Official low traffic neighbourhoods review led by cycle lanes lobbyist ‘will be whitewash’

A CYCLING campaigner appointed to head a review into low traffic neighbourhoods (LTNs) will declare them a success in a “whitewash” report, a Government committee has been told.

More than 13,000 people signed a petition on a Parliament website calling for an “independent review” into road closures amid fears they “increase traffic congestion and pollution”.

The Department for Transport (DfT) has appointed the Active Travel Academy run by Rachel Aldred, a professor of transport at the University of Westminster to conduct a “deep dive into the impact of segregated cycle lanes and low traffic neighbourhoods”.

But the move triggered a flurry of letters complaining that Prof Aldred has a track record of supporting the creation of cycling infrastructure and LTNs and so the review will not be independent.

The letters highlight how Prof Aldred, 46, was a director and elected trustee from 2012 to 2018 of the London Cycling Campaign (LCC), a lobby group that has campaigned for the introduction of LTNs and cycle lanes.

In 2014, as chairman of the LCC’s policy forum Prof Aldred was a keynote speaker at the Space for Cycling Campaigners’ Conference which discussed how “removing through-motor traffic can be ‘sold’ to residents and others”.

BikeBiz, a cycle industry trade website, has reported how she has been praised for helping to “shift policy mindset on cycling” and how she had urged bike businesses to lobby for “better cycling infrastructure”.

She has also claimed cyclists need a “dense network of routes that are either motor traffic-free or contain low numbers of slow-moving vehicles”.

One letter to the petitions committee and Mark Harper, the Transport Secretary, accuses her of “clearly setting out to present LTNs as a success, even though the evidence on the ground suggests otherwise”.

It adds that a King’s Counsel with no links to either side of the debate would guarantee an independent review of the schemes “otherwise this will be seen as a whitewash and be widely repudiated”.

Another claimed that pretending Prof Aldred’s unit was conducting an independent review of LTN policy was “one of the worst cases of being allowed to mark one’s own homework”.

LTNs are controversial because many road closures triggered fines for motorists, slowed 999 response times, caused more congestion on main roads and were introduced without consultation.

Prof Aldred has produced a number of reports that claim, among other things, that LTNs help “overall traffic evaporation” both inside and outside the LTNs. Her Active Travel Academy was set up at the university in 2019 after receiving £500,000 funding from a trust linked to the institution’s previous status as a polytechnic.

The committee, made up of 11 MPs, has now told the DfT its “response did not directly address” the request and asked ministers to “provide a revised response”. It has not revealed why the department response was inadequate.

The DfT, which has allocated the university £171,916 for the review, said: “All independent research is commissioned through a competitive process, in line with strict Government guidance.

“Once research has been conducted, policy decisions will ultimately be for ministers to take.”