Can you help make Woolwich Road safer?

Darryl Chamberlain17 Comments

Greenwich Council is currently consulting on plans to make some changes to part of the Charlton stretch of Woolwich Road – between Felltram Way and Charlton Church Lane – following a number of accidents over the years.

They also take into account changes that’ll need to be made for the proposed new Sainsbury’s/M&S store is built on the corner of Gallions Road.

Well, I say it’s consulting, but there’s nothing on its website and there’s no mention of this in Greenwich Time. Indeed, only a handful of households, either on or immediately adjacent to Woolwich Road, have been invited to take part.

However, the Charlton Champion has been passed the documents, so you too can see what’s planned and respond. See if you can spot the glaring error in one of them.

Woolwich Road Consultation Document (PDF)
Woolwich Road Consultation Questionnaire (PDF)

The council’s desire to involve as few people as possible in its decisions aside, what’s planned includes:

– A central refuge on the Victoria Way zebra crossing
– Installing a pedestrian refuge near to Ramac Way
– Widening the markings in the middle of the road to separate traffic flows
– Renewing anti-skid surfaces
– Moving the zebra crossing and bus stop at Victoria Way (part of the Sainsbury’s scheme)

Of course, the biggest thing that could be done on that stretch of road would be to reduce the amount of traffic, particularly HGVs, on the Woolwich Road. This would require Woolwich-bound traffic at the Blackwall Tunnel to be funnelled towards Bugsby’s Way, rather than the A206 as now. Unfortunately, there’s nothing in that document proposing this quick win, neither is there a proposal to deal with the “dance of death” at the foot of Charlton Church Lane.

But there’s nothing stopping you suggesting those, or anything else. As ever with these consultations, there isn’t long to respond, and it’s by post only, to get to the council by 5 October – that’s a week on Friday. Tell ’em we sent you.

Free wifi: Moca on Old Dover Road

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As part of a semi-regular series reviewing venues in Charlton and nearby with free wifi, I worked last Wednesday morning at Moca, the Italian deli/cafe in old Dover Road, which advertises free wifi.

At 9am, the place was quite full, with quite a strong showing of young, but admittedly well-behaved children. I was certainly able to get my head down and do a good hour of work without any concentration problems, and it wasn’t so full that people resented someone on her own sitting at a table for 4. However, there did only seem to be a very few powerpoints and these were not at the proper tables which are better for working.

The free wifi was not a service like BT Openzone or the Cloud, but rather proper wifi with password protection. It was necessary to ask at the till for the wifi and the code was an alphanumeric key, not an easily remembered word. There was no registration required, or conditions to accept. Everything seemed to work quite well. One item with lots of photo needed two goes to download, but it went quickly the second time. I seemed to be the only one using it, so I’m not sure what level of usage it can withstand.

As I started my day here, I had breakfast, a latte and smoked salmon with scrambled egg and both were perfectly acceptable. The woman serving was a little sharp at first, but I think this was to do with the fact that she was on her own with a rush on. A man came out to help and things seemed to settle down. I did appreciate that nobody made any efforts to move me out, or make me buy more, even though I was there, clearly working, for more than an hour.

Moca has a toilet with baby-changing facilities. There is a small terrrace that takes 4 or 5 people. The radio was on when I arrived, but they later put music on, a decent mid noughties playlist with Morcheeba, Moloko and Primal Scream. Well, it worked for me.

Summary
Wifi service: 9/10 (due to unknown service levels at times of high demand)
Work environment: 7/10 (as long as you can work with music and chatting around you)
Food and drink: 7/10

Total: 23/30

Open houses and a closing lido

Neil Clasper2 Comments


This weekend is Open House weekend across London (but not Croydon); Greenwich.co.uk has taken a look at what’s open across the Borough, but on a more hyperlocal level the nearest attractions included in the Open House programme are:
– tours of Charlton House on Sunday, 10am-4pm
– Thames Barrier (though it’s a bit unclear what’s different from a normal weekend there, apart from the ‘special display’; if you can work it out, let us know in the comments below).
So, slightly slim-pickings for SE7; but where else would you like to see involved in Open House in our neighbourhood?

Also, there’s only two more weekends of swimming at Charlton Lido before it closes for further refurbishment. It’s worth noting that as of this week they’re running a reduced programme: closed Tuesdays and Thursdays, and shortened evening hours on other days. The full timetable is here: http://www.better.org.uk/leisure/charlton-lido/. The second phase of redevelopment should see the addition of gym facilities, a new cafe, and indoor changing rooms, and is schedule to be ready for Easter 2012.

The re-opened lido seems to have been a great success to date, witth queues out of the door on sunny days. Have you been using the lido? If so, let us know where you plan to swim once it closes.

Charlton Lido reopens at 9.30am today

Darryl Chamberlain33 Comments


The lights were burning into the night yesterday as Charlton Lido prepared for its reopening. After two years of closure, the lido will be back open for business at 9.30am today for the summer, ahead of further work on refurbishing the pool which will begin in the autumn.

Two gripes – inconveniently, GLL has made it cheaper to buy tickets in advance online rather than just turning up with cash, a slightly strange way of operating a community facility surrounded by thousands of potential visitors in walking distance.

The opening hours seem a little restrictive, too – no chance of a pre-work dip, as the pool will open at 9.30am on weekdays and 8.30am at weekends. If GLL wants to establish Charlton Lido alongside the likes of the pool at Brockwell Park, it’s going to have to open earlier than that.

But at least the pool is back. If you get a chance to visit, please let us know how the water was for you.

Charlton: Where London’s last trams went to die

Darryl Chamberlain5 Comments


Sixty years ago today, in the early hours of the morning, London’s last tram pulled into New Cross depot from Woolwich. Once a much-loved part of the capital’s transport system, the rattly old trams were deemed uneconomic to replace after the Second World War, and were replaced with buses. So while today in 1952 also saw the end of tram route 40 along the Woolwich Road, yesterday saw the 60th birthday of the 177 bus route, which, until the 1980s, used to follow the old tram route to the City.

Little bits of tram infrastructure survive here and there – New Cross depot remains as a bus garage, the power station in Greenwich originally served the trams, there’s the odd manhole cover around, and there was an old electrical cabinet next to the Blackwall Tunnel’s old tram terminal until a few years ago. Most famously, the old tram subway survives under the Kingsway, with part of it kept in use as the Strand Underpass.

But there’s two sites in Charlton that are key to London tram history. The first is the repair depot, which was, naturally, in Felltram Way, right at the western edge of SE7. Opened in the days of horse trams, the Central Repair Depot served all the capital’s fleet and remained open until the end. Later, it became a factory making Airfix models. Before it was demolished in the early 1990s – landing the next door Asda with a rat problem for a while – the tram tracks and cobbles were still there.

Here’s the site in 1991…


Here’s what it looks like now.

There’s one other, more notorious site – but it could be one where the tram tracks live on. The old trams were scrapped at a yard in Penhall Road, close to where the Thames Barrier is now. A couple of years ago, Dutch tram enthusiast Arie den Dulk sent me some pictures of Penhall Road in 1987. (He also sent me the shots of Felltram Way in 1991, for which I’m also very grateful.) He’d been hunting around, and found the old tram tracks…


Are they still there now? It’s hard to tell. While part of Penhall Road was swallowed up when Woolwich Road was turned into a dual carriageway, the building that sat on the site remains. Until fairly recently, it was the first home of the Meantime Brewery. But the yard was never used, and it now remains overgrown and fenced off. There’s nothing to see but foilage.


There’s long-term plans to see all this land developed as housing, but for now the secrets of Charlton’s role in London transport history may well remain buried beneath foilage next to an empty warehouse. When the bulldozers return, if there’s something to left to preserve, hopefully it can be kept for posterity.

More pictures at Greenwich Industrial History.

Fancy growing your own in Maryon Park?

Darryl Chamberlain1 Comment


These folks have every right to look happy – they’re behind the Maryon Park Food Growing Project, which recently got a £5,000 grant from the London 2012 Changing Places Transform Programme. The project’s converting an old plant nursery in the park into land to grow food on.

It launched last month, and if you fancy a plot there – get in touch with the Friends of Maryon and Maryon Wilson Parks, or visit the site on Saturday 7 July at 12 noon (enter the park by the park keepers’ lodge, keep left by the flower beds and the site is sharp left at the end of the long fence).

Talk about Charlton’s rail service this Tuesday

Darryl Chamberlain2 Comments
The CCRA helped avert a cut in Charlton's Olympic train service

Charlton Rail Users Group co-convenor David Gardner has some words for you:

Come to the Charlton Rail Users’ Group Open Forum with Southeastern, Network Rail and Greenwich Council next Tuesday 3 July at Charlton Liberal Club, 59 Charlton Church Lane SE7 at 7pm for 7.30 pm.

We have begun to make a big impact but much remains to be done. Come to have your say on a new entrance, a station community garden, what train service we want from the next franchise and getting improved bus links.

And anything else you want to raise, including trains stooping up the platform.

Hope to see you there. It’s our station and rail service. Together, we can make our voice heard.

There’s already a consultation out on the next rail franchise for the area, which Transport for London wants to see (at least in the capital) transformed into a London Overground-style service under its control. But Tuesday’s talk will be more about the here and now issues – has anyone spotted the station canopies have been cleaned?