Urban speed limits of 20mph and the traps for unwary drivers known as Low Traffic Neighbourhoods (LTNs) really shouldn’t be elevated to the level of national politics. It may be an exaggeration to describe all politics as local, but such small-scale traffic edicts certainly are, and not just because central government has a myriad of other things to do.
This is not good news for those who had hoped that the proliferation of no-go zones for drivers had reached its limits
So when the new Transport Secretary, Louise Haigh, said in a recent podcast, ‘There’s no way me sitting in my office can say “this road in Chester should be a 20mph road or not” – it’s completely ridiculous… Those kinds of decisions should absolutely be made at a local level by communities and not dictated to or stoked by the centre,’ this all sounded like a welcome injection of common sense into what has become one of the most heated debates in local politics.
Or it would have been, except for two things. The first is that Haigh did not stop there. Having cited the hypothetical example of Chester, she added that if this is what, say, Chester wanted, it would have her backing. Indeed, local authorities that wanted more 20mph zones and LTNs, she said, would have her ‘absolute support’. And that could well include central government (i.e. taxpayers’) money.
If that is not ‘nudging’ local authorities into introducing such schemes, it is hard to know what would be. Many of the LTNs currently in force earn thousands of pounds for cash-strapped councils in fines and fees. Now, they may not even have to find the money to set them up. A friendly central government will no doubt step in, thereby removing any sliver of leverage aggrieved local council taxpayers might have retained. Such schemes have losers as well as winners, and the proportion is by no means clear.
Which is where the second objection to Louise Haigh’s supposedly hands-off, local-friendly undertaking comes in. It lacks context. The reason why local speed limits and LTNs became an issue for central government in the first place was the number of complaints MPs were receiving from constituents. They objected to the high-handed way in which many such schemes had been introduced and the deaf ears that were turned to their objections. The issue was less one of traffic than of local democracy that wasn’t working.
It was in response to this sense of powerlessness that the last government planned to restrict councils’ authority to introduce such local traffic measures without due consultation. Central government funding for such schemes was also removed – a significant constraint, given the parlous financial state of many local authorities.
Haigh is now turning the clock back to where it was before, with an added dose of official approval and – maybe – the money to go with it. This is not good news for those who had hoped that the proliferation of no-go zones for drivers had reached its limits.
At which point it is worth noting that few drivers object to additional speed limits on streets around schools or thoroughfares used by children, elderly people or hospital patients. There is no reason why some smaller streets in residential areas should not be closed to through traffic at certain times, if such an arrangement suits those who live in the neighbourhood – and that includes those who live in the peripheral streets as well.
But such restrictions have downsides. It is all very well for emergency vehicles to be exempt from restrictions or fines, but what if there are planters blocking access to the street? And who else should be exempt? Cars with a disabled sticker? Delivery vans? Ubers as well as licensed taxis? How about the plumber – or cars bringing friends and family of residents, perhaps with elderly people or small children on board?
Evangelists of our happy car-free future, surveying the streetscape from their bikes as they sail past the red light, commonly disregard the complications of public transport. Do they realise how difficult it can be to take several small children on public transport? Or ask how they themselves might get around if they broke a limb, or how a lone woman might be wary of being dropped several streets away from her destination at night?
And what about the shops that have lost all passing trade because only registered locals can drive down the street? Or those living on roads that are permanently gridlocked because they now take all the traffic that was once shared with side-roads?
The passions that rage over 20mph speed limits and LTNs do not only reflect conflicting priorities and interests. The way these particular measures have been introduced and enforced has offended many people’s innate sense of fairness, which in turn risks upsetting the unwritten social contract that allows government – local and national – to function at all.
The extent to which some local authorities are now using bailiffs to collect unpaid fines for this sort of offence came to light last week. This served to expose the glaring discrepancy, as it seems to many, between the zeal with which LTNs and local speed limits are policed and the blind eye so often turned to the ‘real’ crimes – anti-social behaviour, shoplifting and phone-snatching, for instance – that blight people’s lives.
If that discrepancy is to be closed, local authorities will have to do much more to explain how the benefits and costs stack up.
As things stand, it is not at all clear who benefits, other than those who already live in the quieter, cleaner streets, and the council that rakes in the cash from inadvertently errant drivers. For everyone else, the costs and benefits of life in a city that is slowed to a snail’s pace and selectively shuts its streets to outsiders may well tip the other way.
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