Devonshire Road Traffic Study

The Forest Hill Society has started to carry out a study of the traffic along Devonshire Road (SE23), and the residential roads that connect to Honor Oak Road and Honor Oak Park and we are looking for more residents and members to help.

The aim of this project is to better understand the volume of traffic on these residential roads and to see the patterns across the day, and over time. The volume of traffic in the area has been growing for many years, and residents are reporting an increase in the number of cars but also commercial vehicles using these streets. Many of these streets are already narrow and made worse through parked cars, and so there is little opportunity for them to be used for more social or healthy activities, such as walking, cycling or spending time outside with neighbours.

A Telraam device counting activity on the street in Forest Hill

The Forest Hill Society has purchased a number of Telraam devices that can be put in the windows of flats and houses overlooking the street which then count cars, vans, motorbikes, bicycles and also pedestrians. They do not film anyone and cannot store pictures so offer a high degree of privacy, but they are sensors that provide numbers and graphs that we can share with Lewisham Council in our discussions for making Forest Hill and Honor Oak a more pleasant place to live in by reducing cut-through traffic, improving air quality and allowing kids more freedom to be outside safely.

Hourly traffic patterns on Ewelme Rd, SE23

We already have devices on Ewelme Road, Woodcombe Crescent and Honor Oak Road. This data is public Open Data, so you can visit this page and click on a street to see the data that has been collected.

Map of current devices in Forest Hill, SE23

If you live on one of these streets, particularly:

• Devonshire Road,

• Tyson Road,

• Benson Road,

• Dunoon Road

... and would be willing to help us with our study over the next few months, then please visit this page to learn more and get in touch.

Once this project is completed later this year, we hope to arrange an event where we can review the data and maybe come up with ideas for improving how our streets are used. We also then plan to use these devices to get traffic data for other areas where traffic is a problem and where we might want to work to bring residents and Lewisham Council together to make local improvements.