NIMBY is.
YIMBY. Also seen with 20mph limits etc. 20mph in my street? yes please. 20mph on the route I use to get somewhere? outrage!
Tangled Metal wrote:It made local news about an LTN scheme in levenshulme area IIRC. A long term campaigner claiming no shifting of traffic from their area to another? However how can closing rat runs not force the users of those rat runs onto main routes left to them? Anyone living in those main routes will encounter increased traffic.
Partly, but it's rather more complex than that.
Initially the rat-running through trips will all divert to the main roads, this will likely increase travel times which will in turn result in various behavioural responses:
-routing changes - other drivers already using the main road may switch to other routes and so on (even in a world of otherwise fixed demand, you often only see increases equating to half the displaced traffic on the adjacent roads because everyone else spreads out in turn)
-demand changes, both from displaced drivers and those on the roads that got the displacement, some of those trips will have already been borderline about to switch to another mode, another destination (shopping there instead of here), travelling at a different time or not travelling at all and then increase from the displacement will be enough to tip them over.
Meanwhile you can usually expect significant changes from residents in the LTN, which is often the bit that seems to get missed here. A considerable benefit of these zones is that it makes very short car trips by residents significantly more inconvenient while simultaneously making doing those trips by walk or cycle far more convenient (largely by removing the perceived danger) and while everyone likes to blame rat-running, it's rather closer to the truth that a good amount of the local congestion is usually down to a minority of the locals...
Also there's the rather more solid cap that, in most urban areas and particularly London inside the circulars, most of the main roads, pre pandemic, were already at capacity for much of the day. Compared to those numbers it is nearly impossible to increase demand. As suggested, the reduced turning in and out of side roads can actually increase capacity slightly and helps air quality with much reduced stop/start.
There are always exceptions of course, and the odd boundary road does sometimes see an increase. That should temporary though as adjacent ltns are rolled out and main road measures are added.