Low Traffic Neighbourhoods
Car use harms us all - our health, the environment, and society - and unfairly, it’s the people who are less likely to use a car that are the ones most likely to be harmed by them. So what can we do?
Low Traffic Neighbourhoods (LTNs) are a great way to prevent cars and lorries cutting through minor roads, making walking and cycling easier and safer, whilst also improving the air quality of the area.
What are LTNs?
Low Traffic Neighbourhoods - also known as Active Travel Neighbourhoods, Liveable Neighbourhoods, or Places for People - use “modal filters” like planters, bollards, and cameras to remove through-traffic from neighbourhoods, whilst still allowing access to the homes within them.
LTNs can greatly increase walking and cycling among residents, decrease the amount of road traffic injuries, and reduce street crime inside their neighbourhoods. They can massively benefit people who don’t have access to parks or gardens for playing and socialising.
The number of car journeys has been steadily increasing. LTNs are a way to make driving less convenient and encourage people to try other ways to travel around our cities.
LTNs for all?
Our report with our partners the Active Travel Academy maps the extent of London’s new LTNs (the ones implemented between March - September 2020) - their implementation, potential, and limitations. Here’s what we found:
LTNs are low cost and easy to install.
LTNs can help rapidly transform the character of urban spaces, making us all rethink what, and who, public space is for.
Approximately nine out of ten Londoners across all different income and ethnicity groups live on residential streets that could benefit from LTNs.
They have great potential to benefit people without easy access to greenspace or places to play and socialise safely.
LTNs can help us reach our environmental goals.
Where LTNs might not suit main roads, other schemes, like protected cycleways, green buffers, and more pedestrian crossings are good ways to deal with the harm caused by traffic on those.
Clean Air Zones are another option which can help increase air quality on our streets.
LTNs and equity
Walking and cycling are great for the environment, but they’re also great ways to improve our physical and mental health. So it’s important that everyone, no matter where they live or how wealthy they are, can easily reach quiet streets, green spaces and cycle paths
Our partners at the Active Travel Academy have also looked at equity and London’s LTNs. Here’s what they found:
Across London, people in deprived areas were more likely to live in a new LTN, compared to people in less deprived areas (this varies more widely when looking at the district level)
Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnic (BAME) people were slightly more likely to live in a new LTN than white people, and this varied further by ethnic group.
LTN residents were demographically similar to neighbours in immediately adjacent areas.
Car-free households were more likely to live in or near a new LTN.
Overall, the new LTNs were fairly shared across London as a whole; they are clearly pro-equity regarding deprivation, and positive in relation to ethnicity.
What you can do
LTNs are key to reducing car use and car ownership, improving public health, and transforming residential neighbourhoods.
There is no ‘natural’ level of car use. Decisions that policy makers take will influence levels of car use, and therefore the harm that comes with them. But there’s lots we can do to help shape and redesign our streets:
Write to your MP and/or councillors. If you live in an LTN and love it, tell them! If you would like an LTN implemented, tell them!
Respond to consultations. Many areas are consulting with communities right now about plans for local LTNs. People opposed to change tend to be more motivated to respond, so it’s really important to make sure supportive feedback is also heard!
Get talking about LTNs. It’s a hot topic at the moment, but we can’t ignore the positives that come with LTNs.
If you live in an LTN, give it time. They might take a little while to get used to, but as we’ve seen in Waltham Forest, after a few years, only 1% of people want to go back to life without them.
Check out these LTN resources:
Other things you can do
Show your local Council that the public support traffic filters.
Check out our School Streets report to learn about another scheme that’s tackling car use!