Bits and bobs...

Greenwich, after what must have been a serious diplomatic incident between Councils, temporarily closed its borders this morning...

They discovered shortly afterwards that it had just been a wind-up...

I managed to have a quick word with the service engineers and let them know that the bridge surface was convex, so that it turned into a paddlestrian crossing in wet weather. 

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Some of the recent graffiti along the pathway seems to have a bit of a drug theme, so I thought that this under-the-arches contribution was rather cute by comparison....  If it has some covert drugs meaning please don't tell me...I just don't want to know!

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Crosswhatfields blog got a concerned email from Michael in Castell House about a van accident that occurred shortly before 2:30 yesterday (Wednesday, 27 April).  A van had run off the southbound carriageway on Deptford Church Street, opposite Wavelengths, severely damaging the railings which were there to protect pedestrians, and continuing into the wall

Note that the wall above the first layer of bricks has been moved sideways.

Did anybody witness this accident?  Michael was trouble by the fact that the ambulance crew , first on the scene, did not seem to have attempted to enter the vehicle but had waited for the police to arrive.  We don't know whether this was because it was already too late to do anything or whether it was because ambulance crews don't carry the necessary tools for opening twisted van doors. 

However, Michael's analysis of road safety along Church Street, bearing in mind the wall a couple of hundred metres down the road was only just repaired a few months ago, seems accurate:

Drivers go crazy on this short stretch of dual carriageway, going fast on
the first bit of 'open road' they get to after the stop-and-go queuing of
most London roads. Maybe this legacy dual carriageway should be made single
carriageway now that it is no longer a part of some central planner's inner
London motorway scheme.

We hate walking from Deptford Bridge station to the estate along that road.
We wish the pavement was at least a metre higher than the roadway.

And, without witnesses, this is pure speculation but the bus lane stops there and there's a small stretch of road where people will undertake in order to get the racing line for the Bird's Nest roundabout.  A continuous single carriageway would be far safer.