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Comments
We should all have equal access to clean air, and these policies load the burden onto those who will never get that option. To be more controversial, you could also argue that lower cost or lower income housing exists on these arterial routes because they are less desirable, so therefore the rich homeowners that make claims about rat runs (probably 1 car every 10 minutes), are happy to pile it onto their less fortunate neighbours round the corner. But that doesn't sit well with people, although i suspect its the truth.
I'd accept statistics in these arguments, but typically people roll out "how it was in lock-down", kids playing the street, feeling safe while cycling etc. All very nice reasons to make a change, but emotional nonetheless and never built in fact. Quantify the argument, show the real problem, prove there is a problem (and where it actually sits, as it might not be in your street in reality), not just the aspiration (nobody wants traffic really) and see what the best outcome is for the area as a whole not just your street in isolation.
For the record i drive a car, i cycle, i want the streets to be safer, i want less pollution, but these LTNs are not the solution and i dislike the fact that they make someone else's life worse for your benefit. I might qualify for one, but i doubt it, i'm on a bus route so i'll get more traffic and all the diesel fumes from the buses as well. Happy days
Most people I know do actually walk and cycle, unfortunately they also require personal vehicles for work.
Islington and Hackney have obviously declared further gorilla warfare measures on motorists which has lead to the buses taking twice as long to get anywhere and ridiculous traffic at every major junction.
I have used excellent car sharing services abroad and would happily ditch my car if we had the same here, naturally though our system is set up to capitalise on the people that actually need it (tax paying residents).
I honestly fail to see who this benefits, save for the automated cars that are coming (and have a top speed of 20 MPH).
What i cant get away from is the thought process that the biggest issues to address exist in quiet streets where pollution is very low, car movement is very low, and the issue of "rat running" is really more anti-social as opposed to be a genuine threat to public life with statistics to back it up. The commentary is always subjective and qualitative as opposed to a made up example like this..."by introducing LTNs, we reduced pedestrian injuries by X% down to X% which is a substantial improvement in addressing this massive issue which was identified as a problem". "Air pollution in Tollington Ward is X% above the London average and therefore we are doing XYZ to reduce it".
Tell me the problems in Tollington ward (not on Hornsey Road, Tollington, Stroud Green Rd, Hanley Road) that must be addressed with an LTN. How does it make it better for people on those roads? Statistically, what are the problems on the other roads in the ward. Facts should steer decisions, not emotion.
I would like councils and policy to focus on the areas where the problems are , you know things like allowing Tesco lorries a free licence to park outside their store on Hornsey Road which creates a massive polluting traffic jam (because it becomes single track), which probably has led to cars attempting to change their journey into other streets. Who gave Tesco the planning permission and that option for deliveries?....yes thats right, Islington Council. Muppets.
I feel that the debate is tricky as inevitably (and it usually is rat running) traffic will be pushed away from the 'privilidged' quiet roads, to the busier roads if LTNs are introduced.
However respectfully, I feel that's missing the point and is just an excuse for the council to do nothing if you frame it as privilege versus the unprivileged.
Firstly, and I don't think this is uncontroversial, the council and mayoralty should be doing everything possible to make unnecessary car journeys as onerous and costly as possible, boost public transpo and make residential streets as safe, clean and quiet as possible for the residents. The car should be the last resort and with home delivery and remote working, that's increasingly possible. From personal observation of neighbours and friends who live nearby, it seems like a small minority of people are using their cars for every trip they make, others walk and cycle everywhere, so apart from work vehicles, I feel it's down to lifestyle rather than necessity around here.
It seems that a lot of the traffic that people complain about is never local traffic i.e. neighbours coming back to the neighbourhood, but rather others traversing and rat running. Inevitably some roads are major A roads and others are purely residential - i think it's reasonable that the point of the major arterial road is to be used by this out of area traffic no? Maybe the zoning on these main roads (like the North circular) should have zero residential properties on them to avoid people's lives being blighted by their busyness.
The second point of the LTN is about ownership in my view - local communities, council estates, homeowners should 'own' their streets - why should people who don't live in the area get to disrupt the peace and clean air, for their own convenience - we need to look at how us as humans prioritise ease of use, sometimes pure laziness of the car, at the expense of better lived environments. The estate near archway is a great example of a paedestrianised area - and that's definitely low-income, but it's calm, leafy and great to live/walk.
That's my view anyway, seems to be all benefits to me with a bit of imaginative thinking a la euroopeene.
From the article to which Arkady refers:
“In mapping the location of LTNs installed across London during the pandemic, the report found they have disproportionately benefited people in lower-income boroughs, such as Lambeth, Hackney and Islington, with fewer set up in wealthier areas.”
—This tells us absolutely nothing about who in those boroughs (in terms of income) benefits the most. Referring to Islington as a “lower-income borough” to support the argument has to imply that everyone in the borough has a comparable level of income and live in comparably salubrious neighbourhoods. LTNs could still be disproportionately benefitting wealthier people—just ones who happen to live in poorer boroughs (but not necessarily poorer neighbourhoods).
It may well be that there is no significant disparity (and I appreciate that this isn’t the only issue concerning the of merits of LTNs), but the statement in the article tells us nothing about that.
https://www.haringey.gov.uk/parking-roads-and-travel/travel/transport-strategy/haringey-s-streetspace-plans#map
They include poorer neighborhoods such as Bruce Grove, (which I believe is where the Broadwater Farm Estate is located).
But what have these car owners really done wrong? Cars have been part of my life in whatever part of the UK i've lived in. Supermarket and retail locations, have been built around people owning cars, houses in many places have garages built into them. Industrial estates and office parks work on the premise that people get to them by cars. I used my car for work while living in Islington, yet i just commuted out 50 miles every day. How do you get all of that changed overnight to address climate and safety issues? Those that needed a car bought into Diesels when the council said that we needed to reduce CO2, we now pay a premium to own one (and i will be forced to sell it in 2021 because of daily charges) because they decided that the particulates were a worse polluter. So many people have ways of living and cash tied up in private transport, and are paralised to make a change without help
If you want less traffic and cleaner air, for me you have to address 2 macro issues.
1. Facilitate the change of ownership of fossil fuel burning cars to electric or hybrid ones. 97% of the Car Park is either petrol or diesel i think. There has to be a halfway house between accepting that people need cars and have a right to own and use one in the borough, together with the the undeniable need to reduce pollution. We have another 10 years before fossil fuel cars stop being made, then another 10 years before those ones clap out. We are 20 years away from seeing the end of those vehicles. So why not take the pain away for people and acknowledge that its in the best interests of everyone to accelerate the switch. Hybrids and electric cars are too expensive for people, and there is no second hand market. Cars for some are their essential tool for work, or their lifeline to friends and family. For me that addresses the immediate issue of pollution without compromising the lifestyle choices of individuals.
2. Make public transport the most convenient and cost effective choice of all options including private vehicles. People will change their ways when the alternatives offer the same or better than what they have. Peak travel on the tube is miserable and expensive, buses a bit better as you can see out, overground has been a good addition, but then looking at city to city transport i can fly to Spain for less than a ticket to Peterborough. The car is still an important part of the mix for many people. I'd agree that very short journeys are regrettable and sometimes unnecessary but who are we/you to judge? If you ride a bike does that give you a platform to judge everyone else? Appears that way.
LTNs are a sign of policy being implemented without ever understanding all people's lives. They will help and benefit many, but also put many people in a worse situation. Nobody wants more injuries and worse air pollution, so why is there so much noise about it? Its because they're being forced without objective reasoning and explanation based on a specific areas problem and many members of the public hate that, particularly myself. Bring people with you on your journey, don't force things on them and make them pay for it.
Oh, and the 3rd runway at Heathrow? All of this local work gets wiped out when that gets implemented by the government. Everything contradicts everything when it comes to policy.
More broadly, the argument that by trying to reduce pollution in one area means that other areas suffer doesn't hold water. By nature, we have to do one area and then the next and then the next. It'll always be sequential and in the short term problematic, costly, painful even, but fast forward twenty years and the effects would be transformative.
We have a situation that a century of thinking on how cities should be run - essentially creating space for cars as a priority and people as secondary now looks like poor judgment. The reversal of that idea is not only necessary but in my humble opinion, vital.
Electric cars are only part of the solution. A significant percentage of particulate pollution is caused by tyre and break wear, which isn't resolved by going electric. Electric cars use more rare earth materials. And they don't address the catastrophic impact on cities of having a car-oriented economy - many of which Brodiej lists. Streets used as car-parks instead of public spaces, nightmarish non-neighbourhood shopping centres, front-gardens turned over to tarmac and garages, etc.
Nearly all of the solution lies in pouring resources into public transport, but part of it is surely making it less and less convenient for people to own and use private vehicles, or some people won't switch. Classic carrot and stick. I accept we're not offering a big enough carrot though.
This report suggests that self-driving vehicles will basically abolish private vehicles altogether in a generation: https://www.rethinkx.com/transportation-executive-summary
Lets get back to LTNs. What statistics can be quoted to show the size of the problems existing in the wards that need to be fixed and how the LTNs will reduce or remove that problem. What defines whether something is a problem, who decides that then? What is a big enough change for something to be deemed a success? Its so easy to see how they get implemented, its just done on gut feel and a few fast tracked loaded consultation questionnaires.
They do have a 'right' to at present, that's absolutely true, but not a right for it to be convenient. I don't want to ignore anyone's 'needs' as you put it, but their desire to place convenience over a less harmful choice. I agree that people tend to get angry when their convenience is threatened, and also be disinclined to be lectured to about ethics!
Still, in most cases owning a car in a city *is* indisputably the less ethical choice, as I think you perhaps accept in the opening par of your articulate missive above. They're not just 'different but equal' choices as you've gone on to imply. And sometimes it's just not possible to bring everyone with you. So I absolutely do feel that it's right to make it less and less convenient for car owners in the hope that people are more likely to make the ethical choice. And I will vote for and argue for that every time. Why should those of us who are already polluting less, not being a threat to pedestrians and cyclists, and not contributing to an uglier and less humane city be the ones who have to compromise? It's not a like-for-like comparison. Surely this goes right back to the harm principle? Surely society should sanction those who choose to do something that harms society for their own convenience?
Doubtless you'll just think I'm being holier-than-thou, and indeed I am, but I do think it deserves a good answer. And I've never yet heard a good one from anybody.
For the record, when we do drive it's often* in electric mode (we bought a hybrid, despite the cost), and it is charged from a provider that uses 100% renewables. On our holiday last year to France we took the train, despite it adding a day each way. We try and reduce plastic consumption. We buy a lot of our clothing second hand. When getting rid of stuff we often give it away using a local group or Freegle instead of throwing it out. Things are fixed rather than replaced. Etc, etc. So we do try and be consistent, but do not always succeed.
*I did not realise how poorly the battery performed in colder weather, where using it in electric mode doesn't make sense
Lot of ways I could answer your question Brodiej, but the quickest one is probably "yes I try - and doesn't everyone'? Doesn't everyone face those decisions every day - the individual versus the collective good?
I'm no extremist (except on architecture and the works of Bob Dylan), so I try not to fly very often (but do fly), I try to eat meat only occasionally (but I do eat meat), I try not to buy clothes very often (but have a nifty collection of whiskets), etc. I despise cars, but do take the occasional cab. Isn't the harm principle totally fundamental to all decisions that effect others?
I suppose this one is a particular bugbear for me, as it's an example of a something that has considerably added to individual convenience while, on the other end of the scale, had catastrophic effects on people lungs, death rates, public spaces, high streets, neighbourhoods, communities, and the fundamental beauty of our cities that is so often dismissed as irrelevant or subjective. The argument for rebalancing is, I think, overwhelming. All I ever seem to get back is 'yes but it's great when I want to go to the shops', and... I'm not sure it washes. In the end, cars make us all suffer, even the driver.
Its Friday night. I shouldn't be on my phone, its been a better debate than many in recent times, so i'll bow out of this one. Have a good evening all.
The LTNs are supposed to reduce through traffic not to stop driving altogether.
I'll support LTNs when they are proposed in a way that objectively shows the problem before they make the change, and shows why that area gets the treatment and another doesn't.
I get that some people have to live on main roads - I have done so for 5 years in total and couldn't wait to get away. Ideally the council planners should bear this in mind when they're zoning and only have office and shop space on main thoroughfares rather than housing and then try to convert a lot of the residential street space into more amenable use - if you think about the average residential road, interesting experiments could be made to convert one side of car parking space plus one way of the lanes to tree planting and wide pavements with flowers ( the sort of flower planting verges like in French towns) and potentially create one way streets.
I'm also a massive fan of shutting (some) roads off on one Sunday a month in London and allow people to roam freely and the kids play in the streets.
I'm pretty sure across Europe there are no driving Sundays in major cities and in Italy most twin centres are fully paedestrianised. That doesn't seem to hurt them.
I always spent my childhood being driven out to a green space as I lived under the Heathrow flight path (literally 400m from the runway - I can't help but think we can make cities nice enough so that parents don't need to take their kids out of town for peace and quiet.