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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.
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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.
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In Edinburgh they changed a lot of infrastructure with the idea being to make it easier to stay distanced. (Back in the early days when we were all too scared to go within 2m of another person.) Possibly one of the motivations to make changes now
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It's a reasonable concern, but I don't think that LTNs are a major driving factor in the challenge to find affordable places to live (in London or elsewhere).
Well, filtering increases house prices. You can have a debate about how much it contributes, but it certainly does.
I mean what a miserable situation we must be in if the response to improvements in the public realm are "please don't make it nice, otherwise I won't be able to live here any more". Bleak.
I'm afraid that worry is a lived reality for a lot of people. I've seen it happening in Hackney over the last 20 years and I've seen dozens of people I know priced out of it. Obviously, it mainly happens to people renting and people who want to buy a flat or house, but they generally have to move further out.
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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.
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.
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That's quite a controversial matter. The council wanted to increase pedestrianisation and cycle infrastructure anyway so some of it will be staying. As per, the usual dickheads* are complaining about it
https://www.thenational.scot/news/19367599.spaces-people-cycle-lanes-stay-bot-tries-sway-voting/
* and some people with legitimate concerns such as those with disabilities
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Well, filtering increases house prices. You can have a debate about how much it contributes, but it certainly does.
I should note that I live in a historic LTN (with a central filter). It's not super-quiet, but it cuts the obvious rat run, that would just lead to queuing traffic through our neighborhood. It's actually one of the more mixed areas around here and has a mixture of social housing and privately-owned property. Other areas nearby have massively leapfrogged ours in terms of gentrification due to better schools, proximity to shops and parks, slightly larger houses (and probably some other factors), despite the fact that they aren't filtered (albeit that they're not super busy anyway). Our area is now catching up as a result of the schools becoming better regarded, housing associations selling off their properties to private owners, but the existence of the LTN didn't spur that, given that it was in decades before that happened. Anecdote only of course, but just to illustrate that filtering is clearly not a sufficient or necessary factor in pushing house prices to the top of a local scale.
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You push traffic onto main roads which are then even more gridlocked/busy and that is where the really shitty housing is.
Questionable on all fronts: beyond a certain point of traffic density those roads are hugely compromised anyway and the whole "pushing traffic" narrative ignores that the volume of traffic as a whole can be reduced (DfT reports have emphasised that the fundamental issues is too much traffic for the road network); lots of shitty housing is actually on estates that are historic LTNs or LTN equivalents.
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Again a very succinct description of the problem. I have become less engaged in the online conversation although I will still discuss it with people face to face. I don't have the patience to argue with the most committed drivers though.
I'm going to try and do my best to reduce my motorised journeys and hope that other people try to do the same.
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the whole "pushing traffic" narrative ignores that the volume of traffic as a whole can be reduced
I agree but I think a lot of people don't. They have no desire to reduce the number of car journeys they make, if anything they want to make more. If you stop them rat running then they will clog the main roads more. The people that think they might drive less if the roads were less hostile are probably not the ones complaining.
lots of shitty housing is actually on estates that are historic LTNs or LTN equivalents
perhaps forgotten about by the rat runners?
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I recently was gifted a car by my grandmother who stopped driving. I was astounded how cheap it was to get it insured, taxed and run. I know taxation often isn't the best way to prevent driving and will disproportionately hurt the poor, but last week we had the decision wether to drive or get the train to York. Four days in advance, the train was TWICE the price of the petrol for driving. It takes a lot to make that decision to get the train, even though I like to think of myself and environmentally minded (though I'm probably not).
IMO unless public transport is significanty cheaper than taking a car, no ammount of LTNs will get people out of cars.
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Was just back of fag packeting this. Well, back of antihistamine box anyway.
We pay about £1k per year for insurance, MOT, etc for our car. That figure excludes fuel. Works out at £2.70-ish per day just to have the car parked up and road legal.
A 1 day travel card for zones 1 to 6 is £18.10.
How far can I drive my car for £18.10? By my calculation, based on its city fuel efficiency, about 120 to 150 miles miles.
I mean, I do most city travel by bike but thats not the point I'm trying to make.
If you take into account the cheap finance deals available on cars, its far cheaper to buy a car and drive than get public transport in London even if you include your monthly repayments for the car in the calculation I reckon.
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I recently was gifted a car by my grandmother who stopped driving. I was astounded how cheap it was to get it insured, taxed and run.
Similarly gifted a car a few years ago, although the car was only worth £85 or so (2001 1.1l Citroen Saxo).
Tax is £170 this year. On street parking will be ~£160. MOT is £45. Insurance is just £200. £200 service every two or three years.
I collected it from its MOT yesterday and the garage said it has passed but will fail "catastrophically" next year due to ongoing corrosion[1]. So we'll get rid of the car just before then and do without a car. ~ £700 before it moves buys a lot of zipcars/ubers, especially when we used to do ~2000 miles a year, so that's another £200 in fuel we used to pay.
A whole chunk of usage was for supermarket shopping, but online deliveries are a lot easier to come by now so we'll go back to booking them every couple of weeks.
(1. It'll still be "safe" to drive for this year, but the MOT bar for safety is a lot higher, especially with the new tougher MOT standards.)
sohi
dubtap
Howard
ffm
Oliver Schick
frankenbike
jellybaby
Eejit
Airhead
fredtc
Stonehedge
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hippy
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@Platini
If you grow up in a place and you're not making it nicer you're part of the problem. A place being nicer is not about money or traffic, it's about community and people making an effort to live alongside each other. LTN's can help foster a sense of community by creating less dangerous public space that neighbours can use to meet and figure out how to live together. Helping to create more inclusive communities. We've seen this in the street I've lived in for 20 years.