Friday, 3 February 2012

The Standard Hits Out At Exhibition Rd Cleaning Costs

One Standard reader asked the sensible question as to why Doctor Gordon Taylor- a traffic management professional, with years of experience and also a long time resident had not been involved. The answer is simple. Taylor was one of the opponents of not just this madcap scheme, but another of Moylan's lunatic ideas of destroying Sloane Square. Moylan is like a sulky child when thwarted!

Council spends £800 a day on cleaning first 'shared' road

Mark Blunden and Lucy Osborne




London's first "shared space" road is costing nearly £800 every working day to clean while council bosses cut street cleansing elsewhere, it emerged today according to today's Evening Standard........
 
The £29 million redesign of Exhibition Road in Kensington - home to the Victoria & Albert Museum, Natural History Museum and Science Museum - allows drivers and pedestrians to mix freely on a high-grade Chinese granite surface.
...........black cab drivers say they are less confident about driving on it......
Steve McNamara, of the Licensed Taxi Drivers' Association, said: "The road surface seems slipperier than most and by the looks of the marks on the road people are having to brake quite harshly."
Emergency Stop Skid Marks

Maintenance teams have been seen cleaning off chewing gum and skid marks left on the granite bricks by cars stopping sharply. 
The council confirmed an extra £200,000 is being spent on "additional costs of Exhibition Road cleansing", while its budget states £336,000 is being cut from its overall street cleaning budget.
Gordon Taylor, chairman of West London Residents Association, who has a PhD in concrete engineering, said: "The Chinese granite they chose stains very easily and it's very dusty. You get oil leakage from the cars and grease, and also the chewing gum."


Impossible To Remove Oil Stains

3 comments:

  1. The ridicule and public outcry is high decibel stuff

    Cllr Cockell and Cllr Moylan should do the decent thing and resign over this scandalous waste of council tax

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  2. Dame. Thank you for publishing the Evening Standard's excellent article. This disgraceful story deserves the widest possible audience. I saw someone reading it on the tube, but refrained from grabbing the newspaper from his hand. It provides much needed detail of the on-going scale of waste that is 'Exhibitionist' Road.

    BTW one of your correspondents stated that Exhibition Road was originally opened in 1851. I checked. This is correct. The thoroughfare was designed as a high quality residential street, leading from Kensington Gardens to Cromwell Road and new museums - a proper use of public funds. It was not designed to showcase the rampant vanity of a couple of local councillors.

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  3. I happen to know for a fact that K&C consulted an acknowledged expert in stone and natural building materials and were strongly warned off Moylan's choice of Granite etc. As ever Danny Boy thought he knew better, despite, also as ever, actually knowing absolutely nothing at all about it, and took no notice whatsoever. Mind you the expert's large bill was paid promptly.

    ReplyDelete

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