Modal filtering

Well, it'll be interesting how they'll propose to change this badly-designed filtering scheme (NB they all are). As usual, there are several filters set on the cell boundary, and it is the side they're on that's supposedly so congested now.

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/transport-for-london-lambeth-low-traffic-neighbourhood-streatham-b1141569.html

As I don't know the area well, I don't know what exactly the causes are here, but experience suggests it'll be just the usual mistakes.

I've got to the point where I don't believe any of the reports or statistics around these schemes. I live in one and it's divided opinion in the community. Although I benefit from it there are a lot of local people and businesses overreaching to blame it's existence for all kinds of things.

Bus travel times, women having to walk alone at night, lower customer footfall and emergency vehicle access seem to be the most popular issues to raise and certainly in our area it's the local conservative mp opposing the local labour administration that gets most of these stories into the local news.

The design can affect the amount of negative publicity it gets but there's a background level of political point scoring and petrol heads who wouldn't be happy even if the designs were perfect.

in the community

i firmly believe that 95% are cunts in this

its habit change so no1 is going to like it, the centrism in design has failed everyone, people who are pro hate it and people who are anti hate it. This is the policy consultation led Britain deserves.

So, the decision has apparently been taken to remove the filtering east of the A23 altogether. This is a bad decision and fails to acknowledge that the scheme had just been badly-designed. This shows only a rudimentary understanding:

It had been blamed over recent months, and particularly in the last few weeks, for clogging up the high road with traffic. This was thought to be due to the LTN affecting the entry-points vehicles were using to emerge onto the main road.

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/transport/low-traffic-neighbourhood-lambeth-bus-sadiq-khan-b1143732.html

This points at junction capacity issues, which are really not that hard to balance out with a different filtering scheme, but I guess some politicians, who typically don't understand technical detail well, succumbed to a misleading campaign about it. Given that all recent filtering schemes I've looked at are badly-designed, this is probably the starting-gun for more filtering to be removed, which is the wrong course of action.

It will be interesting what happens in Tower Hamlets, where Mayor Rahman has threatened to remove all filtering. This will undoubtedly be grist to his mill.

I'm late to the party at Streatham but just looking at it today.

On the placement of modal filters - there may be something to be said here about here about the benefits of 'invisible infrastructure.' As Oliver knows I understand the general best practice & advice to install filters centrally within neighbourhoods - that makes sense for technical and practical reasons. Here in St Peters Islington being a good example with filters within the neighbourhood on Duncan Terrace, St Peters St, Danbury Street; these are effectively 'invisible' from motorists queuing on the adjacent City Road or A1 / Essex Road.

I wonder whether putting the filters next to the main road in Streatham also contributes to the PR nightmare for that project - with drivers, motorists and bus users literally looking at the very visible modal filters along the side roads, while 'stuck in traffic' queuing on the main road.

In Fulham they've done it with APNR and it's still attracting a lot of opposition from the usual suspects. There are some people losing out though, local businesses who relied on parking in the adjacent streets have seen a decline in footfall.

I wonder whether putting the filters next to the main road in Streatham also contributes to the PR nightmare for that project - with drivers, motorists and bus users literally looking at the very visible modal filters along the side roads, while 'stuck in traffic' queuing on the main road.

Without question--engineers often think that by sticking them on side street entrances they can make the junctions simpler/reduce the number of junctions etc., but a good street, even a main street, needs a healthy rhythm of junctions. If the cell is filtered internally, you end up with a normal, easy-to-read junction where drivers on the main drag expect that traffic will come out, influencing their behaviour, as opposed to hooning it past 'closed' side streets with no expectation of interaction. The junction of Southgate Road and Northchurch Road in De Beauvoir is a very good example. It would benefit if the filter there were moved inside the cell to the east.

A central filter does a far better job than one on the edge in every respect, as it creates shorter distances to drive in and out of the cell, with a better effect on driving speeds and a more logical structure of a cell.

It does always baffle me, though, why so many people don't understand such a simple point and fail to appreciate how important it is--maybe they think it can't be important because it is so simple ...

It does always baffle me, though, why so many people don't understand such a simple point and fail to appreciate how important it is--maybe they think it can't be important because it is so simple ...

The LTN near me is a combination of edge and central filters. At the central filters it's fairly common to see cars u-turning (in spaces that aren't really big enough to u-turn) as they were unaware of the filter until they reached it.

The area I'm in is edge filtered. There were also plans for central filters but there wasn't really anywhere sensible to put them which wouldn't result in loads of vehicles doing u-turns on residential streets.

Edge filters also make walking or cycling along the main road much more pleasant and each one removes a point of conflict.

Southgate Road / Northchurch Road is imminently having both sides effectively turned into edge filters so it can have a proper cycle zebra put in, which will be a huge improvement.

It's not being removed forever. Its apparently paused until TfL do the A23 bus & cycle lanes - which is 18 months at least.

I'm sure many have been following the Tower Hamlets stuff. This again demonstrates some campaigners' touching faith in judicial review. Even had their case been successful, the filtering could still have been removed by following whatever process was required again, and correctly this time.

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/transport/london-low-traffic-neighbourhoods-sadiq-khan-lutfur-rahman-tower-hamlets-b1200572.html

As before, filtering is worth supporting, but the way it was implemented, often during the pandemic, the general lack of sound filtering methodology, and the bad design of almost all filtered cells require a rethink. The term 'LTN' also continues to be extremely stupid. Broken record time, but you don't want 'low-traffic' neighbourhoods, you want them to be high-traffic, just not traffic that is mostly people in cars.

I don't know Mayor Rahman's views in any detail, but he could mean any or all of the above, or he might simply not understand this and only see it as the political football all of the above turned it into.

I don't know Mayor Rahman's views in any detail

He hates cycling and has opposed pro-cycling interventions on a number of occasions according to my TH cycling colleagues

I don’t think he actually cares about cycling or the specific implementation details of modal filters.

He does care that they’re a great wedge issue to exercise his car-aspirant base.