At the Meeting of Royal Borough of Greenwich Council last night (Wednesday 19th July) Labour’s Cabinet Member for 
Transport admitted that the failure to install a new pedestrian crossing at the top of Eltham High Street at the junction with Footscray Road is the result of delays by the Mayor of London’s (Sadiq Khan) Transport for London organisation.
Transport admitted that the failure to install a new pedestrian crossing at the top of Eltham High Street at the junction with Footscray Road is the result of delays by the Mayor of London’s (Sadiq Khan) Transport for London organisation.In response to a question from Eltham Councillor Spencer Drury, Cllr Sizwe James replied that “Traffic signals in London are installed ….. by Transport for London(TfL). The Council’s contractor completed the preparatory work for the signals sometime ago and Officers have been pressing TfL to install signals for some time.”
Cllr James stated that the traffic lights should be installed by the end of 2017, but agreed to keep up the pressure on TfL at Cllr Drury’s request.
This work appears to be so late that the Council’s shop updating people on the work has been closed down and now lays empty.
Spencer said “In my opinion, this junction at the top of Eltham High Street is quite dangerous – it is laid out and marked up for traffic lights, but they simply aren’t there. Many drivers and pedestrians have a guess at when is the right time to enter the junction, but with two lanes merging into one it really isn’t easy.”Spencer continued “This situation really shows the difference between how the new Labour Mayor of London treats Eltham compared to Conservative Boris Johnson. Boris allocated £5m to improve the High Street while Mayor Khan can’t find the time to put in the traffic lights which have been agreed. Even worse his current proposals to close and sell off Eltham Police Station reflect the fact he wants to downgrade our High Street even further.”