LTON, which prevents through traffic, has been introduced by Oxfordshire County Council in several places. All of this seems like a rather confusing response to a policy to make roads a little more enjoyable for those who don`t have a car. After all, low-traffic neighborhoods don`t do anything as radical as, for example, banning cars. They`re just a soft attempt — a new bollard here, a planter full of flowers there — to block rat racing and keep traffic to the main roads. Nor are they new: areas on the outskirts of London such as Waltham Forest and Kingston have had LTNs since Transport for London launched its “mini-Hollandsâ” programme in 2014. Go to Walthamstow now, and you`ll find a glorious world with separate bike paths, quiet side streets, and minor changes to the road surface designed to indicate that every motor vehicle that passes must know it`s in someone else`s room. Activists against low-traffic areas plan to take legal action. As regards the alleged non-consultation, it is common ground that there is no express legal obligation to consult under section 16 of the 2004 Act. There was also no obligation for the common law to consult on the ETP itself, taking into account the Covid-19 guidelines developed to address the conditions created by the pandemic, which provided for the consultation to take place in parallel and simultaneously with the experimental implementation of Covid-19-related traffic management initiatives. They said the money would be used to “produce more campaign brochures and posters and pay for legal and related advice before a legal challenge is launched against the council`s mass lockdown program.” Among a number of recommendations, the report says councils should try to make the programs as comprehensive as possible to limit modal shift and try to make them attractive by adding elements such as benches and wider sidewalks. The Centre for London think tank`s report on interventions that planters or other filters use to stop motor vehicle transit on small residential streets also found no evidence that they disproportionately benefited wealthier people. Rejecting these arguments, Justice Dove stated: “In the absence of the global pandemic and tailored guidance from the Minister of Transport to deal with it, previous 2004 guidelines may, in some cases, have supported the use of the time and resources needed to conduct detailed investigations and transportation models to attempt to predict the implementation of proposals. The five low-traffic neighborhoods I delivered last year have been legally implemented.

While the basic idea of filtering residential streets to limit rat traffic has been around for decades in various forms, the onslaught of Covid-era LTVs has led to a strong politicisation of the issue, particularly in London, with protest groups sprouting up. But the study, which combined traffic data with direct evidence from officials involved in LTNs, said the fact that many were implemented on a trial basis during the lockdown meant there was sometimes a lack of consultation, as well as start-up problems that could have been avoided. Across the river in Lambeth, council is celebrating a victory after the Court of Appeal refused to order judicial review in three different low-traffic (LTN) neighbourhoods across the county. Regardless, the local Conservatives promised that in the unlikely event that they won next month`s municipal election, they would scrap them all anyway. Perhaps the biggest problem, however, is that these pandemic LTNs were brought into a frenzy as councils struggled to grab a limited pot of money. This meant a lack of consultation on temporary regimes (although boards are required to consult before making them permanent). Moreover, it would hardly be surprising if understaffed councils that move at high speeds did not distinguish between decent plans that would result in a temporary increase in traffic and poorly designed ones that would cause real and longer-term problems. A number of regulations introduced in 2020 have since been suspended. “It is clear that the COVID-19 guidelines contain specific guidance on the approach to mandatory traffic management under the conditions imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic,” he continued.

A judge has dismissed a lawsuit against low-traffic neighbourhoods (LTNs) in the London Borough of Hackney. County Council said it would continue to monitor LBNs in east Oxford and Cowley for traffic flows and air quality.