Feeling less lonely as Standard columnist blasts SUVs

At last, an opinion piece in the Evening Standard that pins down everything that is vile about the vehicles known as SUVs ("sports utility vehicles", that is big four-wheel drive farmer's trucks tarted up to appeal to rich and insecure urbanites).

When I read Anna van Praagh's short piece in Wednesday's edition (May 23, Comment: My boy's obsession with 4x4s will not do, page 19) I almost did one of those embarrassing "YES!" gestures loved by footballers who've just scored the winning goal.

So, yes! There is someone else out there who finds these bully-boy autos totally repugnant. She hits the phenomenon right on its chrome-plated, sneering grille: "Childcrushers are so vulgar, so selfish, so crass, surely people driving them can sense how much they are disliked?"

Exactly. She distils most of my reasons for loathing these vehicles in a few very well turned sentences. But are they actually so widely disliked? There's a conundrum here.

It's odd, because there has always been a good deal of mockery and distaste for the urban use of vehicles which might be appropriate on a ranch in Arizona, or in a war zone - but are simply an unattractive nuisance in a city like London with so many congested, narrow streets. I can remember people commenting harshly on the drivers of  "Chelsea tractors" way back in the early 1990s, and possibly before that.

Yet none of the jokes, none of the disapproval, has made even the slightest dent in their popularity: in fact they have burgeoned, and conquered the car market, getting bigger, fatter and much, much uglier year after year.

The original 1970s Range Rovers look positively slimline compared with a 2018 Land Rover Discovery - which, at over 2 metres wide, surely should become one of the first to be banned from confined routes like the Rotherhithe tunnel.

Cycling through the back streets of my own unmentionable suburb (the postcode is SW4), the ratio of these vehicles to normal is about half and half. If two of the fatter SUVs are parked on opposite sides of a road, there's barely room for one of their plump brethren to pass - without forcing everyone else to head for the pavement.

There's also an irony. One of the widest, tallest and  longest SUVs encountered today was a Tesla - an electric-powered vehicle. Many of the top-of-range SUVs around today are more fuel efficient than some of the sweet little cars you love so much, you hypocrite author!

OK - maybe that's true. But that does not make up for the sheer physical provocation these massive chunks of metal and and plastic represent; the way they flash their stupid LED fair-lights at you, blast you out of your saddle with their high-powered air-horns, swish past you on their great fat tyres, looking down their noses at you from their elevated, kid-leather-seated comfort.

Grrrr: this isn't SUV envy, you know, it really isn't.

Rookery Road on Clapham Common: the re-surfacing job that time forgot...

Rookery Road cuts across the north-east corner of Clapham
Common. It gets very heavy traffic (as you can see) and yet it has
not been resurfaced in decades. Unlike all the other roads
around here. Why not?

Both Lambeth and Wandsworth Councils have shown exemplary enthusiasm when it comes to re-paving certain troubled areas of their boroughs.

Soon after the 2011 riots, the whole of the Clapham Junction area broke out into a pleasing arrangement of tastefully-variegated pastel-shaded paving blocks: the old dark grey filth-stained pitted tarmac and granite gave way to soothing garden centre chic.

Seven years on this lovely new work is already showing serious signs of decay; no material known to humankind can cope with the daily downpour of spat-out chewing gum, nor the vile stains of McDonald's toxic shakes as they dribble out from discarded polystyrene buckets.

Let alone the pollution from tens of thousands of combustion-engined vehicles passing through the junction every day.

Meanwhile, Lambeth labours away to make little bits of nice street furnishings: Clapham Old Town; Windrush Square; Stockwell Cross. Weeks and months of disruption to locals and passing traffic as gangs of workers rip up the old and carefully lay the new.

All jolly good - we suppose; if we are charitably-minded. What a splendid way to use our council tax quids.

Pity they totally fucked up the traffic flow in Clapham Old Town in the process - giving even more rat-runs to the mumsnet SUVs and off-white-van drivers, confusing cyclists with a ridiculous cycle-lane layout and sending pedestrians all round the houses to find safe crossings. Trouble with those rat-runs is drivers tend to speed up when sneaking into them, hoping they won't be spotted.

And - AND - above ALL! - what about Rookery Road? Yes that little but very important bit of road between Clapham Southside - the main A3 trunk route - and the left turn turn down to the Northside one-way system.

The deeply pot-holed surface of Rookery Road: enough to throw you off
your bike and under the wheels of a speeding SUV.or whatever.
Who will take responsibility for this death-trap?

This couple of hundred metres of road sees very heavy traffic. It is called Rookery Road because it passes under the great plane trees that still accommodate  some truly fine murders of big black bastard carrion crows.

But the surface of this road is also MURDEROUS! It's bad enough in a small car - but approach on a pushbike at any speed and you are dead. Especially if you are trying to position yourself centre road to take the north-flowing lane towards Old Town and Larkhall Rise.

Does this bit of road not fall into one or other borough's care? Who is responsible for this? Most of the other roads around there have been re-surfaced two or three times since even one bit of gravel has been replaced here.

Why?

Maybe Lambeth and Wandsworth think the crows should do it.