Walthamstow’s ‘Four Villages’ Low Traffic Neighbourhood Case Study
Last night was the second of four big transport events in Bath taking place over three weeks or so. Next week involves a three day incubator event which includes a three minute profile of the Camden predicament on video and ends with a one day tram conference where Camden will be on the final session panel representing the Federation of Bath Residents Associations.
If it’s a blow by blow report on what was said last might then Bath Newseum’s expertly written and illustrated article is a great start.
If you want something a bit more Camden LTN-centric then read on. Camden residents were there in profusion which is a great sign – and thanks for making it. Here are the initials of those I definitely saw (JL, AM, CR, BW, CS, GG, JF, JA, CG, GG, ML, RL, NS, JS, Mal) – so that’s at least 15. If you, who were there, have anything to add or correct then please do comment at the bottom of this blog post.
Cllr Joanna Wright, Joint Lead for Transport warmed us up with some ambitious targets:
- Radical rethinking of the relationship between motorised transport and residents, so that we reset the preference from car assisted travel into and around Bath to ‘active travel’ on foot or bike, or public transport. This is not tinkering – its life changing
- Low Traffic Neighbourhoods would be implemented across Bath in the next two years
- To do this will require “direction, belief and stamina”.
Next up was the highly charismatic Clyde Loakes who gave us some hilarious comedy stand-up as well as some invigorating observations and ‘home truths’ on what has been achieved in Walthamstow’s Four Villages, the centre bit of the small London borough of Waltham Forest. Not only did he get a lot of laughs, he also got spontaneous applause at some of the points he was making.
First a bit of background – the area in question is tucked inside the north circular and is a potential rat run for car drivers from Hertfordshire and Essex trying to get into London from the M11, A10, A12.
There’s also significant bit of social justice behind all this which is relevant to Bath too – returning these four afflicted neighbourhoods back to their residents at the expense of car users.
He called it civilising our roads
This enables people to get out and meet on the street, businesses open and thrive by serving local residents.
The forlorn belief that businesses thrive on through traffic hurrying to work has proved to be a complete myth. It is just the opposite.
To make this happen requires three things:
- Make the top speed for all traffic in the city 20mph. Camden Road has that, but we know 67% of drivers don’t comply. Were it ubiquitous across the city then it is less likely to be forgotten and easier to enforce.
- Make parking in these villages dedicated to residents. We’re nearly there in Camden but adjacent areas aren’t and they will remain as daytime free car parks for commuters unless this is extended.
- Employ modal filters to stop rat-running. This would be new to NE Bath – think of the ‘bus gate’ outside Waitrose – this would allow through walkers, cyclists and buses – all the modes of transport which we want to see if you want a quieter, healthier and safer neighbourhood. Any motorist would have access to every property but they would not have an uninterrupted route along the whole of the NE Bath rat run (from the Gloucester Road to the London Road or Lansdown Road). Any ‘active traveller’ however would have a much quietened, pleasant and enticing journey. I picked up my e-bike, loaned from the council, this morning and can now do an average of 10 mph down into and around town, and back up again, loaded with shopping, without standing on the pedals. Click here for details of how you can be next!
Walthamstow is so successful in its modal shift away from the use of private cars that:
- tired shopping streets are now revived with quirky new businesses which serve residents – the Claremont, the hairdresser and the pharmacy could do with some complementary company, as could we and Fairfield Park
- training to ride a bike is available for all – from 3-80, and is booked out all year already
- cargo e-bikes are easy to hire to bring deliveries and big shopping loads home. Three Bags Full get heavy consignments of the Bath Magazine up the hills with ease
- converting a bike to ‘e’ need not cost more than £500 – probably less if you DIY it
- ‘bikehangars’ which occupy only 50% of a parking space and accommodate 6 bikes securely and cost only £20 per year per bike to hire. There are 350 of these and many more on the way. No hauling bikes up and down our front steps
- Muslim ladies are feeling empowered to engage much more easily and independently in the community. If anything getting out of our cars makes us much more flexible in our journeys and in touch with our neighbours
- their shocking level of air pollution has been reduced to nearer where we are in Bath – this would only get better for us
- buses run unimpeded by through traffic moving in the opposite direction. So for Camden: no more hooting and pavement encroachment and an even better bus service than we have now. Did you know that on Camden Road there is a bus in each direction every 15 minutes throughout the main part of the day?
The first reaction of many is “It won’t work for me – I’m totally against it”. Lots of communities have now been through the process of getting used to the idea and eventually embracing it. Walthamstow is on a roll after initial mass protests and Clyde Loake’s council administration remains extremely popular in local elections. Here’s a link to his presentation on the day.
How many non-smoking zealots do you remember who thought they could never give up? There’s something very powerful about the newly converted – like me! I hope you’ll join the clamour for an LTN for NE Bath by signing our campaign here and leave us a message of support or your ideas too. Or, see the campaign links at the top of every one of our web-pages. There’s a campaign group which now has signed up 100 of us, as of today – we’d like 200 to make a really strong statement to the Council.
Jeremy, Chair of the CRA.
The continuation of a no 6/7 bus every 15 mins is essential to our life style.
Happy to walk into town but need bus to carry us home.
Thanks, Liz. This is a loss making service because not enough people are using it. We need to make sure this service gets better used as an alternative to cars – hence mentioning it. I’ll be doing a separate post on the service in due course.
Thank you Jeremy for such a detailed and clear report on the Low Traffic Neighbourhood presentation yesterday. I found it really inspiring and it is clear we need radical change here in Camden and across Bath. I am fully behind the concept of low traffic neighbourhoods and feel our community will benefit in so many ways Ruth L
Thanks, Ruth. You are one of a large majority from our door step research and those expressing views at the AGM. We just need to make sure we are not shouted down disproportionately by those who have differing views.
Great report Jeremy. I was struck by how unequivocal Clyde was about upturning the existing transport hierarchy to put private cars at the bottom, including his dismissal of electric vehicles as an answer.
Yes, Bob – thanks. Can we suddenly do without private transport in the near term for those journeys that would defeat an e-bike – I wonder? The anti electric car lobby slightly worry me. For several reasons:
1. Electric cars are 80% energy efficient, whereas fossil fulled vehicles are 25% efficient and emit less noxiousness. (Yes the electricity has come from a fossil fuelled power station for the most part but this will be changing and already has with the phasing out of carbon intensive coal).
2. They lend themselves to hiring and sharing (as well as autonomous energy efficient driving) which can reduce driver miles and reduce the self-identity with a posh, gas-guzzling car.
3. They make braking energy recovery easier to integrate into the drive chain which increases the energy efficiency and reduces particulate emissions even further
4. Have we got enough material for current battery technology – dubious, but there’s possibilities for hydrogen fuel cells and maybe other energy storage – heat batteries, for example?
Electric vehicles are a much better alternative to petrol vehicles for all the reasons you mention and obviously will be an important part of efforts to reduce pollution and CO2. However, if all petrol vehicles were replaced with electric ones, we would still have the same old problems of congestion, parking, and the urban landscape being dominated by private vehicles. There’s also the ancillary pollution from tyres and brakes that barely gets a mention.
What concerns me is that electric vehicles being promoted as the solution, not just as an improvement. I’m most certainly not against them but I am against them being seen as the only important change we should be making.
I have read a lot of your information and am a little perplexed that your plan seems to be solely closing camden road.
I see no details on the residential areas to the north and south other than your flippant comments on the plan is to force traffic onto a more polluted London road via other narrow residential streets or up through Fairfield PK. Living less than 100M from your proposed busgate it is a surprise that I have seen nothing mentioned in the press or the Locallook about this. I see that in their are comments by your members and your selves that this will (hopfully) increase the amount of parking you enjoy.
Camden Rd is a vital arterial road in Bath for the residents living in the neighbourhoods and communities of Walcot Fairfield PK and Larkhall. yes traffic needs to be limited coming from the A46 but this is best done at deadmill lane and not cutting the communities of NE Bath off from the city.
As a regular bus user (to and from the city every day) I note the congestion is often caused by inconsiderate residents near Gays Hill who feel that it is acceptable to park on double yellow lines every evening. We all know who they are and speaking with Bus drivers they are very clear that if the section of parking on the north side of camden road near Gays hill was removed the traffic would flow much easier and safely and pollution would be reduced significantly.
A LTN in Walcot need to reduce the traffic using the side roads and estates as free car parks and cut throughs, It does not need to be creating a “gated” community by what I heard described yesterday as a group Nimbys. Larkhall , Lambridge , Smowhill and Kensington Gds are clogged up with commuters cars parking on the pavements everyday, Your “plan will exacerbate this as it is the antipathy of a holistic approach to the problems we are facing.
A first stage must be stopping commuter parking in the residential areas, and yes you have this But you group have spoke against other areas having this. When groups in the Walcot area have proposed over many years for RPZ Your groups name always comes up as an opponent of it, Why is this ?
Hi Mark, I am very sorry that your comment only got discovered recently, over a year after you submitted it. We’ve learned a lot from lockdown and some initial progress has been made subsequently according to the Council’s plan for ‘Liveable Neighbourhoods’ which may be relevant to some or most of the misgivings you expressed. The programme is taking a very long time to move forward but to enable us in Camden to make some progress we did need to come up with a concept. Without that the whole debate can only be conducted in the abstract and does not get into the pros and cons for differing communities.
I’ll try and responds to each each one in turn:
1. Camden Road would never be closed as such and there was and is no attempt to make it a “gated community”. There would always be access to every property to anyone but this might be more circuitous depending upon where a driver was coming from or going to. It is the through traffic which would be obstructed.
2. A bus-gate would be the one ‘modal filter’ but on its own it would not complete the job – other measures would be needed either to avoid simple get-rounds or to stop other unintended consequences. All Bath ward councillors were invited to submit bids in January. The chosen candidate LN areas have yet to be decided upon by the council, let alone getting to design and consultation, which will be co-produced by highways engineers and the communities. In the meantime we have tried to reach out to neighbouring communities using our early concept as the basis for discussion. We have dome well with most, especially where there is an existing residents association or the like, but have struggled to find a representative group in Fairfield Park.
3. There is a statistic that nearly 50% of journeys in Bath are less than two miles in length. Camden Road is a victim of many of these as well as supporting 118 bus movements per day and other journeys from further afield – the council’s objective is to stimulate ‘modal shift’ from the vehicle to active travel and public transport.
4. Inconsiderate or illegal parking does impede the bus service and I do note that there are more wardens on scooters penalising this.
5. The Liveable Neighbourhoods strategy includes, as the second of three components, an extension to residents parking zones and we have very much backed that for Walcot ward. I’m not aware of ever not supporting other areas having RPZs. It’s ancient history now, but I understand that Camden opted out of the first RPZ schemes and soon discovered that parking simply got displaced here so the last big achievement was getting RPZ 15 established, so that lesson was learned a long time ago.
Jeremy