New plan for Brockley Cross revealed

Last weekend, at the Brockley Cross Action Group AGM, the Council provided the details of their new plans to redevelop the area around the junction.

The design refines their initial efforts, which disappointingly unambitious. The new plans are much better, including the following improvements:

• There is a new zebra crossing, which should make crossing the junction much easier
• Geoffrey Road gets a small central island to make it safer to cross - it should have an additional benefit of making that spot impossible to double park at, which is currently a problem
• The parking bay on the south side has been replaced with some short term parking. The current set-up encourages dangerous double-parking. Whether this change will resolve that remains to be seen, but any attempt to do solve that problem has to be welcome
• The parking well on the north side, which has been monopolised by D&M Vans, has gone. This will prevent this spot from feeling like a narrow corridor for pedestrians between a wall of vans. It may even persuade D&M to move somewhere where they have proper off-street parking permission and to set up in an office where they have planning permission to do so. Just as likely, however, is that they will look to other streets to store more of their vans, so we hope that traffic enforcement keeps that in mind
• Shardeloes Road gets a new zebra crossing, while the dangerous zebra crossing on Brockley Road gets a new central island, which should reduce approach speeds and improve safety

The overall effect of these changes should mean that the area becomes a great deal more pedestrian friendly. Combined with the new planned development on the corner of Geoffrey Road and some tree planting, the area should be a nicer, less chaotic spot, discouraging the illegal parking chaos that it currently breeds.

The plans are not yet completely finalised and there will be a further opportunity to have your say in October.

Work on the pedestrian crossings will begin this autumn, while work  on the rest of the plans should start in February 2012.

Well done to the Council for responding to some of the initial feedback, we hope the plans to improve the parking situation remain in the final analysis.