Modal filtering

Some of my cycling and driving neighbours here in Islington were more sceptical than me of our local LTN til it went in (summer 2020) and settled down after 1-3 months. They generally got used to it and enjoyed the benefits over its cons.

Its good to see commonplace being used and the council engaging with you and the community. Of course, the devil is in the detail on these schemes as has been said before, engineers are experts at technical stuff, but local people are experts in how their low public spaces work (or don't work).

LTNs are one tool to better manage motorised traffic and enable walking and cycling, and shouldn't be seen as the start or end point.

https://mcusercontent.com/a614ac923baeeb9cfff7be5a4/files/a7e626e0-3f92-4a90-b23b-852c58b880a0/TCPR_West_Residents_briefing_170221.pdf

Document outlining the extension of an ANPR controlled area in South Fulham. Covers a lot of the complaints about the first stage and attempts to introduce a new anachronism TCPR instead of LTN. The stats are tricky because of covid but living inside the east of this scheme is pretty dreamy and now we get a massively increased quiet area to play with. A lot of my walking/cycling happens within this area so I'm struggling to complain.

Just seen it allows all H&F residents, black cabs and visitors to pass through freely. Doesn't that make the streets significantly busier while encouraging short journeys?

The Islington ones are emergency vehicles only apart from one bus gate. There is one camera that's meant to allow some local residents through, but they haven't figured out who should be on the list yet.

No, it has turned our street into an oasis of calm. Visitors have to have passes issued by residents to pass through the cameras. Most of the traffic in our street was coming from Chelsea to Wandsworth Bridge.

We have had some confrontations over speeding drivers. The main and possibly only downside for residents is for the residents of Wandsworth Bridge Road who are going to suffer all the through traffic and most of the access traffic for a large part of the area.

It's had a lot of vocal protesters but there was a big movement on the west side to extend the scheme.

a new anachronism

Nice predictive text mishap. :)

Well, it's just another form of filtering. Allowing taxis through may be popular in that area, I don't know. The key is still to stick the filters, whether ANPR or not, in the right places.

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/ealing-cancels-low-traffic-neighbourhood-swyncombe-avenue-ltns-b936932.html

Has much been discussed of Rosamund Kissi-Debrah's campaigining against the LTN around Hither Green & Catford? Her back story is that her daughter died from severe asthma. At her daughter's very recent inquest traffic pollution has been proved to be the cause of very early death (I think she was around 10 years old).

I have some friends who know Rosamund well. She stood for Green in the local elections recently, which seemed on the face of it to be counter-intuitive. The main thrust of her critique of LTNs is that they make traffic so bad on the main rounds around them that they penalise those in housing alongside, mainly lower income and disproportionately high BAME population, more than higher income and non-BAME peoples' housing.

It's true that a lot of traffic pressure used to be released via ratrunning (in that neighbourhood the ratrunning was really out of control, mostly I guess joining Catford south circular with Lewisham A20 and nearby A2 at Blackheath).

The tl:dr of her argument seemed to be: LTNs disproportionately benefit privileged people, with a direct health / quality-of-life cost to the less privileged.

I guess Oliver's arguments against automobilism above do key into this, and as he says, LTNs aren't really going to change motor-dependence without other more crucial changes to the current way we prioritise motorism in our planning.

We should have discussed this on Sat. Been discussed a lot on local group here (she lives down the road from me).

Theres more to that than what you have said ^ from her POV.

She is on a busy road that has a bus route already. When the LTNs were introduced that road saw some displaced traffic but there is nothing but anecdata on that as it was lockdown 1.0 then when we came out of that every cunt was driving their SUV to the shops for some reason (there is data on this how people are driving. more). And she has basically threw her toys out of pram and said LTNs cause traffic.

I dont agree with her.

I guess Oliver's arguments against automobilism above do key into this, and as he says, LTNs aren't really going to change motor-dependence without other more crucial changes to the current way we prioritise motorism in our planning.

I agree with this but we have to start somewhere.

My road sees a lot of displaced traffic from South Circ when its busy as Google/Waze just sends drivers on my road, whats the solution for that on local level? My councillor cant write to Google and tell them to change their algorithm, nor can he un-freeze fuel duty or increase taxes on driving.

Yes we should! But you were busy telling me I am too pale. #racist

Seriously though, her arguments about why LTNs aren't helping her and her immediate neighbours aren't hard to agree with, given that her daughter died so horribly, so young, and has managed to prove (for the first time, no other inquest has) that pollution was the direct cause of her daughter's illness.

Yes.

But if we are looking at modal filters as a deterrent to driving then we have to give them some time. It is behavioural change.

You cant expect it to happen in a month, it is sad to see that someone like her cannot see the bigger picture and bangs on about “what about now?”.

I've seen this Lambeth LTN referenced quite a bit when this issue comes up. Even on the border of the LTN car traffic is down. I don't know anything about this specific LTN and whether it is typical or not.

https://beta.lambeth.gov.uk/streets-roads-transport/railton-low-traffic-neighbourhood-stage-one-monitoring-report/analysis

General Trends
Within the LTN, the following overall percentage changes in counts were observed against the baseline:
Car: -58%
Cycle: +51%
Goods Vehicle: -43%
On the periphery of the LTN, the following overall percentage changes in counts were observed against the baseline:
Car: -11%
Cycle: +31%
Goods Vehicle: -6%
Across both internal and peripheral roads, the following overall percentage changes in counts were as follows:
Car: -24%
Cycle: +40%
Goods Vehicle: -17%

I've also seen a report somewhere referencing LTNs and wealth with the conclusion that it was actually the less privileged that were benefitting but I can't remember much about that one, will see if I can track it down.

EDIT: This one https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/q87fu/

Highlights
-Article examines equityofnewLow Traffic Neighbourhood (LTN) implementation in London, UK, March-September 2020.
-Across London, people in deprived areas were much more likely to live in a new LTNt han people in less deprived areas.
-Across London, Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) people were slightly more likely to live in a new LTN than White people.
-Individual districts varied widely: more deprived or BAME people were more likely to live in an LTN in some districts, less likely in others.
-At the micro-level, LTN residents were demographically similar to neighbours in immediately adjacent areas.

the less privileged that were benefitting

If we are talking about private car ownership then the relationship and data is clear as families who earn 100K+ are more than likely to own a car.

LTNs benefit even the drivers who live inside them, it reduces all other traffic. Amazon, Uber, etc.

The Hammersmith & Fulham ANPR version I'm in is going to be extended to a massive area. Wandsworth Bridge Road will be in the centre excluded from the LTN's either side. It should be a fun one to watch.

The West side extension is happening because the richer community on that side took up against the ghetto side having an unfair advantage. If ours is allowed to continue pending the trial period I think we'll see an increase in house prices due to the peace and quiet.

The most angry and vocal protests came from Chelsea residents who can't just drive through it anymore despite having plenty of restrictions on their roads.

Our Amazon and Ubers are not reduced, no one wants that!

The most angry and vocal protests

https://twitter.com/LudicriousRdClo

The tl:dr of her argument seemed to be: LTNs disproportionately benefit privileged people, with a direct health / quality-of-life cost to the less privileged.

I think there are a few things wrong with that, not least that it's very questionable whether the locations of LTNs reflect a particularly privileged demographic. However, the main point is that he less-privileged already suffer disproportionately from the effect of cars (including pollution, collisions etc.) despite owning the least cars and driving least. If we change nothing, then that injustice persists and there is no solution to reducing driving overall that doesn't include LTNs.

Completely agree with your reflections on that.

whether the locations of LTNs reflect a particularly privileged demographic.

I gather this has already been challenged quite convincingly. Can't remember where/who.

I guess I raised it because, unlike a lot of the spurious complaints about modal filtering (or 'cycle zones' if The Times is to be believed°), this one's quite a difficult one to argue against without looking like a privileged white dogooder - fact is, those less privileged tend to live in more polluted places.

°It's not!

fact is, those less privileged tend to live in more polluted places

I find this pretty dubious. Council estates are more often than not de facto LTNs; yuppie flats are often built along main roads; A lot of posh-looking residential streets are actually all flat shares and even social housing and can have a wide range of income people living there. Etc etc. I think the answer is much more mixed.

(Signed, a white above average income do-gooder who lives on a main road)

Sad to hear this for Ealing. I understand the new leader of ealing council has had a senior role at commonplace (he may still do). He has said all other LTNs will go to a CPZ style referendum. It will be interesting to see what happens. Needless to say, I think this is the wrong way of doing it.

As always, credit to hackney, camden, islington for sticking with LTNs, as well as others like lambeth where I assume we can expect even more with their recent leadership change.

I gather this has already been challenged quite convincingly. Can't remember where/who.

I can't remember the source (probably something by Rachel Aldred), but the Safe Cycling in London map is an interesting thing to browse (twitter account here). You can filter to look at just existing or just new LTNs. In my area at least there's an almost perfectly negative correlation between historic LTNs and the posh areas. The LTNs are mostly historic council estates. This doesn't mean that the posh streets aren't fairly naturally quiet, but they're still pretty awful public spaces (at least for cycling and playing) because the width of them has been reduced to being almost unusable by two lanes of parked SUVs.

I don't have any evidence for the demographics of residents on main roads; however, I'm pretty certain that if you have two otherwise identical houses, one on a busy road and one on a quiet road, then people will be prepared to pay more for the house on the quieter road. Some people use that to infer that trying to make anyone's road quieter is conveying an unearned privilege on them; I take it to mean that people really, really value living somewhere with less motor traffic and therefore reducing motor traffic overall will improve everyone's quality of life.

This has certainly been born out in H&F. There are some correlations between poverty and houses on big main roads, the reason given is large families need homes that would be outside their budget in a side street. I think most of us realise that living above shops or next to 4 lanes of traffic is likely to be less pleasant than a side street.

Yuppie flats have often had the social housing next to the street at pavement level with the nice places on the riverfront or higher up. There is a move away from this but the roadside properties are seen as undesirable by the developers. Councils like H&F are taking money instead and enlarging estates by using land they already own. Hopefully not creating massive crowded ghettos!

Thank you, our local Nextdoor was full of this kind of stuff. Still is regarding cycle lanes.

Ours is now called TCPR - Traffic, Congestion & Pollution Reduction system.

This is the current one, expansion coming soon hopefully :-

https://www.lbhf.gov.uk/transport-and-roads/south-fulham-traffic-congestion-and-pollution-reduction-scheme