Monday’s Friday Reads – 10 August 2020

1. “london’s Low Traffic Streets
   Not everyone is a fan
   Too right – I am now “boxed in” by restricted zones on each side … the local erm “council” 9LBWF) conducted surveys of people ” INSIDE these zones, but not people on the outside – so that “Do you want to be closed in” was asked of people inside, but NOT “Do you want ot be shut out” of those outside.
   This has now happened twice & my local block is now comppletely closed in – & we were never, ever asked.
   Total fail of democratic accountability, before one even considers that pollution & congestion has, in fact, got worse, oops.

2. The Swiss policy seems especially significant given the journey time specified – 6 hours – this is more than I think anyone would have anticipated.

3. The report on Camberwell station once again brings up the issue of additional delays to other passengers caused by an extra station stop. As long ago as 1978, the Advisory Committee on Trunk Road Assessment questioned the value of small time savings and suggested that they should be ignored. That should also hold true for railways. In reality, and whatever models may say, a 2 minute extra delay or a 2 minute time saving is not likely to have any significant impact on passenger numbers when expectations are that train services will only be plus or minus 5 minutes in terms of punctuality. A good rule of thumb would be to ignore time savings or increases when these are less than 10% of the journey time for short journeys and 5% for longer journeys.

4. My feeling from the hoo haa about the local LTNs is that people are happy when the LTN is the street they live on, but not happy if it inconveniences their own personal car journeys. Some form of “OIMBY” – Only In My Back Yard – scenario.

   However I do feel that if you do set up LTNs you do need to ensure that the ‘approved rights of ways’ are effective enough to hold the traffic, and don’t have massive blockages for five months that are causing their own issues. Yes, Crystal Palace and the Scaffolding In The Road after that car hit the building, because the insurers can’t come to an agreement, I’m looking at you.

5. If you want to reduce air pollution you need to either reduce demand, or provide alternatives, for private car trips.

   LTNs are a very cheap (and therefore popular) way of doing both.

   They not only make it harder to drive (reducing demand for short trips), they also make walking short trips more pleasant for most – because they have low-traffic route options.

   This obviously doesn’t work for every trip, but, given that most trips in London are short, the combination of the two effects should be significantly for air quality and average quality of life.

6. Bob
   My local LTN(s) are INCREASING pollution
   On Monday I had to use the car – transporting “stuff” & then going on elsewhere …
   The 3-minute first segmentt of the journey took 8 minutes …..
   And the one place on a local main road that really needs a cycle lane – doesn’t have one ….

7. Greg.
   The data doesn’t agree with you. Pollution level in LBWF are down.
   https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EfPWO69XoAEuj5I?format=jpg&name=medium

8. #IslandDweller #Greg
   I think the time period of the data cited (2007 vs 2017) is not helpful to test the point Greg makes. Probably what you are seeing there is mainly the effect of tightening vehicle emissions regulations. That made a big difference over most of that period. The issues with Volkswagengating the Euro 6 regulation, and SUV-related emissions growth, only start to come in as a material factor towards the end of that period.

   More generally, the broad type of thing that Greg mentions does raise conflicts between people. For example, consider the planning enquiry over the Torrington Place cycle lane, (in Camden, south of Euston) which made part of TPl one-way for motor vehicles to widen the cycle lanes.* A lot of residents on other roads in the neighbourhood complained that this would increase traffic on roads the TP traffic was displaced to; that it it would increase some journey distances quite substantially; that it would more frequently tip roads over into near gridlock as traffic levels were often near the tipping point where flow breaks down. Just the kind of points Greg makes. And indeed everyone would prefer traffic should be somewhere else from where they are and where they want to drive.

   But overall we see a trend, going on for a long time now, of a substantial reduction in motor traffic volumes in central London. On the one hand, one can argue that it is reasonable to reallocate some of the road-space away from motor traffic because there is less of it. Clearly that will concentrate traffic in places where you leave it with capacity. On the other hand, probably part of that reduction, even much of it, comes from making it so annoying to drive in central London people increasing strain not to.

   More generally, it relates to the argument “If you expand roads, it will only increase traffic” that people trying to oppose road expansion often make. Of course that much is quite plainly true. Why would you increase road capacity unless you expected it to be used? The real question is to what extent it is reasonable, and in what locations, to discourage traffic by making it, or leaving it, very annoying to drive in those places. It is a difficult philosophical question. I certainly don’t have an answer.

   It reminds me of what Dutch people say: “You can drive a car in Amsterdam, but it is your own fault”.

   *TfL lost that enquiry, mainly because they failed to do some before/after traffic measurements properly. The Inspector thus found that they had not evidenced their key point. That is not the same thing as the key point being false: I would be rather surprised if it was false. Maybe that is why TfL didn’t try very hard to demonstrate it, they expected it to be believed. Nevertheless apparently this is how Planning Inspectors feel they must rule in such a situation. But TfL found a legal excuse to totally ignore the result of the enquiry, which must have left the people who thought they had won apoplectic.

9. I do sympathise with those being forced to adapt to difficult consequences of the LTNs.

   If the pandemic has reminded us all of one thing, it’s that sometimes the greater good has to come at the expense of some personal inconveniences.

   Years ago I worked in Australia for a while, and heard a lot of Aussies talk about “whinging poms” – they have a general view that British people spend a lot of our time moaning about everything. I didn’t think much of this until I came back to London, and immediately noticed that they were absolutely right. It’s a national mental illness. We like to moan incessantly about the most pathetic, insignificant get-over-yourself first-world-problem things. I’m afraid I would put some of the LTN grumbling into this category.

10. It is almost a definition that LTNs increase car trip times for some people (including some trips that can only be made by car).

    But by doing so, they make walking or cycling or taking the bus** faster and more attractive for some trips.

    You can’t just use anecdotal evidence that some trips are longer to write the schemes off – you need some actual testing and monitoring over a long period to see how behaviour actually changes as a whole.

    Many of the angriest consultation comments provide evidence that trips are being reduced; people now walking the 0.5 miles to the shop instead of driving etc.

    **Some schemes include bus gates, so buses can cut through LTNs even where cars can’t.

11. Another interesting idea I’ve seen, is that we should comparing trip times not just between whether the LTN is there or not, but the amount of congestion in each situation too. By reducing the number of cars going through the LTN, it is likely that it speeds up the journey overall for the cars still there in most cases

12. Island Dweller
    The is LBWF
    They are [Snip! LBM] very carefully picking their monitoring points
    The pollution on the roads over which traffic is now being forced is going up
    { I can tell by my nose, it’s that obvious! ) – but that’s not where they are measuring.

    Data point: London’s air is cleaner, now than it has ever been.
    In fact it’s obvious from the plant & other “vegetable-like” life that is growing in profusion, that was never seen here in former years.

13. The outside of the zones is bound to be worse to start off with, but ‘traffic evaporation’ also seems to be a possible consequence, such as alluded to here: https://www.icevirtuallibrary.com/doi/abs/10.1680/muen.2002.151.1.13

    I have seen similar road filtering come into effect locally. It always follows a pattern of:
    1) First few days when a lot of traffic transgresses any navigable obstacles such as no entry signs and bus gates, and things snarl up while people get used to new routes
    2) General compliance within a month or so
    3) What was all the fuss about? and who in their right mind would undo the flood gates again?

    What I find more of a concern is how under-used the new cycle infrastructure remains. For anyone on short-ish trips and who is able, sitting in a jam on the newly throttled Euston Road and seeing the odd bike whizz by ought to be a ‘no brainer’ incentive to do the same. I guess people are still too plain scared or just refuse to make the leap of imagination. You don’t need all that lycra and kit either. I remain hopeful that people may start to ‘twig’ when good bits of infrastructure become properly joined up with each other. At any rate, it was never a God-given right to clog the streets up ever larger lumps of metal that are too often far bigger than necessary to convey what they usually convey.

14. Disabled people can no longer enter or leave taxis on the Euston Road because the little used cycle lane blocks access to the kerbside. Emergency vehicles trying to het to UCH are caught up in the gridlock. In Hackney the residents of the Walford Road area voted against the access restrictions and yet they are still being implemented. In Islington a main roundabout on the A1 (Highbury Corner) was redesigned to cut down on car access and increase bus access before the pandemic hit – the 277 bus route was also cut short terminating at Dalston instead of Islington. However, Islington is now directing even more traffic toward Highbury Corner by blocking access to nearly all alternative routes. The gridlock and increased pollution is real. Islington’s own figures show the side roads (the ones Islington are blocking) contributed 6% of the NOX figures, whereas the main roads (the ones Islington are adding traffic to) contributed 43%. There should be more debate around local road closures with a range of options developed and a vote held to decide the way forward. One option would be to restrict access to 50% of the roads for 12 months at a time, with a switch over of access control / no access control every year (say on 1st May). That way you are getting a greener environment without causing massive inconvenience to local residents and gridlock on major roads

15. This Sustrans report is interesting, and speaks to my previous remarks on what keeps cycling from becoming a normal activity – and LTNs play a part.
    https://www.sustrans.org.uk/our-blog/research/all-themes/all/inclusive-cycling-in-cities-and-towns/

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