‘LTNs will benefit the vast majority of residents whatever their race, income, age or ability’

• IN inner London, including Islington, the vast majority of people – 90 per cent – live in residential streets as opposed to main roads or high streets, and this holds true whatever demographic you chose (age, ethnicity, disability, income, car access).

The figure is always between 87 per cent and 93 per cent. Any suggestion that only rich people live in residential streets is way off track.

People of low income are just as likely as wealthy people to live in a residential road, and so just as likely to benefit from LTNs, low-traffic neighbourhoods.

LTNs can actually help to address inequity: lower income families are less likely to have their own outdoor space so their need for usable street space is greater.

Women, older people and the very young make more local journeys (the school, the shops) than men do.

London’s black children are more at risk from pedestrian injury than its white or Asian children, while black Londoners are less likely to own cars than white or Asian Londoners.

When LTNs are introduced there’s often a fear that the surrounding main roads will become gridlocked, but that is not what happens.

When road space is removed the traffic doesn’t all just go somewhere else. For example, when bus lanes were introduced, the two lanes of cars didn’t all just squeeze into one, jammed, lane.

Some people choose to travel by public transport instead, or walk, or cycle, or re-time the trip, or combine car journeys or change destinations (shopping local rather than out of town) and the traffic kept moving.

Evidence from Waltham Forest from 2014 to 2016 shows that, after a teething period, the changes in traffic counts on those main roads were comparable with what happened on main roads across London in the same period. The LTNs did not significantly increase the traffic on the main roads.

So the people-friendly streets in Islington will benefit the vast majority of residents whatever their race, income, age or ability. And the people living on the main road should not anticipate any permanent increase in traffic.

Actually we think the children are the real beneficiaries – able to play out on the streets the way we did back in the 1950s and 1960s – they are getting their childhoods back.

That’s why Barnsbury and St Mary’s Neighbourhood Group strongly support Islington Council’s introduction of people-friendly streets.

Our information comes from a report “LTNs for all?” available on our website.

R WALFORD,
N1