Eltham High Street sees social distancing measures

Barriers have been erected along Eltham High Street to widen pavement space and assist with social distancing.

With most shops looking to reopen in 15th June with restricted access, queues outside are to be expected in many areas. These measures are to ensure space is available for those passing queues.

Not all areas along the street have these measures and disabled parking remains.

This is the second area to see temporary measures in the borough after Greenwich. While that scheme was put in place relatively quickly (well, by UK standards – it was very slow by the standards seen in other cities around the world) it soon saw criticism as cyclists were squashed against barriers and links to cycle paths blocked for those on bikes as well as cars.

Since then little has been done to create semi-permanent layouts such as wands.  There are also no wands yet seen on cycle lanes between Woolwich and Greenwich.

It’ll be interesting to see how these measures stack up. Eltham saw notoriously bad parking before current events, with double parking common. Will we see much parking beside barriers?

And if so will enforcement occur? Cameras will be permitted to enforce parking on cycle lanes but I believe Greenwich still havn’t adopted measures that London councils have had for 17 years to use cameras for traffic infringements.

They were just one of three London authorities out of 33 not to do so. They eventually begun the process but the latest news I’d heard before lockdown was no measures were in operation.