Modal filtering

They’re often put in to make life easier for through traffic and they increase traffic speeds since no need to worry about anything oncoming.

OTOH if placed strategically they can be used to filter a neighbourhood by making it impossible to (legally) drive through.

If your road isn’t on a useful through route then it being one way is mostly redundant rather than actively harmful.

How do you think they should be implemented? This is the third stage of consultation on this scheme I think. I'm not sure how else they could be implemented.

My mistake, I assumed they were doing them like in other boroughs. Still, it doesn't sound as if it's been a successful process so far. The current proposals are just terrible.

These need to come up from the streets. There need to be engagement exercises, local knowledge fed in, and proposals refined before anything goes out to consultation.

I'm reading the thread and I can't find the reason one way streets are a bad thing?

I've just bought a flat on a one way street and it's nice and quiet

One-way streets are always a bad thing for cycling and walking, whether they're inside filtered cells or not. They increase distance, risk, turns, indirectness, bad driver behaviour, speeding, pollution, and motor traffic capacity (the latter being the main reason why they're put in outside narrow streets with two lines of car parking, whereas the main reason why they're put in in said streets is to reduce the inevitable conflict caused by the narrowing from two lines of car parking).

Cyclists need permeability: 'Maximum route choice, minimum diversion', the main network characteristic that increases cycling.

The reason why your street is quiet doesn't have anything to do with it being one-way. It's because it's not a rat-run, and that's caused by the shape of the network around you and quite possibly some filtering somewhere.

See how you feel about the one-way in your street when you've lived there for a while and you can't cycle to your house from both directions but either have to walk up to it from one of them, violate the traffic order, or go around the houses to enter your street from the other end. As above, your personal inconvenience is only one of the problems with one-ways.

These need to come up from the streets

What does this even mean? People have such Stockholm Syndrome to traffic that they can’t even visualise what something different would look like unless you make it happen in front of them.

I’m extremely happy with the way my local council has done things lately - stick thing in on a minimal notice ETO and let the haters burn through their energy long before the consultation rolls around a year later.

Is there an example of a filtering scheme in London where the pre-consultation has been anything other than a pointless shouting match?

We have a couple of local groups campaigning for modals but people from neighbouring streets tend to complain that it results in more traffic going through their area and I don't really know how to argue against it without saying that the idea is that fewer people drive, with the implication them that they shouldn't drive, which never flies because they want to drive.

I kind of see the logic but I feel like it ends up being a kind of nimbyism? No cars on my street thank you and if you don't want cars on your street then make your own citizen group and lobby for your own modal. It doesn't help that obviously as it stands the people who end up lobbying for this kind of thing are the type who are settled and can afford to not use cars much (include myself here).

Then again I might just be depressed. We had quite a well thought through (I thought) bus gate scheme just get outvoted and removed at a council meeting (Cambridge mill road bus gate) which has kind of made me quite cynical of the possibility to improve streets from the ground up via the democratic process.

I don't really know how to argue against it

With data that disputes it? Lots good stuff out there; especially: http://rachelaldred.org/research/low-traffic-neighbourhoods-evidence/

https://findingspress.org/article/21390-the-impact-of-low-traffic-neighbourhoods-on-active-travel-car-use-and-perceptions-of-local-environment-during-the-covid-19-pandemic

The people who are hard anti cant be argued with and should not be wasted energy upon IMO. Its the people on fence about them.

Thanks for the links, there's lots of good ammunition in there. I do just try and mention that in the end, car journeys need to decrease, which as you say, helps sway the swayable, but people who feel the need to drive take it as an insult. I try to pick my battles and give the impression that I'm not in a position to judge people's reasons for driving.

However, I am. And I judge them extremely harshly.

people from neighbouring streets tend to complain that it results in more traffic going through their area

If the council adopts LTN as policy for the whole borough or city then you don’t have this problem. This sounds hard, but it might turn out to be easier to slip this into a policy document or election manifesto than it is to sell a particular scheme.

In terms of roads that won’t be filtered, the main idea is that these are roads that are chokka anyway. Traffic can’t increase because there’s no capacity. That’s what gets you your reduction in driving.

this is a key issue rather than bad implementation

inconsistent rate of implementation, its just not enough

if they are implemented borough-wide rather than trials in small pockets it can actually show a positive change which then can be used as a justification to roll out further and more

in London Hackney is leading the way: https://twitter.com/hackneycouncil/status/1431510609820983302

Greenwich, Ealing, RBKC, Westminster are all going backwards.

If the council adopts LTN as policy for the whole borough or city

This is actually what I often see mentioned in the local cycling group and even some local newspapers, but I guess this is a top down approach, which gives some people the impression they "haven't been consulted".

Right now we basically have people on a busy road that want a modal campaigning for it. It's not joined up, so ample possibility for traffic to go into other roads etc.

"haven't been consulted".

The consultation is the election and let the leaders make decisions based on their expertise and mandate. As much as I hate to live under Tories, its what people voted for. In a way consultations are less democratic.

It sounds like the bureaucratic bollocks that new labour cooked up.

And the outcomes of consultations arent binding. It should be more quality rather than quantity exercise.

One could argue that the residents of inner roads werent consulted on the usage of Waze which sends driver on their streets which have next to no enforcement. Or we werent consulted on freezing fuel duty. Or the £27 Billion that will be spent on roadbuilding in 2021-22 (same year as COP26) while cycling budget is £338m. So on and so forth.

IMO greenwashing EV bros are the worst.

Agreed on all counts. Particularly electric car bros. Don't know why they insist on calling them EVs. They only ever mean cars.

Yeah those bloody ebikers

how you feel about the one-way in your street when you've lived there for a while and you can't cycle to your house from both directions but either have to walk up to it from one of them, violate the traffic order,

Thanks for this detailed explanation, i
I was not aware of these effects of one ways. Regarding how they wil affect me personally, I've visited the property a few times by bike and not felt inconvenienced, hopefully I will just get used to the way the street is and it won't be a Black mark against my decision to move there. I would be interested to see any Raw data you're aware of that shows the affects on risk, behaviour, pollution, and danger that you mention.

They’re often put in to make life easier for through traffic and they increase traffic speeds since no need to worry about anything oncoming.

It's the case with so much infrastructure, seemingly harmless things turn out to purely originate from a desire to make life more convenient for drivers, enable further dominance of cars at the expense of society and public health. Sigh.

I’m working on the front of a building in a one way street and I see all the problem behaviour described almost every day. There’s also a speed bump which people crash their engine pan on very regularly. Some people even hit the second one 70m away and it’s so noisy the neighbours wish there had never been speed bumps installed.

I'd say all of that has happened. As well as various online presentations and Q&As, including breakout groups with residents, Sustrans, councillors and council engineers, there's also been the Commonplace maps with hundreds of comments https://tottenhambrucegroveltn.commonplace.is/comments which have driven the next stage (for instance the area to the west of Downhills Way/Belmont Road was only added into the LTN after feedback from the consultations).

I need to reply to lots of things I haven't had time for in this thread, but here's an article on 'LTNs' being removed in Ealing:

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/ltns-west-london-ealing-scrapped-no-improvement-air-quality-b956149.html

https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5d30896202a18c0001b49180/t/6138df7f4bb8dd5c3ad71afc/1631117185481/traffic+filters+results.pdf

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/oct/04/birmingham-to-become-a-super-sized-low-traffic-neighbourhood

^ good news on Birmingham. What they also need to do is start removing on-street car parking in the centre, turning multi storey car parks into something else. Hopefully all in their plan - wasn't published last time I checked.

Very few decision makers in other English towns or cities seem even aware of this kind of thinking and planning.

Great to see leadership and a strong narrative from Councillor Waseem Zaffar.

Went to a local consultation event by Islington Council today, on their St Peters low traffic neighbourhood, between Angel and Hoxton.

Was great to see local people enjoying riding an array of bikes and other cycles hosted by https://www.pedalpowercc.org/

One guy I met never knew about handcycles; now he does. It's just the sort of thing council's that are implementing LTNs should be doing and shouting about.

And good coffee and cake at the Arc centre https://www.thearccentre.org/

Is anyone aware of a council planning to remove an experimental traffic order (that blocked off a few streets creating a LTN), but this decision being challenged and the streets remaining blocked to through traffic? Would be good to hear of examples if so.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UabSO0X1rYw&ab_channel=TheGuardian