Road.
I would really like the new scheme to work because the pedestrian crossing as it was before was dreadfully unsafe but this shouldn’t be at the expense of traffic blight for people living on the surrounding roads.
Tessa Parikian