LTN Discussion

[heartblock]

it's gone wrong! Yep ... we all in truth know that ...... but many clinging on to the fundalmentalist zombie line ........ LTN GOOD, public transport BAD...... LTN GOOD...... public transport BAD..... cyclist GOOD.....disabled BAD.....cyclist GOOD...... OLD people BAD....

[malumbu]

What mind altering substances are you taking? Even by the standards of this thread that is a weird post 🤔

[heartblock]

Long day at work is my only excuse...I was going to delete but then thought it was quite funny in a crazed sort of way. Sorry everyone.

Back to LTNs I was wondering when the measures to reduce pollution on Croxted, LL and ED Grove were happening? Wasn’t there going to be ‘green’ fencing? And what happened to the exercise at looking at a dedicated bike lane.

[Penguin68]

If I have read past posts correctly - what is happening in the centre of Dulwich is no longer an LTN but something else - the fact that it was introduced under LTN 'legislation' now being irrelevant, as its now a mini-Trafalgar Square scheme - again something not actually agreed by anyone other than the self serving Southwark apparat. So all criteria for judging whether it has met the aim of e.g. reducing pollution would now be irrelevant (and I don't think there are any general criteria for judging Trafalgar Square type closures).

[Earl Aelfheah]

If I have read past posts correctly - what is happening in the centre of Dulwich is no longer an LTN but something else - the fact that it was introduced under LTN 'legislation' now being irrelevant, as its now a mini-Trafalgar Square scheme - again something not actually agreed by anyone other than the self serving Southwark apparat. So all criteria for judging whether it has met the aim of e.g. reducing pollution would now be irrelevant (and I don't think there are any general criteria for judging Trafalgar Square type closures).

 

There is a data dashboard which shows what's happened as a result of the scheme. It's published on the Southwark council website. Shows increases in active travel and decreases in the number of motor vehicles, both within the LTN and on most boundary roads.

[Rockets]

Rah x3 that's your interpretation of the data shared on the dashboard. And your interpretation, in my opinion, is not correct - the dashboard shows that there had been some roads that had seen a reduction in traffic (namely the roads within the LTN) but many of the boundary roads/roads outside the LTN had seen increases in traffic.

If the council is, indeed, changing the categorisation of the LTNs to avoid detailed scrutiny then that probably shows you the direction of travel in terms of how successful the closures have been. And remember, the council promised us the LTNs could only be considered a success if they reduced traffic for ALL - which clearly hasn't been the case,

P.S. did anyone see the census data on car ownership within the LTNs - not a good story for the council given they said car ownership decreases within LTNs.....

[march46]

The monitoring data shows all roads have less traffic than pre covid, with the exception of the ends of East Dulwich Grove (central is down) and Burbage Rd.

This data is pretty old though, would be good to see it refreshed.

[Rockets]

On a seperate subject this type of post from the local lobby groups really needs to stop. They take someone's misfortune and try to turn it into something to support their narrative when they know nothing of what happened. They insinuate speeding was involved when they have no clue to the circumstances of the incident. Perhaps they should be more concerned with the well-being of the person who had to be cut from the car rather than to use it to further their own selfish personal crusade.....

[exdulwicher]

If the council is, indeed, changing the categorisation of the LTNs to avoid detailed scrutiny then that probably shows you the direction of travel in terms of how successful the closures have been. And remember, the council promised us the LTNs could only be considered a success if they reduced traffic for ALL - which clearly hasn't been the case,

 

That's a bit Conspiracy Theory even for you!

It's not a change in category, it doesn't mean less scrutiny. It's a natural evolution of the scheme.

You've filtered a junction so there's less traffic through it. You're now left with a shedload of empty tarmac so it gets remodelled, repurposed etc. More pedestrian space, a cycle lane, seating, activities, art installation, plants, space for cafes to put tables/chairs, bike/scooter parking...

Can be any/all of that. It comes under various names - placemaking, streetspace, streetscape etc and it can be done either as an evolution of a traffic scheme or as a regeneration project in its own right. There are loads of examples in London, some big scale ones, some little more than a single parklet.

They're quite "connected" sort of projects: LTN, CPZ, community spaces etc are all closely related and interlinked.

As an aside, have a read of Lambeth's Kerbside Strategy which was published a couple of days ago. A lot of the sort of LTN, CPZ, placemaking etc is contained in that. Link in the tweet below.

[Rockets]

Lambeth's Kerbside Strategy is interesting and one we can all get behind but it does fall into the usual traps that those producing these materials always do which is they focus so much on the ideological objective that there is often very little detail on the strategy or tactics to get there - sell people on the vision not some of the realities of getting there.

For example :

- councils always default to the "only XX% of people in our borough own cars therefore cars are bad" and then they apply these programmes borough-wide without any consideration for variations in car ownership and the reason for those higher car ownership levels - so, for example, Southwark always bleats on about how many people own cars as a justification for LTNs etc but give no acknowledgement that the ownership figures in the north and south of the borough can vary massively nor the reasons for that (PTAL scores etc). So they dump LTNs in areas like Dulwich that have poor PTAL scores and so people are more reliant on cars.

- it doesn't do anything to address or understand the reason why people have cars in the first place or how/why they are used

- it does little to address how, at a time of reductions in public transport, what picks up the slack for journeys not done in a car? It's clear cycling is not the only answer but the one council's like to try and over-index on as if is solves every problem - the latest census data shows that for all the money invested in cycling it isn't delivering the desired results

- Slide 37 is probably the key slide as it is the Kerbside Pricing Principles - which may well be the underlying trojan horse - to start massively increasing the cost of car owners of on-street parking

It will be very interesting to see how it goes for Lambeth as, as many councils have found over LTNs, pretty pictures and "everything will be awesome" superlatives on their vision are very difficult to convert to reality.

[ab29]

I live on LL which has seen a massive increase in traffic since the road closures - so called ltn. It has made the traffic here much worst. More air pollution, more cars, more noise, much worst living conditions for the residents and ZERO enviromental benefits - on the contrary, idling traffic is making the pollution even worst.

What a great idea - push your crap to your neighbours garden and pretend the problem is solved.

[Rockets]

London the most congested city in the world....just look at the increase since the pandemic and how it compares to other cities and how they have performed since the pandemic.

London isn't working anymore....

https://inrix.com/press-releases/2022-global-traffic-scorecard-uk/

[CPR Dave]

Good find Rockets.

What a damning indictment that is of traffic management across London.

"[for] the second year in a row, [London] topped the Traffic Scorecard with drivers losing 156 hours sitting in congestion, five percent above pre-pandemic delays. "

[Rockets]

And Will Norman has some front with this tweet, he fails to realise that he is part of the problem and that just adding yet more cycle infrastructure is clearly not the answer.....I love the fact that he cites the bike lane on Blackfriars Road leading to a 5% increase in, one presumes, cycle traffic.....that isn't close to enough when you try to balance that against the negative impact that has had on buses and other transport modes around the area.

At some point you have to hope they are smart enough to realise that just adding more cycle infrastructure isn't going to magically fix the problem and that a city like London is more complicated from a journey perspective than they realise. It seems they have never bothered to properly understand the challenge.

[ab29]

Agree Rockets - I will never ever cycle in London, even tough I do outside of it. Miles and miles have been wasted on cycle lanes - it really shows after covid - cycle lanes empty all day long, squeezing cars and buses into reduced space.

LTN is an ideology and a very harmful one. Just look at the Underhill & South Circular junction today - Thames water dig out another hole near Esso petrol station in Forest Hill and the junction is absolutely and completely jammed - and even more so because of the Lewisham and Southwark ltns!

[ab29]

And if the fairy tales about the reduced traffic were true, why do I see more cars in front of my home and not fewer?

[Rockets]

And the most damning element of that report is that congestion is up 5% in London from pre-Covid levels - makes you, ahem, wonder what happened between pre-Covid and now......

Marry that with fact the report also states that when comparing UK cities every other city in the top 10 in the UK has managed to reduce congestion compared to pre-Covid it makes you wonder what on earth is being done to London.

I think London is being taken for a ride (no pun intended) and one day there will be a post-mortem on how the likes of Will Norman and his band of pro-cycling headbangers were allowed to ruin the city quite so much.

The decisions taken my the mayor's office and local councils in relation to LTNs etc is clearly an unmitigated disaster that is doing untold harm to the city and it's residents and instead of dealing with the mess they have created they are doubling down and making things worse.

[malumbu]

heartblock post

Long day at work is my only excuse...I was going to delete but then thought it was quite funny in a crazed sort of way. Sorry everyone.

Don't apologise, I found it very entertaining and some light relief from other long winded/obsessive posts that I can no longer be bothered replying too.

I've not added anything to the debate but let's face it, we are poles apart. Most of you are angry, some will resist anything seen to be an attack on the right to drive when you like, where you like, how you like, whereas a few of us support curbs on motoring, even the relatively blunt tools.

I'm off to bother the BBC and government about sustainable travel and behaviour change but there again I am on the side of the angel's.

[Rockets]

Malumbu - we finally agree on something...LTNs are very blunt tools and as we all know blunt tools are not very good at doing the job they were designed for....

Overwhelming evidence LTNs are continually failing to deliver on their stated goals no matter how much polishing of the turd the LTN supporters try to add.

Now London, a city where private car ownership has been dropping consistently over the years, is now grinding to a halt and is the world's most congested city - go figure....it's time for people on the pro-side to pull their heads out of the sand and take a step back and look at what is going on around them and admit it is time for another approach.

[heartblock]

There is some interesting data about car ownership inside LTNs and on boundary roads coming out of the last census- the main drift being a much higher car ownership inside than on boundary rds where residents complain of longer queues of idling traffic and slower bus journeys.

So- after my drama-rama I decided to partake of some mini-research and asked a friend living in the closest LTN to me to look at her 3 neighbours one side and 3 the other and count adults and cars across those 7 (including hers) properties. So....

Outside LTN - 21 adults in 7 properties (mainly flats) and 4 cars

Inside LTN - 14 adults in 7 properties (large semi-detached) and 15 cars

Unscientific.....but quite interesting.

[Rockets]

Yes aren't there a couple of roads within the LTNs where car ownership is 3 per household?

I saw non-Dulwich threads about other LTNs having the similar trends of very high car ownership within LTNs but maybe that is more a reflection of the areas that councils decide to locate LTNs (pandering to the very people who need to change driving habits).

What is probably more interesting is to see whether since LTNs went in whether there has been any decline in car ownership within the LTNS - which was something the council promised.

My hunch is that there hasn't been any.

[exdulwicher]

What is probably more interesting is to see whether since LTNs went in whether there has been any decline in car ownership within the LTNS - which was something the council promised.

My hunch is that there hasn't been any.

 

That takes years to filter through, not months. Most cars are on some sort of lease / finance deal and the introduction of an LTN is not going to make many folk go "right, that's it, I'll give the car up immediately!" - often because they can't (company car, on a lease deal etc). Research from the Waltham Forest LTNs / Mini-Hollands showed a 6% fall in vehicle ownership within LTNs after 2 years compared to a statistically insignificant change outside. The challenge is that you need DVLA data as well as residential info to measure it, it's really not something that can be counted by looking out the window at parked cars!

What can happen in the meantime is that the car is used less, especially if a viable alternative (like it being safer/quicker to walk/cycle etc) has been offered. That's been shown in the first couple of tranches of data from Southwark and Lambeth (the data that you don't believe, naturally...)

 

London the most congested city in the world....just look at the increase since the pandemic and how it compares to other cities and how they have performed since the pandemic.

 

Pedantically, it isn't, it's the most congested city where Inrix have data and they don't have data for most of SE Asia or Africa where there are vastly worse cities for congestion. But whatever. Interestingly, the average speed in London hasn't changed much for decades, it's been around about 10-12mph since the 1930's.

And most of the recent surge is down to this:

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/number-of-cars-in-central-london-surged-60-after-sadiq-khan-stopped-enforcing-it-in-evenings-b1052632.html

One of the few retrograde steps taken post-Covid. Make it easier / cheaper to drive and more people will drive. It's now (relatively) easy to get into town before 7am, park up, go to work, drive out again after 6pm. No charge. Or people will decide to go to a show / out for a meal etc in the evening and drive in when there's no CC and parking is cheaper.

But then again, congestion itself can be a tool for change:

https://www.dezeen.com/2023/01/11/congestion-roads-cities-traffic-sustainable-transport-phineas-harper/#

The issue again is one of ease - you make it easier / cheaper to drive and more people will drive so congestion rises. It reaches a peak where eventually some people will say "bollocks to this, I'll walk/ride/get the bus/train etc" which then reduces traffic which then makes people think "oh it's quicker to drive, I'll get in the car". It's a self-balancing system - we all see this in action whenever you say "I'll leave early to avoid the traffic" or "I'll wait for a later train to avoid the crush". Behaviour modification in the face of adverse conditions.

And without infrastructure changes, it'll keep doing that. If you add more roads and make it easier to drive, more people will drive. If you remove some roads and replace with a bus or cycle lane, more people will move to buses and cycling. People are lazy, they'll always take the easiest option. There are a few caveats around cost, reliability and journey time; some people are willing to pay more for a quicker journey for example.

[CPR Dave]

It's been more than two years since this debacle started though Ex Dulwicher.

I'm not sure why people like you and Malumbu who dont even live here are still so invested in pretending this has been successful though. (if we just wait a bit longer)

[Bic Basher]

Only in Dulwich can a project be such a monumental balls-up and they vote the Labour councillors back in!

[heartblock]

Most of the boundary roads are traditional Labour strongholds, so even a dip in the vote will not matter .

The gated rds are in swing seats, so they may vote Labour to keep their car storage and to keep their right to pollute my rd with fumes and noise while their rd is quiet and unpolluted.

Which rd had their community garden taken away from them - a boundary rd. Which rd with access to a huge park was given a ‘square of shame’ an LTN rd in a swing seat.

It’s obvious really.