6 minute read
Low traffic neighbourhoods: How did we get here, and where are we going?
Ralph Smyth charts the recent public trajectory of ‘low traffic neighbourhoods’ (LTNs), and gives context to their future as part of a greener, better-connected public realm.
In May 2020, weeks after the start of lockdown, the government published new guidance telling councils to “make significant changes to their road layouts to give more space to cyclists and pedestrians”. ¹ The benefits for wellbeing, air quality, noise, climate and local economies were also mentioned, as was fitness. Perhaps surprisingly, low traffic neighbourhoods (LTNs) were not. Instead, there was a mention of “modal filters” (also known as filtered permeability), in other words the underlying measures that allowed people who were walking and cycling through access, but not those driving.
In July 2020 the Department for Transport (DfT) published Gear Change, described as a “bold vision for delivering a permanent and long-term increase in cycling and walking”, but the meaning of LTNs remained undefined until summer 2023 when a review was announced, describing an LTN as a “transport scheme which seeks to remove, or substantially reduce, motorised through-traffic from a residential area through the use of traffic-signed restrictions or physical features such as planters”. Measures that restrict driving on existing roads typically attract opposition in the run-up to and immediately after their introduction, and it was in London that LTNs and opposition to them took off.
Many people feel a lack of consultation contributed to LTNs’ image problem and that the perceived rush to install them in 2020 was particularly problematic. While plans at the height of the pandemic positioned themselves as “a once in a generation opportunity to deliver a lasting transformative change”, the realities of the pandemic also meant that usual consultation methods such as public meetings were impractical. This led some to say they did not feel they were being listened to, others to even claim that LTNs were an affront to democracy. By February 2023, ministers had commissioned a briefing on preventing ‘15-minute city’ measures, which referred to restrictions on driving.
Over the spring of 2023, work progressed “to drop some commitments which no longer seem to chime with current priorities”, such as a community right to close streets burdened by people driving through. Tactical notes on media handling proposed to do this “quietly”, with the shift in policy reaching a crescendo at the Conservative Party conference that October. “What is sinister, and what we shouldn’t tolerate,” Secretary of State for Transport, Mark Harper, announced, “is the idea that local councils can decide how often you go to the shops, and that they can ration who uses the roads and when, and that they police it all with CCTV.”
Alongside the speech, ministers published their Plan for Drivers, saying it was wrong some drivers should feel under attack, and cancelled key guidance for local authorities. The result of its withdrawal meant policies supporting the creation of school streets, pedestrian zones, safer cycle lanes and reliable bus routes were cancelled. When a new version was published in March 2024, it failed to fill the policy gap for these other measures, as well as leaving out important advice on equalities, such as helping people with visual impairments navigate changed street layouts.
Concurrently to all of this, the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities had actually rebuffed a Parliamentary petition against 15-minute cities in March 2023, saying that far from limiting freedom, they were actually about creating.
high quality places… ensuring key services are located close to development...to provide people with more choice about how and where they travel.
Indeed, rather than being restrictive, they are about moving away from areas zoned as residential, shopping or offices, towards creating a more organic, vibrant mix.
The Labour Party had stayed mostly quiet on the matter, until the media revealed a connection between so-called 15-minute city conspiracy theories and changes in government policy. Shadow roads minister Bill Esterson noted, “The negative comments about Low Traffic Neighbourhoods and 20 mph zones in residential areas all came as a result of the conspiracy theories on the internet, not as the result of evidence from the real world.”
Looking ahead, the key battleground remains whether measures, seen by some as “dictating travel choices” are needed to meet environmental targets and quality of life ambitions. The Plan for Drivers asserts that environmental concerns don’t justify “anti-driver measures”, but even mainstream motoring bodies like the RAC Foundation acknowledge meeting climate targets without cutting car use would be like “trying to climb Everest on a bad day”.
Although there are no targets for climate adaptation, as weather becomes ever more extreme and unpredictable, swathes of grey in urban areas will need to be turned green with SuDS and other green infrastructure to mitigate flooding and heat. Public health would also benefit from more people travelling actively in greener spaces, but as yet there are no hard targets for this. Landscape professionals will be essential to deliver these changes, but policy is required to enable them. As well as the Plan for Drivers, the Environmental Improvement Plan is another major document set to impact the future relationship between transport and the public realm, and thus how planners and designers can respond. Created by the Environment Act 2021, this sets out an array of statutory targets across issues like particulate pollution and nature recovery, though not noise, microplastic pollution, or landscape yet, sadly. There appears to have been no modelling to date, but traffic and speed reduction will likely be needed in some rural areas, if roadkill and habitat fragmentation are to be reduced and ecological connectivity enhanced. This could offer important opportunities for reducing the impacts of traffic in Protected Landscapes in particular. Design guidance published in February 2024 by Active Travel England seeks to find a way forward, ensuring that LTNs are joined up as part of coherent routes for walking and cycling, while mitigating the impacts of any displaced motor traffic. While adding green infrastructure to schemes will help them score over the threshold for funding set by the guidance, it is unlikely to deflect opposition in the short term, not least as planters have often been the most fought over, if not vandalised elements. But, in areas where LTNs have been in place long enough to bed in, the high-quality public realm has formed an important legacy. With a DfT survey of residents living in LTNs finding that 58% of them were unaware of their existence, the longer-term health, environmental, and community benefits of greening streets could yet be the changes that are most remembered.
Ralph Smyth is a freelance sustainability consultant, advisor to Transport Action Network, and mediator. He’s previously led on transport for countryside charity CPRE and practised as a barrister.
