On the second morning of Weiss Road’s one-way, most of the cars parked along it were still facing the way they used to drive.
Putney.news counted 27 cars on the street shortly before a quarter to eight on Tuesday. Nineteen pointed north, towards Lower Richmond Road, which is the direction drivers are no longer allowed to take. Parked cars prove little on their own, and some of those will not have moved since Sunday.
Over about half an hour that morning, roughly half the drivers who reached the new no-entry signs carried on past. The other half turned in and drove down the street without pausing. Two stopped in the road, looked at the signs, and drove on.
Weiss Road became one-way southbound on Monday, between Lower Richmond Road and Felsham Road. The council made the change under a temporary traffic order, the kind used to close a street for the Boat Race, and one that carries no right to object. Its letter to eight streets, dated 12 August and signed by Henry Cheung, the council’s assistant director of traffic and engineering, called the change urgent action against rat-running.
Nobody has said who enforces it.
The council’s Putney Bridge junction page sets out how it watches traffic around the bridge: bus data from Transport for London, number plate cameras, and week-long counts of speed and volume. It also names the enforcement it is installing a few streets away, new CCTV to catch drivers ignoring the access-only restriction on Putney Embankment. The page was last updated on 5 August, a week before the letter went out, and it does not mention Weiss Road.
There is no Weiss Road notice in the London Gazette, nothing on the council’s website, and no entry in the roadworks bulletin the council published for the week the scheme began.
What counts as it going wrong
The same page gives 300 vehicles an hour as the threshold in the council’s traffic management policy that “warrants further action to be considered”. It is the number the council has previously admitted has no methodology behind it. On Felsham Road, at the far end of Weiss Road, the council’s own counts have already crossed that line twice at weekends.
The 12 August letter told the eight streets that the change followed “extensive talks between residents and the council”. Residents on the surrounding roads say a leaflet through the door was the first they knew of it. Putney.news has asked the council about those talks, the traffic modelling and the choice of temporary traffic order, on two separate occasions last week. It has not responded to either.
The scheme goes to the council’s Transport Overview and Scrutiny Committee on Thursday 24 September, a month after it started and three weeks into the school term. That committee has not met since 11 February.
If you live on one of these streets
The Transport Overview and Scrutiny Committee meets at 7.30pm on Thursday 24 September; the agenda and papers appear on the council’s democracy website beforehand. The three Thamesfield ward councillors are Ethan Brooks, Robert Morritt and Salvatore Murtas. The cabinet member for transport is Nick Austin. The council’s traffic and engineering team takes questions, quoting the reference “Weiss Road one-way”. If you have watched the junction this week, tell us through the contact form.
