This rather confirmed my suspicions that most people are broadly in favour of traffic calming measures, but a small minority are very vocally opposed to #LTNs on social media and they're the voices that get heard by this government
I suspect part of the reason #15MinuteCities took off in Paris but have spawned conspiracy theories in the UK is that #AnneHidalgo invested in the benefits alongside the traffic calming measures, whereas UK councils had no budget to invest in the positives and also no budget for proper public consolations explaining what was going to happen so people felt it had just been dropped on them without warning.
Boost walking and cycling in towns and cities, urges UK government adviser
“Cars particularly destroy the liberty of the child and the teenager to move around safely,” it said. “Children are much less free now than they were 50 or 100 years ago, a fact which changes the nature and vitality of our towns.”
Oh dear, another bit of the Tories culture wars (this time the accusation that Low-Traffic Neighbourhoods (LTNs) were being imposed on normal folk by car hating extremists) has failed to survive contact with reality...
Apart for a majority in LTNs supporting them, my favourite statistic is over half the people living in LTNs don't even realise they are.... yet another political 'crisis' inflamed by the commentariat.
'An official study of low-traffic neighbourhoods (LTNs) ordered by Rishi Sunak amid efforts to stop them being built has instead concluded they are generally popular and effective and the report was initially buried, the Guardian has learned.'
Rishi Sunak’s report finds #LowTraffic Neighbourhoods work and are popular
Exclusive: Downing Street initially buried study, which Tories had hoped would strengthen arguments against traffic-reducing measures
"Critics of #LTNs argue they benefit people living inside them largely by pushing traffic on to nearby roads. However, the DfT said this did not seem to be the case."
I see the "LTN Resistance" is struggling to decide whether low traffic neighbourhoods push house prices up or push house prices down.
(The "Resistance" is an anti-Labour troll farm run by George Galloway's Workers Party and related SWP supporters in Birmingham. WP hates anything Labour does for not being left-wing enough, hence opposition to low traffic neighbourhoods).
3 Dec'23: "#LTNs decimate areas so it is no wonder they decimate house prices. " with a link to an anti-LTN 'article' by the Daily Fail
Dear #RishiSunak, you’ve declared war on people who want to curb car use. It’s one you’ll lose.
“There is … an irony in the fact that the “pro-motorist” campaign against #LTNs, previously articulated by the #transport secretary, Mark Harper, is now being spearheaded by a #PrimeMinister whose default transport mode is a #helicopter.’
'Only five per cent of the responses to a petition calling for a review into the Low Traffic Neighbourhood scheme (LTNs) were from Oxford residents, data shows.'