Gosh, so much triumphalist nit picking here: "Ooh, it's not on a through route," "Maybe there was some event going on," etc. All of which misses (perhaps deliberately) the wider point, which is that it is simply wrong to use a resource like Richmond Park as a bypass when they exist already (the A3, the South Circular, etc).And, as someone pointed out earlier, the huge majority of traffic in the Park is simply using it as a rat run: the 1998 report by Peter Brett Associates cited found that the proportion of through traffic was between 94 and 98% during weekday peak periods and was even 80% at weekends; furthermore, around 60% of weekday trips neither originated nor terminated within a few miles of the Park - showing that its roads were not predominantly used by people visiting the Park but were being treated as if they were simply part of the general road network.The result is that traffic forms a cordon of steel which divides the central wilderness area from the remaining acres and this stretch of countryside, itself quite extraordinary within a world city, is undermined by noise, pollution, congestion and danger from cars, all aspects of the surrounding city which most park visitors have come to escape. And those are not my words, but are directly quoted from Dame Jennifer Jenkins' Royal Parks Review, published in 1996. And don't imagine that things have improved since then, with road traffic having increased by about a third since her report was written (https://roadtraffic.dft.gov.uk/summary).
Richard Carter ● 2210d