by Mike Wells
The Labour-run London Borough of Camden (LBC) has been forced to scrap a hugely controversial Low Traffic Neighbourhood (LTN) scheme centred on Dartmouth Park on the eastern edge of Hampstead Heath – home to Ed Miliband, Benedict Cumberbatch and numerous other Labour luvvies. The plan had been to impose an 18-month ‘trial period’ with the least possible public consultation.
Attempting to put the best spin on it, LBC calls this a “pause”, but the scheme – a pet project of cycle-fanatic Cllr Adam Harrison, “Cabinet Member for Planning and a Sustainable Camden” and CBC’s Deputy Leader – was always unworkable. Uproar among locals, who discovered Camden’s brief ‘nonsultation’ was to be held during last summer’s holidays, was led by the Highgate Society which commissioned expert analysis of LBC’s dodgy metrics.
Locals packed protest meetings and deluged their council with complaints, not least about the scheme’s obvious potential for raising money by fines. With vehicle access from the north, east and south denied to thousands of homes in the LTN, voters demanded to know how ambulances, deliveries and visitors could reach them, or how anyone less than 100% fit would be able to get the shopping home?
Among many issues they highlighted were inevitable gridlock on Highgate Road, Highgate West Hill and other bus routes on the proposed LTN’s boundary, and increased air pollution on children’s walking routes to the area’s schools – ironically the same good schools which attract so many upwardly-mobile Labour supporters to leafy Dartmouth Park’s expensive homes.
Having wasted vast amounts of TfL’s money on consultants while plotting Dartmouth Park’s LTN in secret, Camden’s Labour regime has been handed an expensive lesson in not annoying one’s diehard voters. Its problems include a private company called Commonplace, and an unusually articulate local population.
Commonplace Digital Ltd is a privately-owned “citizen engagement platform” which claims to “inspire thriving places, powered by data and collaboration”. On its touchy-feely website rows of smiley, young and casually-dressed “customer success managers” and “business development managers” promote the platform.
What Commonplace actually does is to sell machine-readable online surveys to councils and developers – relieving them of the trudge of asking local people what they think and reading the responses properly, while still getting the result they first wanted via an ostensibly democratic process.
The snag, as we in Bedfordshire know to our cost, is in the questions asked and the boxes you’re allowed to tick. Our council’s Commonplace survey on local cycling and walking issues produced 826 responses, of which over 100 tried to explain – only possible in the “other comments” box – that by far our worst problem is how to get across the A1 safely into Biggleswade without using a car: a walk/cycle underpass is needed, obviously.
But in its published LCWIP plan, based on this “engagement”, Central Beds Council felt able to ignore the lethal risks run by locals trotting or wheeling their children across the A1 carriageways, because the online Commonplace survey had asked no machine-readable question about it. The metrics didn’t prove a need, which happily allowed CBC and National Highways to carry on ignoring the danger.
People are increasingly suspicious of the skewed questions asked in Commonplace surveys, and in the case of Camden’s proposed Dartmouth Park LTN, many refused to participate. Instead 773 locals emailed their council direct, as well as emailing individual councillors. Here in Beds our ward councillor just leafleted over 800 locals about our Biggleswade problem, asking what they need to get onto town safely, and the scores of replies were a revelation.
Ask people what they really think, without leading questions or tick-boxes, and what you get is ‘quote gold’. Many said roughly what was anticipated, though in their own inimitable words; others made important points that hadn’t even occurred to campaigners. Analysing genuine replies like these – as opposed to machine-readable surveys – takes time and thought, and Camden is now having to go back to the drawing board and read its hundreds of non-Commonplace responses, acutely aware that having wound up the Highgate Society and Dartmouth Park’s vigilant locals, its cunningly-worded online “consultation” cannot alone justify imposing a disastrous LTN.
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What is ignored is that car exhaust emissions increase at lower speeds, so LTNs which displace traffic onto already busy main roads increase congestion and so increase exhaust emissions and emissions form brake dust and tyres.
I have never seen a survey of why people drive into London or a campaign to entice them on to public transport, suggesting that ULEZ is really all about the money. But then ULEZ don’t really work because Euro 6 is a high speed test and not applicable to urban driving. Whatever impovements in air quality there may have been are from other factors. If ULEZ criteria are updated to Euro7 this will drive the proverbial electric bus through ULEZ as it includes tyre and brake dust and most EVs will be penalised unless heavily discounted to fudge the criteria.
Want to decrease emissions? Give people an altenative to driving and keep the traffic moving.
Speed humps do wonders for emissions. They didn’t think that one through.
NB Airborne pollution is 15 times worse on the London Underground than it is at street level. Where’s the action on that?
Two of the four roads leading to where we live have speed-humps (10 on one of them alone!). My driving technique when forced to use these roads is to stay in low gear, accelerate smartly after crossing each one, then brake for the next.
I’m hoping that the residents will eventually get fed up with the additional noise and ask the highways authority to remove them. Some hope, I know, but it makes me feel better…. The humps are totally unneccessary anyway.
They are ubiquitous in my borough – Wandsworth – and all the others.
It’s entirely true to say that they have taken all the fun out of driving and made it a real slog.
They just need to hire the XR people to trot their signs out and block the A1 any time someone needs to cross
Speed bumps are in reality a simple proof to residents that their controlling council does not understand any of the science.
In transport matters, my pet hate is speed humps.
Why pay engineers and construction workers to build a beautiful smooth road, then straddle it with speed humps?
In my close family members, there is one with chronic pancreatitis, another with severe post-herpetic neuralgia, and another with arthritis in the lower back. All 3 yell at me as driver when I hit a speed hump much above walking pace, because it hurts them. Not just a little, a lot.
I can read many reports of emergency response vehicles like ambulance and fire choosing longer routes to avoid speed humps and pain to wounded passengers or shifting/loss of load.
Nowhere have I been able to find authorisation for planners to install devices known to cause pain.
An enquiry to my local council traffic engineer about pain received a hostile response as if speed humps were as vital to survival of the masses as Covid vaccinations are, nothing addressing pain, and a sign-off that no further communication would be entered into. Who pays his salary, but we rate payers?
Am I a cranky old man or is this a worthy issue to fight? I am deeply suspicious of corrupt money paid in the speed hump planning and purchasing process. It’s a sitter for the brown envelope of cash. Geoff S
Geoff, my experience with transport planning bureaucrats is that their egos exceed their intellect. They detest being exposed as incompetent.
It took residents in our short but dangerous and narrow street 27 years of hassle to achieve restricted entry to prevent rat runners.
More recently, i attempted to get a 6m yellow painted ‘no parking’ line applied opposite my driveway entrance … the idiot that called me with the refusal did not even know the difference between adjacent and opposite.
I’m not sure that the rate of emission increases but slower-moving vehicles are emitting for longer per 100 yards of road.
They’ve cut the speed limit from 30 to 20 in my neighbourhood, so now I have to drive everywhere in 2nd instead of 3rd or 4th, so it’s quite possible that both emissions increase and it’s happening for longer.
Driving in second will also raise your RPM and thereby the amount of petrol required to keep your engine running
Engine efficiencies vary with speed. As efficiency decreases, pollution increases.
Fuel consumption increases at low speeds, also. Modern cruise-controlled engines are most fuel efficient around 80 mph.
My experience is that ICEs are most efficient in 30-50 mph range, as long as one does not use breaks.
I try not to break anything, even when using brakes…
I take breaks whenever allowed.
Modern cruise-controlled engines are most fuel efficient around 80 mph.
Nah. 90kph (55mph) is best for both of my vehicles. I can get extraordinarily good fuel economy with that on cruise on the flat (the freeway in southern Italy is my best record).
Because one of my cars is a sleek aerodynamic Volvo (and they make very good engines), it can get good economy even up to 130pkh, but 90 is the absolute best.
Since I do not drive extended distances at 80 mph, it is hard to say if my cruise controlled engine is more efficient at that speed.
“Ask people what they really think”
That’s funny. They don’t need to ask when they already know what people really think. The thing is, they know better than their electorates…
Oxford’s 15 minute gulags
“A cabinet decision on the traffic restrictions will be made on November 29 following a consultation which closed earlier this month. But Duncan Enright, cabinet member for travel and development strategy, has already told the Sunday Times: “It’s going to happen, definitely.”
https://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/23079671.anger-travel-chief-announces-traffic-filters-going-happen-definitely-ahead-decision/
The green republic of Bristol (h/t Arthur Dent)
“Cover of darkness used after Bristol residents opposed to the roadblocks had previously protested by lying in front of machinery
A Green-led council carried out a “sneaky” operation at 3am to install low-traffic neighbourhood (LTN) infrastructure while under police protection. The installation of LTN blockades and so-called “bus gates” took place in the small hours of Thursday morning across the city of Bristol.
The 3am start time for the works was picked by council officials to avoid protests by residents so firmly opposed to the roadblocks that they reportedly lay in front of machinery on previous occasions.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/03/14/bristol-green-council-installs-ltns-3am-police-protection/
Leafy Dulwich
“Council staff traumatised by ‘horrid’ LTN meeting were given day off to recover, High Court told
Campaigners bid to secure historic legal victory over council accused of ‘bulldozing through’ low traffic neighbourhood”
“The claimant’s own evidence is that ‘there was considerable hostility and anger shown by residents and the council’s plans’, that the criticism from ‘angry’ residents was so ‘relentless’ that some of the councillors ‘were in tears’ and that the council team took a lunch break ‘to get away’.”
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/transport/ltn-meeting-councillors-tears-west-dulwich-lambeth-high-court-b1210663.html
It still hasn’t occurred to them to listen to the voters… It probably never will. The people aren’t interested in what the councils want, so out comes the steamroller…
Steamroller????
Would that be coal or oil fired?
I expect you mean batteryroller.
S/.
One problem is you can only plan traffic reduction for the city as a whole, you can’t get there by individual councils adopting an uncoordinated set of different measures as the ideas strike them. Camden trying to become LTN is like Thetford trying to become Net Zero. Do it on the right scale, or don’t do it at all.
A second problem is that the UK, or at least England, perpetually tries to get somewhere by doing half of what’s needed. In this case, promoting cycling and walking without making safe cycling or walking paths. Won’t work, doesn’t work – as shown by the rise of cycling during the pandemic, and its subsequent fall when people found just how dangerous and unpleasant it is in English cities.
“ for the city as a whole”
That is the responsibility of one S. Khan, the Mayor.
TfL controls the major roads throughout London – so-called red-routes.
That’s also where you find the ugly bollard poles delineating the covid lockdown imposed cycle lanes making it impossible for emergency vehicles to get through traffic.
Progressives have learned that good government should not get slowed down by what folks think. It’s almost as if they are trained!
Ah, just ignore those deplorables.
They will have nothing and they will be happy.
Bank on it.
Oh, wait….
/sarc
Ah yes. How to do “surveys” that endorse whatever the sponsors of the survey wanted.
I always refuse to take part in surveys because I know that they are only being carried out in order to re-inforce someone else’s beliefs – the results will always be twisted to fit what they want to happen.
Not providing the choice of “all those alternatives misstate the facts”? Or assuming politics can be charted on a one dimensional left-right line?
I put no stock in polls, surveys or cunningly worded online consultations, they should not be used to justify policy. If one must be used a survey should be sent to every eligible resident. To be eligible you must be 21 years of age and a tax payer. All you have to do to show you are against the survey is throw it in the garbage. If the government gets back 50% or less that indicates the community is against the policy. If you get back more than 50% then you must have 50% plus in favor of the policy to be considered favorable. By 50% plus I mean of all those eligible not of those who returned their survey. This procedure will remove nearly all the shenanigans carried out by the government. That is a good thing.
A flaw in your logic there I think!
If you don’t send it back you are taken as automatically in favour
No, my idea is that you need a majority of those eligible. If you sent out 1000 surveys but only got back 499 of them it doesn’t matter how those that returned the survey voted it isn’t 501 so they lose.