One step forward, one step back: Putney’s traffic troubles will be tested next week

With the holidays almost over, a summer of roadworks designed to finally tackle Putney’s traffic problems will be tested next week when schools, and cars, return in force.

As ever, there is good news and bad news.

The good news

The long-awaited effort to speed up the bottom of the High Street is finally moving. Workers are insetting the bus stop outside TK Maxx, freeing up road space the council hopes will let more traffic through. Last month BT removed its last remaining phone box on the site, ending a year-long blockade of the bus layby. Now workers have started pulling out two sets of streetlights to make the inset bay possible.

The work has been delayed by a year but was finally cleared out when the council approved a different application on the same stretch of the High Street for a new BT “Street Hub” carrying two digital advertising screens. Phone companies have been accused of keeping dead boxes in place precisely to negotiate swaps like that one: a broken box for a profitable advertising screen.

Once the lights (and their hefty array of cameras) has been removed and resited, workers can then finally get to the task of lifting up the pavement, creating the busy laybay and – fingers crossed – massively improving traffic flow.

From that point, the council then has to wait on Transport for London to agree to retime the Putney Bridge junction traffic lights, a change the council says is worth an extra 11 cars through every green cycle. Where the bus stop is almost certain to work in some capacity, that final piece is still Transport for London’s to give.

The bad news

The decision to make Weiss Road, just off Lower Richmond Road, one-way only is still being met with scepticism by locals, and there’s a new wrinkle – it may not be legal, and so not enforceable.

Weiss Road meets the main road at a T-junction, and its No Entry sign is mounted perpendicular to the approach: a driver coming towards it sees the sign edge-on rather than face-on, which is why it barely registers until they are already at the junction.

Under the DfT’s Traffic Signs Manual (paragraph 4.2.10 and diagrams 612 and 613 if you’re interested), a council can leave the usual “no left turn” and “no right turn” signs off a one-way junction only if the side road is narrow and of minor importance, or the No Entry sign itself “can be clearly seen from the main road when approaching the junction.” Weiss Road looks like neither.

One street along, Bemish Road, one of eight streets named in the council’s original consultation letter, has proper advance warning: turn-restriction signs, in place for years, readable well before a driver reaches them.

There is no camera at the Weiss Road junction, and nothing suggesting any other enforcement. Putney.news counted 13 of 29 cars still facing the wrong way on Saturday, down from 19 of 27 two days into the scheme, but still close to half the street. Where the bus stop is almost certain to work in some capacity, the one-way idea meant to deal with rat-running remains very much an uncertainty, especially with two one-way streets now parallel to one another.

The test is coming: St Mary’s primary school and its new traffic crossing is just one road up from Weiss and it’s fair to say there is going to be significant confusion come the new term.

The test starts now

The council’s own letter said the August timing was chosen to give a “bedding-in period before the school term”, and that period is over. The Transport Overview and Scrutiny Committee gets its first look at any of it on Thursday 24 September, its first sitting on the junction since February. Until then, next week is the real test: one change built to work, one that might not even be lawful, both facing the traffic that’s about to come back.

If you live near either junction, tell us what you see.

Small reader shoutout: thank you to Adrian for pointing us to the DfT Signs Manual.