|
|
 |
| |
Roadworks on Kentish Town Road. Inset: Adam Leyes and Caroline Hill |
Sort out patchwork pavements
Adam Leyes and Caroline Hill want to know why the re-paving of Kentish Town Road has ground to a halt
KENTISH Town Road Action and other residents’ groups have been asking Kentish Town Road traders for their opinions on the new pavements in Kentish Town Road – “A vast improvement, they make the whole environment feel better”, says Jake Morgan of Morgan’s Stationers in Kentish Town Road. Nick Mavrides of Ace Sports says “I think the new paving stones are a huge improvement on the old tarmac.”
Obviously to enhance the image of Kentish Town the whole street has to be done from north to south, otherwise it will look like a patchwork quilt. we’ve been fighting for the reinstatement of paving since they were taken away in the 1990s so we would love to have them back outside my shop.”
Camden Council has run out of the money needed to replace all the horrible black tarmac in Kentish Town Road with beautiful new paving this year. The sections which have been replaced are looking splendid and are universally acclaimed.
But there are many more sections still to be done and we want to make sure that the council honours its promise and completes the job in the next financial year.
Some years ago the council covered all the pavements with black tarmac, which it assured us would look smart, and be safe and comfortable. In practice the tarmac turned out to be really nasty, uneven, trapping pools of water, slippery in places when wet.
The pavements quickly became a patchwork of various shades of black when all the utilities –
and the council too – dug up the pavements for different legitimate reasons and then laid down new patches of different textured tarmac, with new pools of trapped water.
At the end of 2004, Kentish Town Road Action came into being to campaign for a better shopping centre. We consulted expert advisers on high streets and shops.
They all told us that the single most important thing needed to improve Kentish Town Road was good paving. They said that local groups should lobby the council for proper pavements with
paving slabs. So we lobbied, and in 2005 Camden Council agreed that the pavements would all be renewed with proper paving slabs as part of their ongoing Boulevard Project.
Sure enough, slowly at first and starting from each end of Kentish Town Road, brand new paving slabs were laid. Pedestrians liked them, shopkeepers liked them. The street started to look brighter, cleaner, and smarter. The new paving lifted the whole area.
The first phase was to be done in 2005-6 and the rest, we were promised, would be completed in 2006-7, this year.
And then – the blow. In March 2006 we were told that there wasn’t enough money after all, and only a third of the money needed for Kentish Town would be available this year. So work started, and will soon finish, leaving Kentish Town Road a patchwork once more.
Part of it has smart new pavements, the rest has dingy patched-up black tarmac. Shoppers and residents say the same thing, that the new pavements make everything better – cleaner, brighter, more even, better drained, and when someone needs to lay a gas pipe or cable under the pavement, they can lift the slabs, do the work, and put the slabs back again.
Simple – but the job is only half done.
Shopkeepers who have the new paving are very pleased with it. Others who don’t are fed up.
Where there is new paving in Kentish Town Road there is a completely different atmosphere from before – a sort of airiness, cleanness and vitality.
That’s just what is needed for the whole of Kentish Town Road. Come on Camden Council – you are applying to Transport for London for £1.5 million to improve traffic and the environment in Kentish Town Road, but TfL will not pay for pavements.
This is not just about making the place look pretty, it’s about the regeneration of Kentish Town Road. It is vitally important for the good of Kentish Town and for the Camden Council’s credibility that this work is finished in the next financial year and that the street is not left with a patchwork of different pavements. We are asking Camden Council to budget now for the funds needed to finish our pavements in 2007.
|
 |
|
|
|
