Author Topic: LTNs - BMJ article  (Read 7556 times)

ian

Re: LTNs - BMJ article
« Reply #25 on: 02 March, 2021, 07:27:04 pm »
The problem is that none of the opposition to these schemes is logic-based so there is no amount of evidence, data, and rational discourse that will sway their opinion. That's a mistake a lot of campaigners seem to make (and not just this, pick your flavour of irrationality, and note they tend to cluster in one of those perfect circle venn diagrams). Honestly, sometimes you have to make it clear that it's a small minority with loud voices and make the case for a wider benefit, of which there usually is.

Jaded

  • The Codfather
  • Formerly known as Jaded
Re: LTNs - BMJ article
« Reply #26 on: 02 March, 2021, 08:34:20 pm »
They have also done the modal thing where the journey by car will be 2.5 miles but 400 metres if walking or cycling etc.

A sort of inverted SUSTRANS route?
It is simpler than it looks.

Cudzoziemiec

  • Ride adventurously and stop for a brew.
Re: LTNs - BMJ article
« Reply #27 on: 02 March, 2021, 09:30:09 pm »
They have also done the modal thing where the journey by car will be 2.5 miles but 400 metres if walking or cycling etc.

A sort of inverted SUSTRANS route?
Nah, that would also require drivers to lift their cars over gates with impossibly narrow openings or fold them in two to get through a 180-degree turn in half their own length.
Riding a concrete path through the nebulous and chaotic future.

Kim

  • Timelord
    • Fediverse
Re: LTNs - BMJ article
« Reply #28 on: 02 March, 2021, 09:35:10 pm »
It's only the last few decades we've been building cul-de-sacs that are inescapable by anything but car.

I believe the reasoning behind this is that permeability aids criminals.  By forcing everyone in and out by a single car-infested route you ...fight crime?

Re: LTNs - BMJ article
« Reply #29 on: 02 March, 2021, 09:40:24 pm »
One of the papers I've seen recently linked in an LTN related article did indeed show that crime was reduced in LTNs.
Rust never sleeps

Re: LTNs - BMJ article
« Reply #30 on: 03 March, 2021, 10:27:58 am »
It's only the last few decades we've been building cul-de-sacs that are inescapable by anything but car.

I believe the reasoning behind this is that permeability aids criminals.  By forcing everyone in and out by a single car-infested route you ...fight crime?

I have had this discussion with the police before, as a planning officer pushing for increased permeability in a new development. Criminal yoof escaping on BMXs etc. I suggested if the police were also on bikes (which tbf in London they sometimes are) it would be ok.

Safety has also been whined about re the LTN closest to me. They say it means you're more likely to be mugged or raped. As my posts upthread show, this is something I think about when planning routes especially at night, but I'm less concerned by residential streets overlooked by lots of windows. I mean I'll still walk with keys between my fingers at night but I do that regardless of whether it's an LTN. I don't think a ratrunning driver is going to be particularly useful in stopping something happening to me and if I'm on my bike then they're probably the problem. If your street is without much traffic noise (as mine is because it's a dead end) then you can hear everything going on outside and if there is any kind of commotion (as there sometimes is, it is the bad end of Croydon after all*) then it doesn't take long for curtains to twitch and heads to pop out.

*Last summer a woman responded to getting a parking ticket by screaming abuse at the parking warden then going to her boot, getting a metal baseball bat and attacking his car as he'd ran to hide in it. Sadly for her there were plain clothes police in the park nearby and they ran over and one rugby tackled her and got the baseball bat off her while she continued to scream. Don't judge me for curtain twitching, it was much more interesting than the online seminar I was supposed to be watching at the time.

ian

Re: LTNs - BMJ article
« Reply #31 on: 03 March, 2021, 11:29:28 am »
I think statistically you'd have to live in a particularly bad neighbourhood (and I don't even think Croydon is that bad, your still more likely to be run over in Wild West Croydon, but that's mostly down to the utterly atrocious driving rather than any urge amongst the locals to be law-abiding) to be at more risk of violent crime than being hit by a car and I'm not really clear on the logic of an LTN being more dangerous for violent and other crime. Like it to not, LTNs tend to more residential and middle-class areas by definition, poorer people are the ones that end up living by busy roads.

Re: LTNs - BMJ article
« Reply #32 on: 03 March, 2021, 11:42:50 am »
There've been a few people moaning on Next Door that they feel less safe walking at night with the constant rumble of through traffic suddenly gone.

Hopefully that's a short term thing and the traffic will be replaced by people out and about.

(or they're just talking shite)

Like it to not, LTNs tend to more residential and middle-class areas by definition, poorer people are the ones that end up living by busy roads.

All of the estates round here are LTNs as built (no through traffic). Plus a lot of the houses on leafy-looking streets are council-owned or divided into shonky bedsits and flatshares.

I'm in no way convinced that the flats on main roads are populated by a preponderance of poor people. Maybe the very rich *don't*, maybe there's a difference in average income, but that's not the same thing.

ian

Re: LTNs - BMJ article
« Reply #33 on: 03 March, 2021, 11:52:06 am »
It's a generalization, of course, a lot of those houses were initially on streets that probably didn't have high levels of traffic, and people will put up with a lot if it puts in the catchment area of a good school. Certainly, when we look to buy a house, a non-busy street is a high consideration and we're definitively middle class.

Surrey decided to switch off the streetlights after midnight a year or two back. Lots of uproar, of course. I'm not aware that the promised crime wave ever happened.

ian

Re: LTNs - BMJ article
« Reply #34 on: 04 March, 2021, 06:40:21 pm »
I won't make you read it as it's nothing that you won't have read before since I think they're written by an algorithm, but Mary Wakefield (wife of Dominic Cummings, also of no discernable talent or skill other than coming from a rich family and hanging around with other people of no discernable talent or skill other than coming from a rich family) has the usual dire piece in The Spectator that ticks every box. I will give them some credit, they've taken the cocaine-dealing youth on electric scooters trope using LTNs to turn your terribly middle-class neighbourhood into South Central and run – or rather drive, I suppose – with it.

Re: LTNs - BMJ article
« Reply #35 on: 04 March, 2021, 06:45:09 pm »
Hmmm. Not sure why I bothered. Usual drivel. I'd like to live in a world where people like that are utterly irrelevant.
Rust never sleeps

Re: LTNs - BMJ article
« Reply #36 on: 04 March, 2021, 07:14:47 pm »
There've been a few people moaning on Next Door that they feel less safe walking at night with the constant rumble of through traffic suddenly gone.

Hopefully that's a short term thing and the traffic will be replaced by people out and about.

(or they're just talking shite)
It’s funny how blind (or perhaps that should be accepting of) so many people are to the very real threat of mortal peril that motorised traffic brings, and how quick they are to over exaggerate the comparatively small risk of being deliberately attacked on the streets.

I suspect that your alternative explanation is closest to the truth.

Kim

  • Timelord
    • Fediverse
Re: LTNs - BMJ article
« Reply #37 on: 04 March, 2021, 09:28:42 pm »
Like it to not, LTNs tend to more residential and middle-class areas by definition

https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/q87fu/

cygnet

  • I'm part of the association
Re: LTNs - BMJ article
« Reply #38 on: 04 March, 2021, 10:58:32 pm »
There've been a few people moaning on Next Door that they feel less safe walking at night with the constant rumble of through traffic suddenly gone.

Hopefully that's a short term thing and the traffic will be replaced by people out and about.

(or they're just talking shite)
It’s funny how blind (or perhaps that should be accepting of) so many people are to the very real threat of mortal peril that motorised traffic brings, and how quick they are to over exaggerate the comparatively small risk of being deliberately attacked on the streets.

I suspect that your alternative explanation is closest to the truth.

I (as a >180cm white male)'ve learned that my risk perception wrt poorly lit streets/fear of attack is different to a lot of people.

As a frequent rider I've also learned that my perception of cycling is different to those who do not cycle "because it is too dangerous"

They are both problems that should be addressed, and the solution is NOT telling people that they are doing maths the wrong way.
Hopefully that's a short term thing and the traffic will be replaced by people out and about.people having less to be fearful about
I Said, I've Got A Big Stick

Re: LTNs - BMJ article
« Reply #39 on: 04 March, 2021, 11:38:55 pm »
Previously these people found some reassurance that there were cars going up and down the streets they were walking on. Without the cars it's too quiet. I can accept that, however irrational it might be. I'm weird enough to have deliberately moved from a very quiet flat to a very noisy one because I couldn't stand it.

My hope is that there'll be a lot more people out and about as time goes on. That's clearly evident on some streets already.

But, as I say, the LTN threads on nextdoor are so full of disingenuous loudmouths throwing literally any argument at the wall to see what sticks that it's hard to know if any of it is real.

ian

Re: LTNs - BMJ article
« Reply #40 on: 05 March, 2021, 09:52:33 am »
It's the same series of argument thrown at any of these changes (we had the same word-for-word when we had a home zone in Ealing in the early 2000s to the implementation of a 20 mph zone in Croydon in the later 2010s). They don't care about any of it. It's the old joke, how do you get a driver to care about pollution? Tell him he's going to have slow down.

I can't do Nextdoor, I glanced a while ago, and indeed, full of people griping about getting an FNP for driving down a street in Croydon. Now I don't even drive in Croydon and even I'm aware you can't drive down that street anymore, plus when I clicked a link to a photo of a nutcase standing up with a protest sign at the end of them street, behind him, on poles two huge 'road closed to traffic'-style signs clearly indicating that, no, driving any further will incur financial penalty. Ironically, the protest sign was illegible.

As with all change, if those same people didn't whine, it wouldn't be change.

Re: LTNs - BMJ article
« Reply #41 on: 05 March, 2021, 11:32:28 pm »
There've been a few people moaning on Next Door
[...]
they're just talking shite

It's NextDoor.

I can't do Nextdoor,

I signed up as an experiment, but lasted about an hour before I asked them to delete my account - you can't do it yourself - which took about 10 days. None of the digests I received in the interim came close to making me change my mind.

Re: LTNs - BMJ article
« Reply #42 on: 23 March, 2021, 10:21:23 am »
LTN's have hit Oxford and people are NOT happy.

My mate who lives in one, is particularly unhappy. He was explaining to me how awful it was now, because he couldn't drive directly to his 'fav' supermarket anymore, 0.6miles away. The awful diversion makes the journey a whopping 1.2 miles! That only leaves him with the choice of 2x other giant supermarkets 0.7 and 1.1 miles away. I was thinking of starting a JustGiving for him, to help with the loss.

Re: LTNs - BMJ article
« Reply #43 on: 23 March, 2021, 10:23:46 am »
As if sitting on your arse and pushing a couple of pedals in your cocooned metal cage required any effort.
Rust never sleeps

John Stonebridge

  • Has never ridden Ower the Edge
Re: LTNs - BMJ article
« Reply #44 on: 23 March, 2021, 02:03:34 pm »
If plans proceed our house will be inside a proposed LTN which would be excellent.  We live near one of the most polluted streets in Scotland so anything is worth a try (Id anticipate short term increase to traffic on St Johns Rd which would soon tail off) and closing local rat runs would make walking locally significantly more pleasant.

https://consultationhub.edinburgh.gov.uk/sfc/corstorphine-connections/supporting_documents/CorstorphineLTN%20consultation.pdf

Been speaking with the neighbours about it and some of the views I've heard expressed just beggar belief (but then Iv heard exactly the same arguments made by people who think they have a right to drive to work and have a parking space approximately the length of themselves away).   

Re: LTNs - BMJ article
« Reply #45 on: 23 March, 2021, 02:47:38 pm »
LTN's have hit Oxford and people are NOT happy.

My mate who lives in one, is particularly unhappy. He was explaining to me how awful it was now, because he couldn't drive directly to his 'fav' supermarket anymore, 0.6miles away. The awful diversion makes the journey a whopping 1.2 miles! That only leaves him with the choice of 2x other giant supermarkets 0.7 and 1.1 miles away. I was thinking of starting a JustGiving for him, to help with the loss.
They all look fairly sensible and cover a lot of the rat runs in those areas. That's good, because the rat runs are in residential streets. It's maybe a bit awkward for drivers, because the rat runs exist for a reason - East Oxford is kinda higgldy pigldy and while getting from the centre outwards (and vice versa) is easy, going perpendicular to that is restricted to only a few roads (now, the only way to get between Iffley and Cowley roads will be the ring road, Church Cowley Road (also residential, busy), and Magdalen road (also residential, brutal speed bumps), if you don't get into the mess of tiny residential roads near the plain). This plan will cause significant congestion on those roads (and all hell will break loose if there is an obstruction on the ring road).
You can see the areas easiest here:
https://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/19087719.cowley-low-traffic-neighbourhoods-mapped/

There's also this:
https://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/19179124.oxford-roads-close-part-school-streets-pilot-scheme/
Windmill is a large school, with a tiny middle class catchment - walking to school isn't going to be an imposition for most. It will be interesting to see how it affects EOPS - the catchment is much bigger and a lot of parents collected their kids by car (my daughter went there - if I collected her then I went by car on my way home from work).

Oxford City is clearly pushing for change (see also the zero emissions zone in the centre), and hopefully it will have a significant impact. As someone who lives outside the ring road, there need to be proper alternatives put in place that allow people to travel about the city (and not just in/out of the centre) - the cancellation of the PickMeUp bus is a big step backwards on that front. 

Re: LTNs - BMJ article
« Reply #46 on: 23 March, 2021, 04:13:54 pm »
LTN?

Jaded

  • The Codfather
  • Formerly known as Jaded
Re: LTNs - BMJ article
« Reply #47 on: 23 March, 2021, 04:16:00 pm »
If plans proceed our house will be inside a proposed LTN which would be excellent.  We live near one of the most polluted streets in Scotland so anything is worth a try (Id anticipate short term increase to traffic on St Johns Rd which would soon tail off) and closing local rat runs would make walking locally significantly more pleasant.

https://consultationhub.edinburgh.gov.uk/sfc/corstorphine-connections/supporting_documents/CorstorphineLTN%20consultation.pdf

Been speaking with the neighbours about it and some of the views I've heard expressed just beggar belief (but then Iv heard exactly the same arguments made by people who think they have a right to drive to work and have a parking space approximately the length of themselves away).   

Not surprising - Edinburgh, with a fantastic bus service, managed to vote against Congestion Charge, and splash £1bn on a Tram.
It is simpler than it looks.

Re: LTNs - BMJ article
« Reply #48 on: 23 March, 2021, 04:52:03 pm »
LTN?
Low Traffic Neighbourhood. You create one by taking all the rat runs and bunging a giant planter in the middle of the road so cars can't get past (but bikes and pedestrians can).

Re: LTNs - BMJ article
« Reply #49 on: 23 March, 2021, 06:19:24 pm »
There've been a few people moaning on Next Door that they feel less safe walking at night with the constant rumble of through traffic suddenly gone.

Hopefully that's a short term thing and the traffic will be replaced by people out and about.

(or they're just talking shite)

Like it to not, LTNs tend to more residential and middle-class areas by definition, poorer people are the ones that end up living by busy roads.

All of the estates round here are LTNs as built (no through traffic). Plus a lot of the houses on leafy-looking streets are council-owned or divided into shonky bedsits and flatshares.

I'm in no way convinced that the flats on main roads are populated by a preponderance of poor people. Maybe the very rich *don't*, maybe there's a difference in average income, but that's not the same thing.


I’ve known people who got scared when they moved to the country, as it was too quiet. I think they justify their feelings when change occurs rather than the lack of traffic being the cause.

As to Next Door. I tried it and got rid. If nothing else it was eye opening to learn how vituperative, vindictive and just generally unpleasant some of our bearish neighbours are.