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I'm afraid compared to what Sunak has just announced, all the filtering in the world will just be irrelevant chickenshit. This Government has increasingly shown that it is intent on causing maximum motor traffic increase, mainly concentrated on electric vehicles. This will be achieved mainly through peripheral road-building (i.e., ring roads, orbital motorways/motorway boxes, tangential roads, by-passes, etc.), which increases distance travelled by motor vehicles like nothing else, and no doubt projects such as London's underground Inner Ring Road, as well as putting other roads underground to place development on top. After all, if cars don't pollute at the point of use any more, and naughty roads are underground and out of sight, there's no longer a problem, right?
Don't forget that Johnson has only ever used cycling, in whose purview filtering falls to some extent, as a 'soft' policy to confuse people and to distract from his largely right-wing and anti-social political instincts. It's from the ABC of Machiavellian advice to politicians--if you're too dictatorial and easy to work out, people will revolt, so try to break up your political profile with something that doesn't seem to fit, and some people will say good things about you.
I like filtering as much as the next person, but it affects comparatively tiny areas and is only a small gambit in the big political picture, which has become clearer and clearer since the £15bm and then the £27bn and now an even bigger funding announcement for road-building. Of course, much of this is being sold under the banner of 'sustainability', but that word has long had a viciously problematic double meaning in also referring to economic sustainability.
Automobilism is great for that because it makes people constantly need stuff--from the negative health consequences that cause people to have to seek more medical treatment, to the vastly-increased need to travel, to the need to buy cars and other vehicles, to economic practices such as how retail and business are going to work--with more roads and more electric vehicles, there'll be more potential for businesses to base their models on, say, highly-centralised Internet ordering and parcel delivery, and a lot of traffic. If you think that traffic levels today are bad, the idea that road-builders have is that if the traffic impinges less on where people live, then there won't be so much political opposition to it any more.
tl;dr--Don't be fooled by a bit of filtering, as it'll make virtually no difference to the way things are going.
And if you think all of that sounds bonkers, this map initially showed the state of these projects in March:
http://maps.dft.gov.uk/road-investment-strategy-2/
It may have been updated since, and may continue to be updated, but it's simply utterly disastrous.
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I'll be writing to the other politicians she suggests with more supportive comments about active travel, and may also drop her a note in response. I find it interesting she talks about lack of consultation. Was anyone consulted over the past decades about our towns, public spaces, parks etc becoming polluted, noisy, hostile and aggressive environments.? And on divided communities - presumably she will be campaigning about the issues of severance caused by the existing infrastructure that priorities moving motor traffic over human beings?
If you look carefully she's not entirely negative. It feels like so much of the reaction - a knee jerk response to a change to the status quo. I'm optimistic that people can come around. But I could just be naive.
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If you do reply, it might be helpful to include data, and the link below shows miles driven in ealing (via DfT estimates) and how they have increased over recent years. circulated by Cllr Jon Burke in Hackney:
https://mobile.twitter.com/jonburkeUK/status/1321060610298302468I think there is mileage in that dataset! Could be useful if you want to engage on the "we weren't consulted on these incremental changes either", but also more generally on what this data means for Ealing's vision, policies and plans (etc).
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I was going to write something here about how my previous post was perhaps over cynical and then I read the facebook link of her letter to Ealing Council. Her final question to them is just a gargantuan red flag.
"Just out of curiosity, how much money does the council gain as a result of erecting these LTNs? How much is each LTN worth to the council's coffers?"
I think, despite her tone suggesting that it's all about engagement and consultation, it's pretty clear which side of the fence she's on. As @Carey said, it's just an utter failure of leadership. It's an absolutely classic tragedy of the commons whereby each individual acting in their short-term interest and convenience creates an overall situation that screws everyone over. Her suggestion of a referendum is therefore just utter shite as it rejects all other metrics for success (which are based on aims that all parties subscribe to) by allowing a veto purely on popularity and addresses none of the underlying problems.
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re: referendum, LTN's are wildly popular in the areas that have them, right?
They are after a while. In the short term, especially with these schemes, there can be disruption. This means that they need to be left to bed in. Engaging with local communities is really important, but it needs to be in the context of how strategies for encouraging cycling and reducing motor-vehicle impact are implemented, rather than whether they're implemented or not.
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A protest which took cabbages to Hackney Town Hall, apparently in response to a Tweet in which Cllr Jon Burke said: “If it wasn’t for us immigrants, ‘born n bred’ Londoners would still be eating cabbage with every meal.” This is apparently because he'd been receiving hostility about his background.
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Some feedback from inside the H&F LTN. People in the area do like the relative peace and quiet. However we can't really enjoy it because our neighbours on Wandsworth Bridge Road and the west side of that road are suffering major traffic jams especially at peak times. So now we are all hated for liking our 'enclave'. It's been carnage on Nextdoor :)
At the moment there are 3 general groups looking for change. 1 group want to erase the LTN, 1 want to reorganise the roads by making big one way streets but also allowing more traffic through, others want an LTN on the west side which would leave WBR carrying all the neighbourhood through traffic basically poisoning that street and it's occupants with traffic jams.
If any bright sparks have the solution now would be a good time to come up with it. The trial for the LTN continues but those living in it have no choice either way, it stays and we all enjoy peace and quiet and probably an increase in property value or it goes and we are all back to square one.
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The only solution is more LTNs and incentivising a transition to mobility forms that mean less motor traffic.
If you try to 'create road space' for motorists, all you do is scare off the people who could cycle or use cargobikes etc, and they revert to driving. Further, Waze and Google Maps detect the 'empty' road space, and route increased volumes of motor traffic onto them.
We had this massive argument in the Netherlands in the 70s when communities closed the roads they lived on to people driving through them. That was the foundation of what the Netherlands has today.
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Had a lovely time in Rotterdam in the early 90's. Very peaceful housing estate with free bikes leant on trees in the middle of green pedestrian areas.
The problem with our current scheme is Wandsworth Bridge Road is under serious pressure. Maybe we have to be the first but obviously people who live on the road are starting to experience breathing issues etc. and we're all so nice round here we don't want to pile that suffering on our neighbours. However they are in a pincer movement and giving the west side an LTN does sounds like it will please a lot of people.
I've been adapting to less motor transport for many years. I work very locally and I have been drawn into the fight to show people that tradesmen could use electric cargo bikes etc. Or even as in my case work in the street they live in or streets very close.
There's quite a few people putting this perspective across but as others have said there's a lot of people who just want to drive where they want to.
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If WBR is already chokka, would additional LTNs make it worse or exactly the same? I live on a main road and would love LTNs on the back streets round here, because I can't see them making air quality any worse than it is.
The real problem is too many bloody cars, and too many heavily polluting ones. Hopefully the ULEZ extension in less than a year's time will be the end of a lot of the worst of them.
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I'd like to understand this situation a bit more, as I used to commute that way. WBR has always been a bit borderline in terms of capacity. What additional traffic is now being pushed onto it? Is it just local school-run stuff? The main flow on WBR as far as I could work out was all the way through to the New King's Road (and then up to Fulham Broadway). There was never any other way to avoid that by rat-running, so what is the change in traffic flow that the LTN has caused that is making WBR busier?
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Even with reduced traffic due to Covid, crossing the river has mostly been a clusterfuck all year. Hammersmith bridge has been closed for a while, and both London bridge and Vauxhall bridge were closed for months at the same time, and at the same time they were doing roadworks on WBR when it was down to one lane. So all the traffic that would use those bridges, and I don't have the figures but I'm sure they're out there, and that volume is probably huge, is pushed to the next available crossing.
So I think those alone have impacted more on traffic than the LTN's. Do TFL even consider the impact of having all those major bridges closed at the same time? I would have guessed they would, but it doesn't seem like it.
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Yes but it was an emergency. With London Bridge it was discovered by surveyors that it required urgent maintenance before it would start becoming damp and the bearings became too damaged. Damp bridges are not happy bridges!
Just like bicycles, preventative maintenance ahead of time is much more time and cost effective than doing the engineering equivalent of a root canal after the damage has become catastrophic.
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Very difficult to condense the discussion that's been taking place around Sands End into a few paragraphs. The area has it's issues with traffic and it seems as if it all started with Harwood Terrace, a tiny road that became a cut through for a huge amount of traffic looking to reach Wandsworth Bridge via Sands End East. The whole area became a rat run through to WBR. The street I live in was so full of traffic for 2 hours a day that we couldn't get in to it at night to park.
Now WBR is the main access road for the whole of Sands End East, with residents from H&F being allowed to use any of the roads. It has made access to the New Kings Road very easy for us. Rat running still happens in some ways but not to the same extent. A downside is the rat running is now at much higher speeds.
Of course Hammersmith Bridge is closed, Vauxhall closed for a while and Wandsworth Bridge is undergoing maintenance the worst of which is now over. It has been bad!
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Strange timing but there is a massive development taking place and the entrance will be adjacent to Harwood Terrace. Funny how 2 weeks after the planning permission being signed Harwood Terrace was closed to traffic. Shortly afterwards the council realised they couldn't maintain that stance and rolled out the entire LTN with ANPR. In the public zoom meeting the traffic planners looked very pale at the thought of the amount of traffic that wants to come from the south circular north through the borough. Described it as a Tsunami.
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Realised I hadn't answered your question! Out of borough traffic can't access Sands End East from the South East, they have to use WBR to come into the LTN and even then they can only enter it from roads that are close to the bridge. Hazlebury and Broughton have cameras to ensure people are not trying to skip the queues on WBR.
So if you come from Chelsea to the Harbour Club you need to drive down WBR before you can turn into SEE and onto Townmead. You could go all the way down WBR and turn left onto Townmead.
On the other side we have the traffic that can't use Hammersmith Bridge which is trying to avoid Putney Bridge but can't turn right into WBR or Imperial (because it's now in the LTN) So it has now filled the entire West side with traffic trying to permeate the tiny streets and Carnwath is overloaded to the Junction with WBR and the bridge as the traffic light can only allow filtering for a few cars at a time.
It's a proper puzzle ball.
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For anyone who is keen there is quite an interesting look here at Bolton's 900(?) modal filters.. who knew. From an ideas with beers session:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HyT51mUTf4Q
Good narrative building on "historic" LTNs, original and retrofitted filters, and "invisible" infratructure, all of which have of course been here for a long time if we look carefully.
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As someone that lives at the bottom of Vanbrugh Hill and drives semi regularly, can't say that I'm thrilled about this proposal:
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Modal filtering
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@Oliver Schick
^ and i should add, itll be also interesting to gwtbthe votes out in the next local elections and compare wards/boroughs where we have LTNs vs places that have tried but given up due to poor leadership (Wandsworth).