You report on a study that is said to show that low-traffic neighbourhoods (LTNs) may prompt residents to drive less, and rebuts objections to them (Low-traffic neighbourhoods may lead people to drive less, data suggests, 12 June).
This, though, was not a study of road usage, but simply of the annual mileage of cars registered to LTN residents and to residents of the surrounding area. However, most of the traffic passing through the wider area originates and terminates further away, so the study is irrelevant to traffic levels and does nothing to deny the problem that every LTN exacerbates an adjacent high-traffic neighbourhood. While the residents of LTNs benefit, residents of adjacent roads suffer increased pollution. Also, LTNs divert traffic on to bus routes, making journey times longer – and so making public transport a less attractive alternative to the use of private cars.
It seems strange that a method that cannot capture the harm done by LTNs was chosen for this study.
John Wilson
London
• Re LTNs, there is a simple choice to be made. Most main roads are overcrowded and if a shortcut is available through a residential area then we, as motorists, will take it. I live in Jesmond, an inner-city suburb of Newcastle upon Tyne, which was until recently plagued by the use of its terraced streets as rat runs by motorists trying to shave a minute or two off their journey time.
In March, the Labour council, with rare imagination, introduced strategically placed bollards that at a stroke eliminated through traffic. Our streets were transformed into calm, safe, unpolluted avenues to walk, cycle, push prams or simply stand on to take the air. Of course, the motoring lobby was outraged and vociferous, something gleefully seized on by the local press. We, the silent majority, simply gave thanks.
Alec Collerton
Jesmond, Newcastle upon Tyne
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