Low Traffic Neighbourhoods?

ratherbeintobago
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Re: Low Traffic Neighbourhoods?

Post by ratherbeintobago »

RickH wrote:Here in Bolton, some of hhe folk from Bolton Active Travel Forum started mapping filters that are already there and ended up locating over 900 hundred in the borough, dating back at least to the late 1960s.


That’s really good work - I’d thought of doing something similar (Rochdale) but of course we have no active travel forum due to a complete lack of engagement from the council.
Tangled Metal
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Re: Low Traffic Neighbourhoods?

Post by Tangled Metal »

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.

I used to commute up the A6 from Lancaster when the Heysham link road build had traffic controls all over holding traffic up going to the M6. Often trucks from Heysham and the Lancaster/Morecambe industrial estates cut up that road which was never suitable for big trucks. Footways to the side of the road are barely wide enough for one person in places without hanging over the kerb. However they still allow any truck that is allowed on UK motorways to go up that road? It's a bypass route when junction 34 to 35 is shut.

One time I was cycling and a truck carrying large concrete beams without a bed just bogeys overtook me like I was static I was doing 21mph and ended up between the two sets of bogeys as it started to accelerate. I got up to 30mphn and was blowing when in spotted a dropped kerb I could duck into that was possibly wide enough. It was but only with me crashing into the hedge. Without the hedge my right shoulder would have been hit by the truck.

That's why I feel certain routes should be designated as light traffic only and enforced as such. The A6 is a rat run even without traffic controls making it a more appealing for such. But while the Heysham link was being built it saw an increase in traffic probably four-fold possibly more. It's a good example of making something difficult in one place creates huge issue in another place? Motorists do tend to seek the route of least resistance. Create new resistance you will change the route traffic uses. Live in the new routes you're out of luck.

Are LTNs always the right idea if they're just shifting the problem to another area?
ratherbeintobago
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Re: Low Traffic Neighbourhoods?

Post by ratherbeintobago »

I’m not sure it’s as simple as that.

The suggestion is that traffic flows better on major boundary roads (as there’s less stop/starting as people drive in and out of the rat runs). There’s a model for this that I forget the name of.

In any case, one of the London LTNs demonstrated a 20% drop in boundary road traffic. I suspect that it’s multi factorial, as some traffic goes as people find the LTNs safer to walk/cycle through, some goes as it’s not worth going round the houses instead of a 5 min walk, and some goes because the average speed is low enough to force modal shift (IIRC the magic speed is about 9mph, below which it’s simply not worth driving).
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RickH
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Re: Low Traffic Neighbourhoods?

Post by RickH »

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.


Initially that may be the case. I've seen figures for some recent LTNs in London where the LTN motor traffic levels have dropped markedly. Figures of 20%, even 30%+ on some roads but only a 2% or 3% increase on boundary roads. There is a phenomenon known as "traffic evaporation" where a proportion of the traffic doesn't go elsewhere. It disappears as people choose other means for at least some of their journeys - people finding they can walk or cycle to nearby places. Traffic isn't fixed, at least a proportion will start to use other means if their journey becomes more convenient by other

There is also smoothing of the flow of traffic by fewer vehicles trying to turn into, & to some extent out of, as many side roads disrupting the flow. We have some "Accidental LTNs" in Bolton where the road closures were done a number of years ago to limit the number of roads you can turn into. As with newer LTNs, you can still drive to every house but you have limited entry/exit points so there is no through traffic.

I think some people are playing the game - there seems to be particularly vociferous opposition from taxi drivers. I've read accounts of people claiming their LTN is dangerous because their taxi couldn't get to the address & they had to walk some distance. Assuming the account to be true, I have wondered if the drivers are using it as an excuse, or even deliberately choosing the "wrong" end of a road to reinforce their point.

To some extent I think the LTNs have highlighted a problem that was previously hidden - car ownership has doubled since the 90s & vehicle mileage driven has increased by around 30 to 40% in the last 10 years. The growth of satnav with more-or-less live traffic data (such as Google Maps) has contributed by routing a lot of the extra traffic down previously quiet residential streets.

Although I have wondered in recent weeks if Google have changed their algorithms to reduce minor road use - doing some deliveries in an area that I know generally but not some of the specific roads I've found Google sending me round the bigger roads when there is a cut through that I might have taken if I was making it up myself. Of course it may be just a case of Google being better - I've had instances in the past where the satnav seems to be sending me a long way round that I wouldn't have considered to somewhere. Measuring it on the map actually show the "long way round" to actually be shorter. The jury is out on that one.
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pwa
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Re: Low Traffic Neighbourhoods?

Post by pwa »

ratherbeintobago wrote:
pwa wrote:I can think of a few places local to me where rat runs could be eliminated without preventing access to properties for ambulances, deliveries and so forth. And if I lived in those places I would accept any slight inconvenience as the price of some peace and quiet.

But of course it is true that traffic management should include looking at where displaced traffic goes, and how that affects people living there.


There’s a lot of frothing going on on social media, but the short answers seem to be that there are a lot of old schemes about that aren’t contentious.

There’s an assumption on the part of the protestors that all the traffic gets redirected onto boundary roads, when a decent chunk goes away, and the boundary roads appear to flow better due to less stop-start as traffic goes into and out of side roads.

Perhaps the marketing of properly thought out schemes should be done with reference to old and successful older schemes that people are familiar with and accepting of. We all know very old and established bollardisations (new word) that few would want removed. We know the calm that they maintain. And rather than trying to sell people the (to many) alien idea that they should be forced to abandon their cars, portray it as just keeping through traffic on trunk roads. If alternatives to car use are being created at the same time, flag them up, but don't connect blocking car access with the provision of cycle facilities or better public transport because that sets up conflict. It allows the narrative of "They are stopping you doing X and making you do Y", which is bound to run badly on social media.
Pete Owens
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Re: Low Traffic Neighbourhoods?

Post by Pete Owens »

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.

I saw that too. What I took out of it that, however much the BBC was trying to make a controversy out of it, there was nobody whatsoever opposing the principle of the scheme. What we saw was mostly people who wanted quieter streets but were dissapointed that the street they lived in was not covered by the scheme - whatever the opposite of a NIMBY is.
ratherbeintobago
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Re: Low Traffic Neighbourhoods?

Post by ratherbeintobago »

If nothing else, this is all moving the Overton window - no-one seriously disputes the need to reduce car dependence. The difference is the how
Pete Owens
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Re: Low Traffic Neighbourhoods?

Post by Pete Owens »

RickH wrote:Here in Bolton, some of hhe folk from Bolton Active Travel Forum started mapping filters that are already there and ended up locating over 900 hundred in the borough, dating back at least to the late 1960s.

You could add to the list by including modern purpose built estates designed as culs-de-sac to solve the same problem of elimitating throgh traffic though filtering without the permeability has the extremely unfortunate cost of making these places very difficult to get about other than by car.
ratherbeintobago
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Re: Low Traffic Neighbourhoods?

Post by ratherbeintobago »

Pete Owens wrote:
RickH wrote:Here in Bolton, some of hhe folk from Bolton Active Travel Forum started mapping filters that are already there and ended up locating over 900 hundred in the borough, dating back at least to the late 1960s.

You could add to the list by including modern purpose built estates designed as culs-de-sac to solve the same problem of elimitating throgh traffic though filtering without the permeability has the extremely unfortunate cost of making these places very difficult to get about other than by car.


It's the lack of permeability that's the problem there, isn't it? And I don't think it's all that easy to build in afterwards - certainly a few blind cul-de-sacs locally where sense would've dictated building in a bike/footpath to the neighbouring one.
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mjr
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Re: Low Traffic Neighbourhoods?

Post by mjr »

ratherbeintobago wrote:It's the lack of permeability that's the problem there, isn't it? And I don't think it's all that easy to build in afterwards - certainly a few blind cul-de-sacs locally where sense would've dictated building in a bike/footpath to the neighbouring one.

Yes, that is the problem. The Police Architectural Liaison Officer and the council Community Safety Officer are both automatic consultees and routinely oppose anything which allows evil walkers and cyclists to avoid noble police car drivers, whereas Living Streets and Cycle Nation/UK groups have to waste their scarce volunteer time trying to monitor user-hostile planning application websites to detect plans where they need to support direct links for walking and cycling (StreetFocus and BikeData help but are not perfect tools and I think are also volunteer-made).

Council Highways Departments don't advocate direct walk/cycle routes and there seems to be no automatic Transport Planning/Policy consultee yet. This is expected to change with Active Travel England but that's going to take at least another year to start, I think.
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Stevek76
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Re: Low Traffic Neighbourhoods?

Post by Stevek76 »

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.
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Tangled Metal
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Re: Low Traffic Neighbourhoods?

Post by Tangled Metal »

Pete Owens wrote:
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.

I saw that too. What I took out of it that, however much the BBC was trying to make a controversy out of it, there was nobody whatsoever opposing the principle of the scheme. What we saw was mostly people who wanted quieter streets but were dissapointed that the street they lived in was not covered by the scheme - whatever the opposite of a NIMBY is.

Having lived near a street that became busy because of roadsides and diversions i can see the point of those but wanting LTNs that create pollution in their areas. I also wonder if LTNs are rushed through to take advantage of lockdown changes in traffic. Do they carry out full impact analysis of these changes before implementation?
ratherbeintobago
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Re: Low Traffic Neighbourhoods?

Post by ratherbeintobago »

The counter argument is, of course, that no-one carried out impact assessments of rat-running.
Pete Owens
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Re: Low Traffic Neighbourhoods?

Post by Pete Owens »

The idea that rat runners are performing some kind of social good by transferring part of their trip to a quieter road is absurd beyond belief and so obviously self serving. Even from the the POV of a driver wedded to their car and no with interest in improving conditions in the local area, a runner is simply a queue jumper. The driver behind them in the queue leaves the main road and armed with local knowledge of back streets appears ahead of them a bit further along thus slowing their own journey.

It cannot represent a significant flow of traffic since the rat-run will be an inherently less suitable route that is only chosen because it can be negotiated at speed. This is only possible if the route is fairly free of traffic and there is no queue to re-join the main route further on. Also rat-running will only be worthwhile when the main road is at capacity - ie it isn't actually possible for it to get any busier.
Stevek76
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Re: Low Traffic Neighbourhoods?

Post by Stevek76 »

Most of the london ones were already being planned but implementation was accelerated with the pandemic. I don't really see a problem with that, it's an ideal time to make changes as it allows people to adjust as traffic ramps back up.

On the flip side, people have interpreted (perhaps wilfully in some cases) the ramping up of traffic to blame the LTNs for queues on the main roads. Most of those queues of course are little different to how they were in 2019. There are a few exceptions with the odd badly implemented scheme but most is just a return to normal traffic, people just forget how infuriating driving in cities is.

In terms of impact analysis, on a specific level that's very hard to do for these schemes, most traffic models don't operate at such a fine level of detail and basically none are properly equipped to really understand mode shift to and from walk/cycle. Sometimes the best way to assess the impact is to just get on and do it, particularly given how cheap and quick to add/remove these are. Most have been implemented under what's known as an Experimental Traffic Order, a power set out by the RTRA 1984 that allows trial schemes to be the consultation themselves.
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