Greenwich is at the Eastern edge of the bowl that forms London. It’s one of our oldest towns, is home to the Maritime Museum, the Old Royal Naval College and the Royal Observatory and thriving markets. It is a beautiful place. However, much of London’s pollution flows our way on the wind - we are, as they say, at the “arse end of the whale”. On winter mornings you can see the smog lying below the hill and across to the City. That’s the reason the West Greenwich Low Traffic Neighbourhood has been such a breath of fresh air: we no longer have traffic adding to that smog.
LTNs, many of which have now been introduced across London, use planters, bollards and cameras to remove through traffic from neighbourhoods. They make driving inconvenient, while making walking and cycling more pleasant. Traffic on London’s unclassified ‘C’ roads has almost doubled in the past ten years. LTNs are the only way of reversing this attack on the residential streets on which over 90% off Londoners live.
Since the LTN was introduced all the bad aspects of rat-running have ceased with no rushing cars and vans, no driving on the narrow pavements to inch past each other, no stand-up rows between drivers who had blocked each other in, no cyclists being forced off the road or pedestrians onto it, and no written-off parked vehicles nor grid-locked ambulances.
The speeding cars only ever gained the illusion of quicker journey times; they always had to queue to get back on or off the A2, after dodging through the bustling residential streets of Greenwich.
Our pedestrians, the schoolchildren, tourists, locals and cyclists all benefit from safer, quieter streets. Crossing the roads is easier for the 4 million tourists visiting Greenwich Park and the 6 million passengers at Greenwich Station and going to school is safer for 3,000 or so pedestrians each day.
The whole area has become calmer, strangers and friends stop to talk with one another, groups can stroll across the road and quite often in it, a once-busy zebra crossing is near redundant. Elderly neighbours can get into their cars without being sworn at. Houses are cleaner, with less grit on the surfaces and the windows needing less cleaning. Even the remaining cars drive more slowly.
However, LTNs are not without complaints. Greenwich council will shortly decide whether to retain, amend or axe the scheme. In particular, tradesmen say they are having to take longer on the main roads to get to their clients on the other side of the LTN. Police have been called to road rage incidents. This is a problem. In other boroughs, surrounding area traffic has fallen after LTN introduction, and I hope the same thing will happen here; the two ‘A’ roads North of the LTN are already much quieter. It is essential if we are to meet the Carbon Neutral Strategy 2030.
The other major complaint has been from residents alongside the A2 who believe pollution is just displaced to that road, that “the haves are dumping on the have-nots”. In practice, now that eight thousand fewer cars join and leave the A2 each day, traffic has flowed more freely, the air across this end of the borough is more breathable on both the residential roads and the main roads. On A2 Blackheath Hill, for example, particulate levels have fallen by over 25% since 2018.
It’s a long journey but I hope that more and more of London will become like it is inside this LTN. A place for people and not cars; calmer, quieter, healthier and more human. It’s how a city should be.
