Low Traffic Neighbourhoods

[Cudzoziemiec]

Low traffic neighbourhoods or mini-Hollands have been all the rage, and predictably enraging for the usual suspects, over the last few years. People react to them, both positively and negatively, far more than to a couple of closed roads yet they're really nothing more than a series of strategically positioned road closures presented as a scheme and given a name. Haven't we been doing this for decades? Yes we have:

LTNs have been perhaps the most contested element of our recent cycling
and walking programme – though the concept, under various names, has
been widespread for decades. Many of the LTNs in England existed before
2020, in some cases since the 1970s. It is estimated that more than 25,000
road closures of the type used in LTNs existed before the pandemic.

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1007815/gear-change-one-year-on.pdf
Good, let's carry on. No need for a name, unless you really want one.

That document goes on to say that traffic data shows in most cases, traffic is not displaced from the LTNs to the surrounding roads but removed completely:

But it also shows that a common claim about the LTNs – that they simply
displace traffic to other roads – is in most cases not happening. Sometimes
it did happen at the beginning, as travel patterns adjusted. But now the
schemes have been in place for longer, councils are also reporting reductions
in traffic on most (though not yet all) of the roads around the LTNs.

LTNs work because the people living in them, several thousand in each area,
change their travel behaviour – taking fewer short local journeys by car and
walking or cycling more. This takes local traffic away from the surrounding
roads too. On those roads, the reduction in these local car journeys appears,
in most though not in all cases, to outweigh any increase caused by the
diversion of longer-distance car journeys by people passing through.

[Feanor]

I'm not sure where this post belongs; I don't think it's here.
But anyways.

'Shocking' Hull A63 crossing attempt caught on CCTV

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-england-humber-58345196

Surely the most shocking thing is how we have made our cities so impenetrable to people, cut across by vast motorways where people are neither welcome or accommodated.

[grams]

The crazy thing about the motorway through Hull is there’s nothing beyond it. It’s filled entirely with people who shoulda got the bus.

[ian]

You'd think that after 'several incursions' Highways England would have got the clue that whatever 'alternative facilities' they have in place are for pedestrians, in fact (and as usual), a pile of wank.

[Jaded]

The crazy thing about the motorway through Hull is there’s nothing beyond it. It’s filled entirely with people who shoulda got the bus.

The amazing thing about the motorway through Hull is that they built lanes going into Hull as well as the desired ones going out!

[John Stonebridge]

I'm not sure where this post belongs; I don't think it's here.
But anyways.

'Shocking' Hull A63 crossing attempt caught on CCTV

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-england-humber-58345196

Surely the most shocking thing is how we have made our cities so impenetrable to people, cut across by vast motorways where people are neither welcome or accommodated.

Reminds me of the Western Approach Road in Edinburgh where cyclists and pedestrians are banned, but its pretty much a daily occurence that pedestrians are seen walking on the verge with 4 lanes of traffic whizzing by (especially folk heading out from the city centre towards Fountainpark with its cinema and other stuff). 

There is actually a reasonable pedestrian alternative that's only a tiny bit longer but of course its not signposted.   

[Cudzoziemiec]

Wow. Yeah, that's an "extra high traffic neighbourhood". Or even a "non-neighbourhood" neighbourhood. It's not just the roads like that where people are neither welcomed nor accommodated, but whole areas.

As for "risking lives" as far as I can see, he's "only" risking his own life.

[Kim]

I'm not sure where this post belongs; I don't think it's here.
But anyways.

'Shocking' Hull A63 crossing attempt caught on CCTV

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-england-humber-58345196

Surely the most shocking thing is how we have made our cities so impenetrable to people, cut across by vast motorways where people are neither welcome or accommodated.

Well that and he's carrying what appears to be a BEER can, rather than a GPS for VeloViewer tile purposes.

[Cudzoziemiec]

Which reminds me I discovered something mildly annoying about the set-up of my Etrex on Thursday. Nothing to do with beer, veloviewer or even traffic though.

[hubner]

For those in North London and who use Cycleway 1 (CS1), Hackney Council has introduced LTNs around Stoke Newington Church Street, which started last week.



CS1 in the area used to be quite nasty, with aggressive and speeding rat runners making cycling really unpleasant. These are narrrow residential streets with parked cars on both sides. Then a while ago, they put in some modal filters and that vastly reduced the rat runners. The latest filters should cut them out completely.

More details and have your say at:

https://rebuildingagreenerhackney.commonplace.is/proposals/stoke-newington

[ian]

I experienced an LTN in Dulwich yesterday (living in zone 6, we don't acknowledge the existence of anything that doesn't arrive in a car), a junction that now hosted a band, playing kids, and generally lots of people frequenting local shops and cafes, as opposed to just driving through. I couldn't help but notice all the signs had been vandalized at some point. People really are a bit mad, it seems a brilliant concept.

Noted all those anti-LTN signs, more typically than not outside houses with an oversized SUV in the garden. They want to stop the 'traffic displacement,' I guess the idea is that it's OK to drive down someone else's street, just not theirs, OK.

[Mr Larrington]

Whatever happened to play streets, such as this one graphically demonstrated by a trademarked Urchin in 1954?

[Kim]

They got filled with cars, obviously.

[telstarbox]

They do still exist but have been somewhat replaced by Home Zones which you may see out and about:

https://www.sabre-roads.org.uk/wiki/index.php?title=Home_Zone

[Cudzoziemiec]

https://playingout.net
is closer to the play street idea, I think.

[grams]

We have (or had) a few monthly play streets round here. The sign for the one nearby was still rather forlornly announcing one for March 2020 last time I looked.

[ian]

We used to live on a home zone street in West Ealing. Oh the familiar wailing from a vocal minority of (often non-)locals when that was proposed, the tired dirge of the bereft motorist facing a journey of mere metres more and seconds longer, along with the lamentations of an unimaginable loss of about one metric parking space*. No idea if it's still there (anyone in the vicinity of Hasting Road, W12 can check – Google apparently thinks so).

*so modest was the implementation, I think it actually added parking spaces.

[phantasmagoriana]

Birmingham's set to become a "super-sized" LTN, apparently: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/oct/04/birmingham-to-become-a-super-sized-low-traffic-neighbourhood

[Cudzoziemiec]

Birmingham's set to become a "super-sized" LTN, apparently: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/oct/04/birmingham-to-become-a-super-sized-low-traffic-neighbourhood

Seems to be a misleading headline. It's not one super-sized LTN, it's seven.

Twenty-five per cent of the city’s car journeys are one mile or shorter, Zaffar said. To convert people to cleaner and healthier forms of transport, the city, including the central area, will be split into seven zones, and rather than driving directly between zones, motorists will be diverted via the A4540 ring road.

Which suggests they'll be pretty ordinary LTNs, or traffic cells as I've also heard them described (I think the idea is plant cells with impermeable walls with limited stomata rather than prison cells, though doubtless the usual suspects will liken them to jail).

Equally importantly:

Birmingham will pedestrianise further parts of the city centre and reduce the availability of car parking through the removal of spaces, steeply increased pricing and clamping down on footway parking.

I hope the bit about footway parking is true.

[grams]

A cell/LTN is defined by its boundary roads that carry through traffic. So it is a single LTN.

[Cudzoziemiec]

Whatever you call it (maybe a low traffic neighbourhood divided into seven cells), it sounds like you won't be able to drive directly from, let's say, North St to South Rd, East Way or West Av, although they're all within the ring road.

[Kim]

And thanks to a combination of one-way streets that spit you out onto the Queensway, tramlines and the Christmas Sodding Market, you won't be able to cycle between them either.

[Cudzoziemiec]

Map from Carlton Reid:

[Kim]

More details can be seen at https://www.birminghambeheard.org.uk/economy/segments/

[Cudzoziemiec]

And another twitter thread, pointing out that while Birmingham is saying "Ghent model" loud and proud, Bristol is implementing the same model but pretending it's something else entirely.
https://twitter.com/steinsky/status/1445014971620990976?s=20

Though TBF the area covered in Bristol is much, much smaller, and not just cos it's a smaller city. The pink streets are basically a shopping centre (Broadmead for those that know it), the blue is basically Queen Square, and neither of those have had through traffic since the 90s.