Low-traffic zones just mean delays and pollution for the rest of us
Our council has used pandemic powers to close large parts of the borough to all through traffic – selecting winners and losers in the clean air lottery
Sound your horn if you live just outside a Low Traffic Neighbourhood! My family lives around the corner from one of Islington’s new “people friendly streets” schemes, and our residential road has recently become anything but. Congestion, pollution and noise displaced from elsewhere in the borough now fill our heads and homes, and risk our children’s health. We are the collateral damage in a bitter battle to let others to breathe easy.
My MP, Labour’s Emily Thornberry, would shudder at the lines of white vans and frustrated motorists queueing all day outside our windows. And so should Boris Johnson, formerly a resident of our road, as he seeks to drive Britain back to prosperity. Nobody will be driving anywhere fast in Islington, nor in great swathes of the capital. As London, the engine of Global Britain, looks to spark back to life, it risks finding itself gridlocked thanks to the petty obsessions of anti-car local politicians.
Our council has used pandemic powers to close large parts of the borough to all through traffic – selecting winners and losers in the clean air lottery. “On your bike!” may be fashionable in the 15-minute city dreamed of by the idealistic Left; but London’s opportunities and allure lie beyond our doorsteps and local high streets.
Closing roads to encourage “active travel” may be a path trodden in some continental cities, with different geographies and economies, but in our mega-city it’s a dead end for workers, parents, the disabled, and any business with ambition. As lockdown eases, volumes of traffic return to normal, and businesses look to make up for lost time, councils which should be nurturing our livelihoods are instead putting the brakes on recovery.
Divisive headlines and single-issue politicians pit this as a case of “two wheels good, four wheels bad”. But the truth is that the annexation of our infrastructure disenfranchises everyone. Transport links sit at the heart of our economy. And while supporters of change may hail the localised reduction of congestion, pollution and road danger, arbitrary solutions merely create similar, but bigger, problems in other residential roads and arterial routes where traffic levels have increased and vehicles are left idling in traffic jams.
Nobody can deny that our roads are more flooded by cars than ever. But rational councils don’t solve flooding by drowning the many to drain the few. We have a national plan to ban the sale of new polluting cars this decade and democratic traffic reduction schemes should maximise our infrastructure, embracing – not demonising – technology that spreads the load equitably across the network and makes journeys shorter and quicker.
People who need to get from one place to another don’t want to be told that their journeys are unnecessary. We are not vermin, and a “rat run” is nothing more than a soundbite to pretend that we don’t all rely on road networks to achieve our goals and keep our lives efficient.
LTNs create urban islands where a few lucky children can play in silenced streets, but the rules are choking their neighbours and our cities.