Research paper

Low traffic neighbourhoods, or LTNs, are increasingly being used in London and other cities and countries to reduce through motor traffic in residential areas, aiming also to increase local walking and cycling. This report explains what LTNs are, what they look like, potential impacts and reasons for their introduction, and limits of this intervention. It then considers LTNs in London, and how equitably they are being introduced.

This guide is designed to support people in local government and the transport sector including designers, planners, engineers, and decision makers make cycling a more inclusive activity for everyone.

Whilst our recommendations are primarily focused on the UK, they are equally applicable in cities and towns across the world.

There are many successful and truly inspiring examples where cities have made cycling more inclusive. With the right political will, investment and knowledge cycling can help people from all backgrounds, ethnicities, ages, abilities and genders.

This Guide is intended to provide an overview of the subject. The Guide is not, and could not be, exhaustive. There is not one correct way to create all TROs, and an approach which may be suitable in one circumstance would be inappropriate in another.

This Guide forms a basis of good practice and, just as importantly, will direct practitioners towards legislation, regulations and other resources that will enable them to devise their own solutions to real-world traffic management problems. Hyperlinks to these resources are provided throughout.

As lockdown eases in the UK and other countries, people are starting to go back to work. However, public transport capacity and demand are likely to be severely depressed for some time. Transport Secretary Grant Shapps has suggested that physical distancing means the public transport network would be reduced to 10% of its former capacity. In London, Transport for London have suggested a figure of 15%. Government has told people to avoid public transport if at all possible, suggesting they walk, cycle, or drive.

For the last 20 years, governments have attempted to encourage a more sustainable approach to transport within spatial planning but have made limited progress.

Car parking and traffic still dominate housingdevelopments. Sustainable access to local services is poor. Sustainable approaches to transport are largely non-existent. The way we currently travel and thecontinued growth in road traffic are damaging our health,harming our towns, and contributing to climate change.

The concept of roads has been around for a long time, much longer than we have had cars. In the past, the space between the houses in our cities has been used for a variety of activities and purposes, including work, entertainment, communication, as a marketplace and for transport. Of course, our streets were also the perfect place for children to develop – to play, to argue, to fraternise, to grow up, and to become better adjusted to society. This has been the case for many centuries, but the situation changed radically over the last 60 years.

This survey has obtained a picture of street design and adoption practice in Great Britain. While there are some councils that have been reported to have lead, required or encouraged outstanding examples of street design, there is an underlying concern at a system level including:

• Failures to adopt industry best practice in street design and the persistent use of outdated and questionable highway design standards dating from the 1960s or earlier.

The Government has made a commitment to sustainable transport as part of an integrated transport strategy, encouraging a decrease in the use of cars and increasing the use of cycling as a viable mode of transport. As one element of their transportation policies, local authorities are expected to produce local cycling strategies which include the implementation of improvements to infrastructure and the initiation of traffic management measures.

Reallocating roadspace from general traffic, to improve conditions for pedestrians or cyclists or buses or on-street light rail or other high-occupancy vehicles, is often pre- dicted to cause major traffic problems on neighbouring streets. This paper reports on two phases of research, resulting in the examination of over 70 case studies of roadspace reallocation from eleven countries, and the collation of opinions from over 200 transport professionals worldwide.

Introduction: This article proposes a low-cost approach that transport authorities can use to evaluate small-scale active travel interventions, including estimating health economic benefits from uptake of walking and/or cycling.