No cheap fix with traffic congestion and pollution

• LOW traffic neighbour-hoods (LTNs) attract local authorities partly because they’re cheaper than dealing with the real problems.

Putting in planters and bollards costs (relatively) peanuts, it forces traffic into adjacent areas and, lo and behold, it’s not our problem any more.

In an ideal world, everyone would live, work and shop within easy walking distance of home, but London’s not like that: too many people can’t afford to live where they work.

Camden’s promotion of walking, cycling and bus use is fine for the fit and able-bodied, and those able to afford expensive local shops or home deliveries rather than having to travel to cheaper supermarkets miles away.

But when did the borough‘s transport planners last endure a Camden Road bus shelter on a freezing wet winter evening or face the impossibility of taking large or heavy items to the Regis Road recycling centre that’s inaccessible by public transport?

Forcing traffic onto fewer main roads doesn’t just affect cars, as the frustration of a pre-Covid pandemic bus journey up Tottenham Court Road that takes five times longer since the West End Project closed all the side streets shows only too well.

Solving traffic and pollution problems needs city-wide measures, such as legislation to force fleet and “last mile” operators – BT, Camden Council, DPD, Ocado, Royal Mail, British Gas et al – to use hybrid or electric vehicles, reversal of draconian pre-Covid pandemic cuts to bus routes, building genuinely affordable housing in the heart of the city close to workplaces, radical transport ideas (such as Ken Livingstone’s tram scheme that would have linked Camden to the South Bank and the West End to west London) and a government crackdown on the manufacturers whose convenience foods fuel national obesity.

None of this is anything like as cheap as barriers and flowerpots, which may be why it’s never suggested.

Closing swathes of the borough to traffic temporarily improves some local conditions, but if it seizes central arteries up completely, nobody benefits in the longer term.

DON KELLER
Address supplied