Just before Christmas, Merton Council approached the three Dundonald ward councillors with a plan to place traffic ‘filters’ (to stop cars/vans going through) at:

• Fairlawn Road at the junction with Wilton Crescent; and
• Burstow Road at the junction with Kingston and Lower Downs Roads.

Your Liberal Democrat councillors asked about the reasons for this and were told that this was because:

Merton Hall Road, Lower Downs Road, Dundonald and Toynbee Roads are local distributor/access roads which means that the traffic are supposed to use these roads.

There are significant problems with rat-running in our area because of the congestion on Kingston Road. However, given the school and nurseries on Dundonald Road, the school on Merton Hall Road, and the single lane on Toynbee Road, not to mention the bridge on Lower Downs Road, we don’t believe that a plan specifically to put more traffic on these roads is the right answer.

When we met with council officers and the Labour councillor in charge of transport on 20 January, we were told that as the money for this came from the Mayor, it couldn’t be spent in any other way. It was either these two roadblocks or nothing. Because of this, councillors couldn’t back the plan, so it now won’t be going ahead.

However, we succeeded in getting the Council to agree that it would come back to look at this area again later this year or early next, with other funding it has more control over. It will then work with local councillors and residents to develop plans that have more support, and look at some of the wider problems.

Please do let us know what you think and your priorities to reduce traffic in our area and help make it safer – [email protected]