Sam Petherick
Richmond’s transport chief has made a passionate argument for the protected cycle lane on Kew Road after a petition was launched calling for its immediate cancellation.
Locals are said to be “furious” about the lane, saying the removal of parking outside Kew Gardens has led to visitors taking spaces outside their homes.
Residents of Kew Green, where coaches carrying visitors to the gardens are now being re-routed, have also expressed their worries about a rise in pollution.
The cycle lane consists of three sections roughly 500m each on both sides of the road. A system of raised posts (known as wands and armadillos) separates cyclists from vehicular traffic.
It was unveiled in late September as Richmond’s first protected cycle space and will last for 18 months with the first six acting as a consultation phase.
Cllr Alexander Ehmann (Lib Dems) is deputy leader of Richmond Council and chair of the Transport and Air Quality Committee.
Pop-up cycle lane from government cycling promo scrapped despite council backing | road.cc
Scheme had huge support from local schools with usage peaking at 3pm each day
A popular pop-up cycle lane that featured in a government video promoting cycling investment is to be scrapped – even after the council voted to keep it. Campaigners say the decision was taken before the project had even been completed.
As we’ve previously reported, the segregated cycle lane on Upper Shoreham Road in Shoreham-on-Sea as much as tripled cycling levels without impacting car journeys. The route serves a hospital and several schools.
Mail on Sunday peddling ‘alternative facts’ on impact of cycle lanes on emergency services, says Cycling UK | road.cc
Cycling UK says that the Mail on Sunday is peddling “alternative facts” on the impact of cycle lanes on the emergency services after it quoted a spokesman for the College of Paramedics claiming that cycling infrastructure and low traffic neighbourhoods were delaying ambulances and putting people’s lives at risk.
The claim, made in an article published today, is one that has regularly been employed in recent months by opponents of emergency active travel infrastructure, although it is not supported by facts, says the national cycling charity.
Barcelona is redesigning 21 downtown streets to prioritize people, not cars – fast company
ADELE PETERS
It’s a light version of the city’s revolutionary car-free neighborhood superblock program, but in a more central area.
In central Barcelona, one in three streets will soon become “green axes” that prioritize people on foot and bikes instead of cars. On those streets, 21 intersections will be converted to public squares, so no one in the area is more than around 650 feet from a small park.
“We want Barcelona to be a sustainable city, to be a livable city,” Janet Sanz, the city’s deputy mayor for ecology, urbanism, and mobility said in a recent interview. “And we understand that today in our public spaces, we have a lot of social and community activities, but they are dominated by private transportation, both moving cars and parked cars.”
LTNs ‘send important signal’ to City Hall on tackling main road congestion, says transport chief – Hackney Citizen
Hackney Council’s transport chief has said that the imposition of Low Traffic Neighbourhoods (LTNs) “send an important signal” to City Hall on the need for the delivery of “radical solutions” to tackle congestion on London’s main roads.
The Town Hall announced four days ago that the introduction of the borough’s three LTNs in Hoxton West, London Fields and Hackney Downs have not caused a rise in traffic levels at its monitoring sites on five A- and B- roads, according to Transport for London (TfL) data.
Nevertheless, Cllr Jon Burke has argued that, in discouraging motor vehicles from travelling through residential neighbourhoods, the council is sending a message to London Mayor Sadiq Khan about the need to tackle congestion on main roads, and suggested road user pricing as one option.
Burke said: “It’s clear to me that LTNs are an important tool in ensuring that an overloaded main road network does not continue to be tolerated by policy makers. Our neighbourhoods have become pressure release valves for the main road network.
“We will no longer allow Silicon Valley billionaires to monetise the value of our residential roads by sending through-traffic along them which they were not designed to accommodate. A consequence is that a significant change to the way drivers now get around the streets of our borough.
LTNs Do Not Cause Gridlock, Finds Traffic-Count Analysis – Forbes
Carlton Reid12:14pm EST
The introduction of Hackney’s LTNs over the summer did not cause a rise in traffic levels at nearby monitoring sites beside main roads, found an analysis of Transport for London (TfL) traffic data.
New analysis ‘recommends that London boroughs without LTNs introduce them – transportxtra
LTNs enjoy majority support as a planning tool and this has been growing. However, they are controversial when introduced, and it is important to get details right as well as to allow trials time to bed in and for monitoring and evaluation
An analysis of Low Traffic Neighbourhoods (LTNs) has been published by Possible, a UK based climate charity working towards a zero carbon society, the KR Foundation and the ActiveTravel Academy. LTNs are increasingly being used in London and other cities and countries to reduce through motor traffic in residential areas, aiming also to increase local walking and cycling.
The analysis, written by Professor Rachel Aldred and Dr Ersilia Verlinghieri of the Active Travel Academy, is the third report written as part of the Car-Free Megacities project funded by the KR Foundation and led by Possible. It examines the location and geographical extension of LTNs introduced in London between March and September 2020, and disparities between boroughs.
You Have No ‘Right’ To Drive A Car Through Our Neighbourhoods, Even If It’s Electric | HuffPost UK
It’s time private cars were placed at the bottom of the transport hierarchy, writes Jon Burke.
“Not TV or illegal drugs but the automobile has been the chief destroyer of…communities,” the late heroine of human-scale cities, Jane Jacobs, once declared.
This sentiment – with which I wholeheartedly agree – is clearly shared. Following the prime minister’s announcement that no new petrol and diesel cars and vans will be sold in the UK beyond 2030, I tweeted that Hackney would be ready to respond with one of the largest electric vehicle charging programmes in the UK.
But outraged Twitter followers were quick to remind me that “electric vehicles will not save us!”.
The uncomfortable truth is, when it comes to the motor vehicle, we cannot live with them, but we cannot – entirely – live without them.
Environmentalists are right to be sceptical of the latest government announcement. Not only will no single measure address the major challenge of our ballooning land transport emissions, but this specific one will have limited impact on the UK’s ability to hit the IPCC’s “higher confidence” 2030 target of 45% fewer global warming emissions than 2010.
It will also, manifestly, not address many other problems arising from our growing addiction to cars. But, environmentalists would be wrong to presume that the proposal is entirely without merit.
“Addiction” might seem like an overstatement, but the statistics speak for themselves. In less than 30 years, the number of motor vehicles on our roads has almost doubled to 40 million, and this phenomenon has been accelerating, with around half of that growth coming in the last decade alone.
London hospital trust to pay £250k to install LTN for public health benefits | The Guardian
Guy’s and St Thomas’ charity will fund low-traffic neighbourhood to tackle air pollution and obesity in Lambeth and Southwark
Carlton ReidTue 17 Nov 2020
The health and social benefits of reducing motor traffic are so substantial that a hospital charity is paying to install temporary low-traffic neighbourhood (LTN) measures in a London borough.
Southwark council will be given £250,000 by the Guy’s and St Thomas’ Charitable Trust to install planters and removable bollards in three areas.
Low-traffic neighbourhoods are areas where measures have been taken to reduce traffic and improve access for cyclists and pedestrians. They have been popping up around the country in recent months, and last week transport secretary Grant Shapps announced a £175m fund to support more LTNs.
A similar plan was ditched by Labour in 2007, after an online petition against it gathered 1.7m signatures within days.
Mythbusters: eight common objections to LTNs – and why they are wrong | The Guardian
Low-traffic neighbourhoods have existed for decades but plans often spark fierce debate. We look at some of the biggest concerns
Not all low-traffic neighbourhoods (LTNs) are perfect, or do exactly what is intended. But often the objections are based on assumptions that vary from the misplaced to the downright incorrect. Here are some of the myths.
They disproportionately benefit privileged people
It is often argued that because many LTNs focus on residential streets and because property prices tend to be lower on busier roads, all the schemes do is push pollution and noise towards poorer people. But the evidence does not bear this out. A University of Westminster study found that among all age, income and ethnic groups, almost 90% of people live on roads that could be part of an LTN, and that there were few noticeable differences across the various demographics.
More generally, moves to reduce overall motor traffic, which LTNs aim to do, tend to help poorer households, which are less likely to own and use cars but still suffer the impact of their ubiquity.