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Very well put. I'm living in one of the newer types of ANPR zones in London (H&F). There will likely be a huge expansion to this zone in the near future and local opposition has been vociferous. All of the points you have addressed get raised time and time again by car owners desperate to continue their personal routes.
I'm also a tradesman and have been adapting to a foldable electric bike to carry out small jobs in Chelsea where even motorbike parking has been becoming less practical for years. I do own a van but only use it to deliver tools and materials to jobs then follow up by cycling, I'm even cutting down motorcycle use. All of this makes it very expensive and impractical to maintain and pay the standing costs of the van and motorbike.
I don't hold much hope for winning the argument against the kind of road use we have within my lifetime. I hope I'm wrong though.
Airhead-
Very well put. I'm living in one of the newer types of ANPR zones in London (H&F). There will likely be a huge expansion to this zone in the near future and local opposition has been vociferous.
Yes, you can see that from all sorts of sources. I think when there is vocal opposition you should always listen because, as Oliver said, local knowledge is valuable. On the other hand I think it's always worth asking a question to help put these objections in context; the question is "Ok, so what is your plan?" Transforming our roads to enable and encourage walking and cycling (and discouraging car use) provides a partial solution to a whole heap of problems including: local air and noise pollution, road danger, isolation and loneliness, obesity, disconnected communities, climate change, lack of independence for children, mental health, and just the general horribleness of places designed around cars. If not LTNs and other related measures, what's the plan? The answers you get are various (and since this is mostly based on twitter responses it's difficult to know how seriously people will cleave to them in real life), but they're all misleading, dismissive, uninformed or just flat wrong (which is why I still support these measures), although they may come from a place of genuine disquiet. Broadly they fall into:
Silence: just ignore the question and keep complaining
Deny that the problem exists or suggest that it can just be avoided: climate change denialism; suggest that people have chosen to live with these problems as demonstrated by their travel choices (which ignores the effect of policy and the classic tragedy of the commons). Alternatively, "Why don't you go and live in the Netherlands then?" (obviously no, I want to make my city better); "If you want to live somewhere quiet then go and live in the countryside?" (what a miserable lack of ambition for the world we pass to our children)
Don't explicitly deny the problem but suggest that the cure is worse: claim that the proposed solution will tank the economy, ruin local businesses, destroy the character of your charming Victorian high street/dual carriageway, simply move traffic to other roads increasing congestion and pollution, further disadvantage already marginalised groups (the elderly, people with disabilities), create road danger (somehow), delay emergency services, enable street crime etc. All of these are wrong for various reasons, which are laid out fairly clearly if you can actually be bothered to look.
Suggest solutions that are proven not to work: electric cars (only deal with noise and air pollution and literally nothing else); "encouraging cycling"/"parallel routes"(we tried those, didn't work nearly enough); or just put the solution "over there" (which obviously just gets the same response from the NIMBYs who live "over there")
Complain about the process: lack of consultation, no consideration of marginalised groups, disapproval of the emergency services, "rushed through", "poorly thought out", "imposed", something-something-"middle-class"; quibble with official stats; suggest that it's just a cash cow via fines (again, all of these are just untrue or fail to recognise that this is a long process, but that taking some action and monitoring it closely to see what works is key)
Once you realise that all the objections you hear fall somewhere around these points and that no alternative solution is being proposed, the whole landscape of these changes looks very different. This isn't to say that people don't have genuine concerns or that change will be comfortable for everyone, but until someone comes up with a better solution this seems like the best option and it provably works in other places with no compelling reason offered as to why it wouldn't work here.
ffm
All good points; a few additional thoughts:
It's worth noting that filtering in the centre of cells doesn't preclude treatments at edge junctions like tightening the radius of turns, making footways continuous and roads discontinuous through raised crossings etc., which slows traffic on entry to a cell and indicates a change of purpose of the road and area.
The point about freedom is, I think, partly underpinned by the belief that the transport situation now is the end result of people's unconstrained choices and therefore represents some sort of optimal free-market solution to transport i.e., "people were free to choose anything and they chose cars". This obviously isn't true since we've got at least half a century of prioritising car use over other modes through policy and road design and this will obviously have influenced people's choices. It also ignores the fact that use of cars excludes other modes by making the road environment subjectively or objectively hostile to them. So even if you believe streets are meant to be for through movement (as opposed to living/playing/shopping/socialising etc.) you still have to accept that making them thoroughfares predominantly for cars has, in effect, reduced people's freedom by preventing them from choosing other modes. Giving them back this option is not some sort of socialist diktat, it's just design of our public spaces in the same way that designing them for cars was (but obviously much more people-friendly).
I think there's also a linked point about people's expectation that they should be able to drive to exactly where they want and that the continuation of society, the economy and basic human existence somehow rests on this. People seem to think that shops will just fail if they can't be stocked from lorries/vans parked immediately outside and that likewise shoppers need to park on the shop's doorstep. Some people also seem to feel the need to park right outside their door, which I suspect is more about extending their perceived freehold and/or the security of their car than convenience. I understand that in other countries this expectation does not exist to such a degree and that people accept that they have to leave their car on the outside of a residential area (which may only mean a cluster of buildings 100m across) in order for that area itself to be more liveable.
The whole middle-class vs. working-class argument makes no sense to me (given patterns of car ownership); however, if "working-class" is being used as a proxy for "tradespeople" then it's worth addressing in those terms. What confuses me most about this is that tradespeople operate everywhere across the world. They do have plumbing in Amsterdam/Delft/Copenhagen, which suggests that either plumbers can operate without vans or they can still access everywhere in cities that have de-prioritised motorised through traffic. Even ancient city centres that are almost impassible to cars have services and heavy household goods like fridges, so these obviously get in there somehow. Forward-thinking tradespeople will be considering how to adapt to these changes to stay ahead of the competition.
Consultation is a real bugbear and although it probably is disconcerting to have changes made to your local area, it seems likely that extensive consultation prior to every temporary experimental solution will just result in nothing happening (we're very much in Ford's "faster horse" territory here). As you say, these changes need to happen everywhere so consultation cannot be simply an opportunity for a particular community to opt out of the application of a national transport policy.
I think the arguing on behalf of others (the elderly, people with disabilities) may come from genuine concern but is also often a smokescreen for the arguer's own wishes. I suspect that many making the argument are blind to the other everyday challenges faced by these groups and have done little to campaign for them. These marginalised groups are also very heterogeneous in ways that defy stereotypes and often benefit from schemes in ways that are not understood by those objecting on their behalf. It's really important that they get to speak for themselves.