• CONGRATULATIONS to Camden Council on coming up with such a neat proposal to reduce traffic both through and from the Camden Square area.

I ask your readers to respond to the current consultation which closes on February 28.

Schemes such as these are needed across Camden, both to keep through-traffic off side roads and (just as importantly) to encourage able-bodied residents of these quietened roads to make their short journeys more actively than by using a car.

The closure of Murray Street to through-traffic will fulfil both ends admirably. In 2018 Murray Street was carrying 5,000 vehicles per day, as I know only too well having crossed it on the school run for the past 11 years.

Murray Street long acted as the barrier to my children’s independence, as there is no reliably safe place for even a 10-year-old child to cross with good visibility.

If we still had a car, there is little doubt that I’d find the planned closure thoroughly annoying on the occasions when I wanted to make a short trip, perhaps to deliver a child to a friend’s house. Often it will now be no faster to do a trip by car than to go on foot or by bike.

This is good, discouraging these sorts of journeys is essential for the health and safety of Camden’s residents, and it is only right that those of us who have the good fortune to live within quieter areas shift as many of our trips as possible onto our feet or our bikes and don’t continue to drive past others’ homes.

RACHEL WRANGHAM
Rochester Square NW1