Your questions answered

Thank you so much to everyone who came to speak to us at the various events we have been attending over the last couple of months. There were quite a few questions that lots of people asked, so we thought that the best way to try and spread the word would be to write a Q&A, hopefully answering all your burning questions.

How are my taxes funding this project?

The work being undertaken in this project is completely funded by TFL. Council offers do support the scheme – but the money for the works comes directly from TFL.

It doesn’t feel like cyclists have been considered that much – it would have been good to see cycle lanes or more provision for cyclists. Why hasn’t more been done to accommodate cyclists?

The ethos behind StreetWorks is that everyone in our community gets a say in what work goes ahead. We have held several community sessions where people came together and talked about what they wanted to see happen on Norwood Road. Unfortunately the road just isn’t wide enough to accommodate cars, walkers and cyclists with ease – so a compromise had to be reached. The majority of residents asked for wider pavements so this is what was prioritised in the designing of the new scheme.

However, in pulling together the designs we tried to ensure that cyclists were considered as much as possible. For example there are ’Trixi’ mirrors at the new diagonal crossing to help lorry drivers see cyclists in their blind spots. There is also a new junction going in to help cyclists turn right onto Harpenden Road, as well of lots of extra bike racks making it easier to lock your bikes up safely.

Please can we have more greenery, trees in containers and wild flowers planted around them?

Yes! We want to ensure the scheme includes green space and planting. But this stage doesn’t begin to happen until the building work has been completed. That way we ensure that we have everything in the right place to work out where trees, shrubs and wildflowers can go.

One slight issue we have is that the cables that run under the pavements are pretty close to the surface in a lot of places along Norwood Road. This means we are unable to dig down to plant trees for example. But we hope to get containers big enough for larger plants and trees instead.

We will keep you updated with progress, and when the time comes we would love those of you with green fingers to get involved too.

The new diagonal crossing is great, and the timing of the lights for cars is much better. But why are there no dropped kerbs on the diagonal parts of the crossing?

Thanks for all your positive feedback regarding the crossing. We have seen lots of people using it already. We understand that it is a little annoying that the diagonal bits of the crossing don’t have a dropped kerb in the same way that the ‘regular’ parts of the crossing do.

Unfortunately this isn’t something we have control over and is part of the design standards which we have to work with. Based on factors such as the size of the crossing and the timing of the lights the best we can do is have a half dropped kerb on the diagonals. This will be installed when the new road surface is laid, as we will be having a new surface here too.

What is happening further up towards the station? Please clean up the bridge! And improve the pavements here too.

The bit of Norwood Road that runs from Avenue Park Road to the station has been a bit of a headache for StreetWorks. Initially we believed that it was the responsibility of TFL so we weren’t able to extend any of the works up from the current end of the scheme to here. However, investigation has shown that this might not in fact be the case. We still have a bit of negotiation to do to understand whether we are able to extend the lovely paving for example up to the one way system. But we are hopeful that this is the case. We will keep you updated.

However, the bridge is also another issue we have been trying to tackle. This is the responsibility of Network Rail, and despite contacting them to ask if the bridge can be cleaned and generally spruced up we have had no reply. We may need your help with this – we will keep you posted.

The Norwood Road pavements look great – but what about the pavements along my road, when will they be repaired?

The StreetWorks project covers Norwood Road from Chestnut Road to Tulse Hill station. The scheme doesn’t cover the side roads. Lambeth council does pavement inspections to determine which roads will be revamped and in what order, based purely on their condition.

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