Ignore false claims and dangerous journalism – most LTNs do cut back site visitors | Andrew Gilligan

I’m beginning to marvel if anybody is ever going to make an sincere argument towards biking and strolling infrastructure once more. They do exist. Individuals used to say issues like “I wish to drive and park wherever I like”, or “why ought to cyclists and pedestrians inconvenience my far more vital automotive journey?”.

These are nonetheless the fundamental objections, however as of late most outstanding opponents realise that it sounds a bit politically incorrect. You want some increased public curiosity floor, nonetheless shaky, to pitch your tent on.

With low-traffic neighbourhoods (LTNs), which use motor site visitors restrictions to spice up strolling and biking, the best choice was claiming that they enhance air pollution. However that has now been so totally debunked that it’s dropping its magic.

So a brand new variant appeared just lately within the Instances, claiming that “councils that applied LTNs in the course of the pandemic have seen larger will increase in automotive use than boroughs that didn’t”.

This was based mostly on including up the entire enhance in site visitors returning after Covid throughout “10 internal London boroughs that launched LTNs in 2020” (11.4%) and evaluating it with the entire enhance in “two internal London boroughs that didn’t implement LTNs in 2020” (8.9%).

In a pacesetter, the paper cited its “investigation” as proof that LTNs had been an “costly and infuriating failure”.

The 2 internal boroughs that didn’t introduce new LTNs had been Westminster and Kensington. There’s a very apparent purpose, nothing to do with LTNs, for why site visitors return has been much less in these two. They’re central.

Within the working-from-home period, central London’s office-based financial system and site visitors hasn’t recovered as a lot as elsewhere. The Instances didn’t point out this. It didn’t even title the 2 boroughs, maybe to cease readers working it out for themselves.

Have a look at every borough, quite than including small numbers of them selectively collectively, and the “investigation” appears much more problematic. The bottom rise in site visitors in London post-Covid (4%) was in Newham, which applied 5 new LTNs. The second lowest (7.7%) was in that paragon of biking, stuffed filled with LTNs, Waltham Forest.

Against this, the third highest rise in site visitors (14.4%) was in Bromley, which created no LTNs. The best of all (16.1%) was in Harrow, the place a handful had been put in however shortly eliminated. Might this be why the paper missed all these – and, certainly, 20 of the 32 boroughs?

There’s good information that almost all, although not all, LTNs do cut back site visitors – each throughout the scheme space and, after a lag, on the roads instantly round it, as a result of fewer folks make quick native journeys by automotive.

And as you received’t have learn within the Instances, throughout London the common rise in site visitors post-pandemic was the truth is precisely the identical in boroughs that put in and stored LTNs because it was in boroughs which by no means did them, or ended them shortly, at 11.1%.

Such borough-wide information is of restricted use anyway – most schemes have been achieved on too small a scale to have impacts throughout the entire. Saying all that, although, would have broken the declare the Instances was making an attempt to push.

The antis’ different favorite pseudo public curiosity argument can also be below pressure. To argue, as some do, that biking is a middle-class conspiracy towards the poor, it’s a must to ignore that poor persons are much less more likely to drive – and that biking is reasonable.

However poor folks (and, after all, many different folks) do use buses. Aha! Nice! We are able to declare bike lanes delay buses! Or we will declare, within the phrases of the long-term anti-bike infrastructure campaigner Vincent Stops, that “the cycle foyer has been allowed to damage London’s bus service” and that segregated bike tracks have “swung a wrecking ball at bus journey instances”.

The article cites no proof, once more maybe as a result of the proof says one thing fairly totally different.

Taking the latest three months of 2022, common bus speeds in Westminster and Camden – the boroughs with the best quantity of segregated bike lane – are exactly the identical now as they had been in the identical intervals of 2013, earlier than building on the lanes began.

If that’s a wrecking ball, I’d be asking my demolition contractor for a refund. The declare that 12 miles of segregated superhighway can have “ruined” a bus community working on virtually 2,000 miles of street is clearly incorrect, too.

The article will get one factor proper: total common bus speeds throughout London have certainly fallen. However right here’s what it leaves out. That decline is basically resulting from large drops in outer boroughs with no significant bike infrastructure in any respect. Bromley and Havering, as an example, have seen bus speeds fall by as much as 6.3% since 2013.

As I discussed, site visitors in central London remains to be not all the best way again to pre-Covid ranges. Speeds did drop within the centre after 2013, earlier than recovering. However even on a pre-pandemic comparability (between 2013 and 2019), bus speeds fell extra sharply in outer boroughs than in central ones. So may it maybe be that buses are delayed not by bike lanes however by the expansion in motorised site visitors?

It is vitally telling that opponents so usually must mislead to make their case. However that doesn’t imply it’s not efficient. And if left unchallenged, it may well enter the political bloodstream.

So what energetic journey now wants is a community of individuals to scrutinise, swiftly unpick and publicly rebut false claims and dangerous journalism – and to complain to the offenders, who are typically the identical few folks. That has been quite efficient in decreasing propaganda campaigns on different topics, and making information retailers assume twice earlier than publishing slanted tales. How about it, of us?