Vauxhall Cyclists: Don't get squashed tonight or this weekend - Shard concrete delivery

The helpful London Cycling Campaign (LCC) have published an article warning that the concrete for the foundations of the Shard building in London Bridge is to be delivered this weekend.  The monster trucks will start their drop-off during rush hour this evening and the concrete delivery will last all weekend.  It affects Vauxhall cyclists because half of the concrete is being delivered from Battersea, and we're on route.

This will apparently result in an additional 700 return lorry-trips in the area (does that mean 1400 trips total?  I'm not sure).  In our patch, it will particularly affect Nine Elms, Vauxhall Cross, Albert Embankment, Lambeth Bridge and Lambeth Palace Road, but obviously if you are planning on cycling to Battersea, I'd take a look at the LCC article so that you can avoid the route in question.

According to the LCC, lorries are involved in over half of cyclist deaths on London roads, even though, compared with other vehicles, there aren't that many of them on the road.

I doubt that the 700 additional return lorry trips are going to do much for the air quality at Bondway, but at least we've been given advanced warning.

So, please be careful cyclists (and Vauxhall pedestrians) because it's not worth risking a speedier route, just to get accidentally squashed this weekend.

Bondway - Ongoing pollution, and student accommodation turned down

Whilst there is focus on the topic of Bondway and the Bondway Tower, I should also note three other points of interest for readers in the area:

1.  Back in January 2010, Markvauxhall mentioned on Twitter that an application had been put in for Student accommodation in Vauxhall.  I didn't think it was contentious, since the night time revellers already cause lots of noise and I thought students couldn't make it worse. The proposed building was quite low-rise but it seems to have been rejected on the grounds of:

* It being unknown whether intensification would have an impact on existing residential development
* Failure to provide mixed dwellings
* Failure to provide affordable housing (a bit of a joke for the poor residents who might have to live alongside the students!!)
* The residence not being near to the University it would serve (contrary to Council's UDP)

2.  Air quality results at the Bondway monitoring station seem to be significantly worse than for other parts of London for at least some portions of the day.  That's rather concerning, considering all of the new residential development that is likely to commence in the area and the increase in traffic likely to take place. 

The folks at London air have more details (I obtained the graph from them), and I confess that I've no idea what exactly PM10 Particulate is, but I hope it's not /really/ bad for humans because we seem to have a freak peak of it on the 23rd(ish) of March.

3.  A new Pret-A-Manger has spawned at the bottom of Aquarius House (the affordable section of St George Wharf) and appears to be opening soon in SE11.  That's two new sandwich places in the space of as many weeks (remember Deep Blue is new too).