London Enters The Modern Age Of Cycling

In the space of only a couple of short weeks we've seen London take huge strides towards catching up with the rest of the world in terms of providing facilities for cyclists.

First there was the opening of two new "Barclays Cycle Superhighways", including one from Merton (Colliers Wood) to the City - and with another two superhighways due to open next summer. Next there was the launch of the "Barclays Cycle Hire" scheme which provides a simple pick up/drop off facility for cyclists to rent a bicycle. And with the first 30 minutes being free this really does sound like an excellent way to cover those short journeys from A to B in the centre of London (where the scheme is initially concentrated).

Needless to say the media has been full of stories about the Cycle Superhighway and, in particular, the bike hire scheme. Sadly most of them seem to be focusing on negative points, however minor they may be, and almost attempt to turn those points into show stoppers. OK, there may be teething problems, but let's not forget what the flip side ... we could have no such scheme at all. At least things are now starting to happen and London is becoming a safer place for Londoners to cycle. That in my view is fantastic, so well done to all of those who helped make it happen!

Initially the bike hire stations are situated in the centre of London, but there are plans to add further stations as more bikes become available and the scheme starts to bed in. So wouldn't it be nice if, now that Merton has a cycle superhighway, we also start to see cycle hire stations spring up along the cycle superhighway. I know I'm somewhat biased, but that would be an entirely logical and sensible expansion of the scheme.


It is a bit of a shame though that the cycle superhighway wasn't extended to Morden though (I know, I am biased). That would have linked it up with tram stops along the way, the vast bus network for which Morden underground station is a hub, and it would have facilitated linking the route to Wimbledon thus providing an even bigger potential catchment area - and a link between the Northern Line and District Line on the underground network.

As you've no doubt guessed by now, I am already a huge fan of these two initiatives and look forward to see both grow over the coming years. Now - like most - I'm not a huge fan of the rather in-your-face Barclays branding, but hey, if that is what it takes to get such schemes off the ground and make them affordable and accessible to the public then I'll happily live with a bit corporate branding.

Can An Online Community For Morden Be Developed?

That's the challenge.

A search on Google for "blogs in Morden" returns about 970,000 results - more than any sane person would ever want to trawl through. Similarly, a search by the Morden area on LoadedWeb doesn't return anything (although at the time of writing this blog is pending review).

Twitter is proving equally difficult but for different reasons, e.g. the word Morden may actually mean something in other languages, there are other places in the world called Morden, some users prefer to refer to nearby areas such as Wimbledon. However, I feel some progress is slowly being made by consistently using the #Morden hashtag and by retweeting relevant local news. So hopefully over time @Mordonian could become a reasonably comprehensive and credible repository for all things Morden.

Meanwhile if anyone else blogs about Morden I'd love to hear from you. It would be interesting to see if it is possible to build a strong online community for the Morden area.

Not Quite Morden But Close Enough

In one of my recent rants I mentioned that other parts of London, e.g. Camden, are do far better when it comes to creating a buzz about the place. Well, move over Camden, now south London shows that we can do it too!

Next Sunday in venues around the Wimbledon areas a range of live gigs will kick off under the heading "Wimbledon Calling". It follows the Camden Crawl model where one ticket lets music fans to combine a good old fashioned pub crawl with live music experiences.

I know this isn't quite Morden but it's certainly close enough, and it's certainly worthy of a mention on here!

Morden Park ... An Apology!

In a recent post on here I expressed slight annoyance with Morden Park lacking a bit of je ne sais quoi to make it a more appealing space for the public to use. On reflection this may have been a bit harsh, and for that I apologise!

Earlier today I went for a gentle run (yes, madness in weather like this) around Morden Park, and seeing the place on a day like this - clear blue sky, brilliant sunshine, people enjoying the weekend - made me see the place in a completely different light. I still maintain that running on a mowed grass path in a big wide open space isn't the most inspiring, but with lots more people around the place had a more lived in feel to it.

For the fitness minded there are some interesting facilities available including, apart from grass trails mentioned above, some gravel/clay paths, an outdoor gym, a "trim trail", a basic pitch & put golf course.

The only missing is the roller blading trail mentioned in my previous posting and the set-up would be complete :-)

Regardless of what other facilities I may think is missing there is one thing I can say for certain, I'm glad that Goals Plc didn't get the go-ahead to develop one of their football centres on the Morden Park site ... that in my humble opinion really would have been a crime against nature.

Better Or Worse Than Average?

An article appeared on the Wimbledon Guardian website the other day saying that the number of deaths and serious injuries on Merton's roads is down - read the article here. It's always nice to read about those sorts of trends - even though you could say that even one accident is too many - and it made we wonder how Morden compares with the rest of the country?

So I went to the Up My Street website to have a quick look. Rather than searching for a specific post code I simply searched for "Morden", and the general findings are that Morden is performing slightly worse than the national average on many of the measures - but not alarmingly so, especially when you consider that Morden is an urban area, and the national averages of course includes all rural areas where statistics like crime levels are generally lower.

Of course there are also areas where Morden is performing better than the national average, e.g. theft from vehicles and council tax.

The full results can be found here. Don't forget to have a look at all the headings and measures. Alternatively you can enter your own post code for slightly more specific results.

Do You Love Morden?

Those of you who actively use Twitter may have come across, what appears to be a bit of a North London cult phenomenon, Love Camden (or @LoveCamden).

Love Camden is aimed at promoting activities and initiatives in the areas and thereby trying to forge or enhance a community spirit. A spin off from constant references, tweets and re-tweet from Twitter users who love their community Camden comes across as an area with a bit a buzz about the place, somewhere cool, a happening place, somewhere people really want to live and spend time ... and so on.

Wouldn't it be great to see similarly positive messages about Morden?

As someone who lives in Morden I do believe Morden has lots of things to be proud of; great cultural diversity, new housing springing up bringing fresh blood to the area, and generally being a safe place to live and work, plenty of green public spaces etc. So let's spread the word!

If you are a Twitter user the account Mordonian and hashtag #morden is aimed at becoming a resource for local news, updates and events.

Other Reasons To Feel That Morden Has A Bit Of Catching Up To Do

Hard to believe it, but the general election took place less than a month ago. Actually, people in Morden (or the Mitcham & Morden constituency to be precise) can be forgiven for thinking of general elections as a bit of a non event; let's face it, there aren't many safer seats around it would seem ... this suits some people and doesn't suit others.

One area which made the last general election feel somewhat different from previous elections though was how everybody - voters, candidates and media - looked at ways of using digital media and social networking to their advantage. Like many others followed several Twitter feeds from a number of political party candidates, political commentators & bloggers and national & local press. Personally I don't think I've ever felt better informed and up-to-date with what was going on in the run up to an election.

EXCEPT ... all the social media in the world proved pretty useless when it came to keeping up to speed on what my local candidates were up to. For example, I was not able to find a single one of them on Twitter (happy to be proven wrong though), but found candidates from neighbouring constituencies practically without trying.

Perhaps the safe nature of the Mitcham & Morden seat is reflected in candidates' approach to campaigning; maybe some of them just thought "why bother" sort of thing?

Similarly, when it comes to accessing digital media Morden is also a bit behind (although things are slowly but steady getting better). A check on Broadband Speed Checker reveals that a few pockets are starting to reach connection speeds just shy of 20Mb ... not bad, but not exactly threatening the near 50Mb speeds found in other parts of the country.

Whilst this posting may sound like a case of sour grapes that isn't the case. Of the two issues highlighted above the first one is easily fixed and the other one will sort itself out over time. Then the good citizens of Morden will be in a much stronger position to actively engage with the local community.