More Putney traffic changes in place – but are they enough?

The traffic island outside Snappy Snaps has finally gone, and Weiss Road is about to go one-way – but Wandsworth Council appears to have given up trying to get the one change that isn’t in its own gift.

Council leader Robert Morritt, whose own Thamesfield ward has borne the brunt of the botched Putney Bridge junction redesign, and new transport cabinet member Nick Austin, who lives and works just off the High Street, have overseen a genuine burst of activity this summer.

The island has gone. Weiss Road, according to a video from another Thamesfield councillor, Cllr Salvatore Murtas, will now run one-way from Lower Richmond Road, cutting off at least some of the rat-running drivers use to dodge the queues.

That’s real progress. What it isn’t is measured. As we reported earlier this month, nobody at the council has published a number for what “fixed” would look like, or a date by which residents could check.

There is one big change still coming: the inset bus stop promised outside TK Maxx, in space freed up when the old phone box finally came out. But it looks as though the council has quietly stopped trying to get Transport for London to move on the changes only TfL controls: the length of the bus lanes, where the bus stops sit, and – the single change residents and opposition councillors campaigned hardest for at May’s election – reverting the Lower Richmond Road turn onto the bridge back to two lanes.

None of this means the changes underway won’t help. They probably will, to some degree. The question Putney.news keeps asking, and keeps not getting an answer to, is the same one: by how much – and is it enough?