WHy does east hillside have this problem?

Firstly, East Hillside is in a vulnerable location because of the layout of main roads in Merton and the limited number of places to cross the railway. Our community is at the hub of seven distributor roads, shown in blue on the map below, all of which converge on our neighbourhood. Through traffic should circulate around the edge of East Hillside, but much of it doesn’t – it cuts straight through our community – especially using either the Belvedere Grove/Alan Road ‘dogleg’; or through Woodside.

East Hillside is a ‘hub’ at the centre of several converging main roads – and lies directly on the axis of east-west through traffic travelling between the A3 and the railway bridges

Secondly – the amount of traffic in residential streets in London has more than doubled in the last 10 years, whilst traffic on main roads has declined. East Hillside has experienced a similar growth.

Data published by the Dept. of Transport shows that traffic on residential streets (the yellow line on the adjacent chart) has more than doubled in the last 10 years, whilst there has been no growth on ‘A’ roads (shown in green) or ‘B’ roads (shown in red). This growth of traffic on residential roads is caused primarily by the greater use of satnavs finding the quickest route for drivers.

Source: Department for Transport: https://roadtraffic.dft.gov.uk/regions/6