A controversial low traffic neighbourhood (LTN) scheme is to be scrapped after it turned a three-mile bus journey into a two hour crawl. The Telegraph has more.
The scheme, at Streatham Wells, south London, has been suspended by Labour-run Lambeth council after it caused huge traffic congestion in the suburb.
The local authority, which announced the U-turn on Thursday, admitted the scheme had caused an 8% increase in traffic on boundary roads
One bus reportedly took 121 minutes to travel just 2.9 miles after the A23 arterial road, which runs along one side of the LTN, became heavily congested with traffic trying to avoid the scheme.
The about turn comes after Sadiq Khan described the LTN as a “huge problem” earlier this month. It is the first time he has criticised one of the schemes.
Speaking after the decision, a spokesman for the Mayor of London suggested it was “the right thing to do”.
Councillors implemented the LTN scheme last year as part of an 18-month trial intended to improve air quality by blocking vehicles from accessing certain residential streets.
But local campaigners, including the Streatham LTN Watch group, said the schemes merely displace traffic onto neighbouring roads and worsen congestion around the fringes.
The backlash, which led to protests from a 60-strong crowd outside the council’s HQ in Lambeth Town Hall, Brixton, has forced the authority to backtrack on the scheme.
Worth reading in full.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
Sadiq the LTN – Little Terrible Nuisance
Can’t scrap the lot though, can he? That would upset his C40 minders.
Lousy…
Restricting traffic in one area increases it in surrounding areas – only a conspiracy theorist would have predicted that. It’s almost as if the people using the roads all have very good reasons for doing so and are determined to make their journeys.
They should call it an STN…a slow traffic neighbourhood.
Since they like attributing individual deaths to motor vehicle pollution which people died because of these jams?
CORRECTION:
The only individual death ‘attributed to air pollution‘ in the entire world was based on unchallenged expert evidence: “Key witnesses to the Inquest, including Dr Claire Holman and Professor Sir Stephen Holgate, had expressed the need for setting health-based targets for air pollution reduction.”
With unchallenged expert evidence the Coroner has no choice but to accept it.
And the death was not “caused by” air pollution.
According to the Coroner, the death was caused by asthma. The child had extreme asthma.
So had the NHS investigated the causes of the child’s extreme asthma she and her family should have been rehoused away from the South Circular road in London:
“Ella died of asthma contributed to by exposure to excessive air pollution.” “Ella’s mother “was not given information about the health risks of air pollution and its potential to exacerbate asthma”. The lack of information also possibly contributed to her death.”
So had the NHS investigated the causes of the child’s extreme asthma she and her family should have been rehoused away from the South Circular road in London.
And this does not seem to be correct: “Ella died of asthma contributed to by exposure to excessive air pollution.”
A more accurate statement is “Ella died of asthma contributed to by exposure to air pollution which was excessive for someone with her particular extreme asthma.”
So when you read the ridiculous numbers of alleged air pollution deaths all based on ‘estimates’ none of them are real air pollution deaths but estimates based on the usual ‘modelling’ and epidemiology which we are all now so used to knowing we cannot trust.
The fact this is the only death worldwide attributed to air pollution should ring the alarm bells about citing this as evidence air pollution all by itself kills people.
It certainly used to when the main form of heating in london was open fires in people’s homes and the famous London ‘pea-souper’ fogs were part of daily life. But then we got legislation to clean everything up with smokeless fuels later followed by natural gas central heating.
Plus cars have catalytic converters to reduce emissions.
It has all gotten a lot better since the 1950s and earlier.
When I was young all the buildings in london were dark grey because they were covered in soot.
London now is unrecognisable. Take a look at some of the old movies on TV and check out the colour of the buildings compared to now.
One step back for the little tyrants. But they will now be planning how to turn it into a NTN …. no traffic neighbourhood.
Soon to be a “no-people-neighbourhood”.