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There was a government initiative to encourage councils to get on with it after years of procrastination.

I find it a bit odd that in the middle of a pandemic it's the 'right'* time to implement a load of this stuff. It's such a weird message - stay at home, protect the NHS, whilst we stick some planters in your street or do weird shit to the euston road.

Public transport capacity was reduced due to Covid restrictions and a lot of people were going to be reluctant to use it in any case. LTNs were part of a range of measures to allow people to get moving again without all feeling the need to use their cars for every journey.

As I've said before, I think it's part of the general 'let's try to use the cover of the pandemic while people are distracted by it to do what we always wanted to do, anyway' thing. Lots of interests have been advanced in this way.

sohi:

It also makes sense to change road layouts while there is less traffic around.

Howard:

From a purely practical perspective, it probably does, yes.

ffm:

Public transport capacity was reduced due to Covid restrictions and a lot of people were going to be reluctant to use it in any case. LTNs were part of a range of measures to allow people to get moving again without all feeling the need to use their cars for every journey.

Well. I like the positive spin ffm is trying to put on it, but the initial justification was that motor traffic was going to rise, so let's filter so that it can't rise as much. This was felt to be very negative by many people. Filtering reduces motor traffic, with all the usual caveats, e.g. no road-building or motor traffic capacity increases alongside, in any case, so you don't need to pandemic as a specific justification for that, but it's easy to argue that it goes against what people would choose if left to their own devices, and it goes against it from a high-handed public policy perspective that many don't understand or consider particularly relevant to their lives.

I personally would want these schemes to be implemented through proper engagement processes and proper funding, and I think the cheap and ad hoc way is really an issue. Twenty years ago, we always used to give the example of the 'Ring of Plastic', which filtered large parts of the City overnight in the wake of renewed activity by an IRA faction, to indicate how quickly it all could be done if there was just some more will to do it, but I don't really believe in that model any more.