6 Feb 24: Councillor’s guide to LTN delivery

00:00:38 – News from around and about
00:18:10 – Councillor Rachel Tripp – supporting LTN introduction in Newham, London.

And so welcome to active travel Cafe for the 6th of February 2024 uh tonight we’ll joined by Rachel trip from newm in London we be talking about low traffic neighborhoods and campaigning for them uh thank you very much Rachel for coming along uh but as ever we’ll start with news and um we

Dive straight into the news and um who is first up with news I’m pretty sure we can have some ltn related news content as well this week Adam you were straight in there with um so bar um Mor Somerset they basically announced single member decisions to make three of the ltn

Trials uh permanent one of the trials has been called in to me it comes across as being um kind of a political game rather than um for me but anyway that aside and they they also then announced what they’re calling five new ltns that effectively turns out to be um wide po 3

Ltn cells plus a a scheme to make it much better for drivers to drop their kids off at school so there’s there’s some concerns about one of them but I think in general it’s it’s a really positive mood that we seem to be pushing forward against this one of the um New

Trials that they’re proposing they deed put do um or committed to do them and I think there’s a there’s an online petition that’s already at three and a half thousand if not more against it already which is you I think quite typical sometimes there that’s that’s it from from

Nor okay thanks very much um so let’s go up the country a little bit north to Worcester not that far from Bath Dan in Worcester hello um my interactive travel news but we’re uh we’re getting a pump track in muster in the city um I think the budget was set about

2 and a half years ago for that there’s been um bit of design work and then a fairly substantial consultation bit of local opposition um but the meeting last week the officers actually proposed to defer it and have another think um what was brilliant was there was cross Party

Support politically from the four main parties to to not do that and to just crack on and build it um which is probably politically quite Brave and um and also look at other sites for an additional pump track so really really very positive news from wer we take what we can

Get great great and um let’s go to a Kelly I’m not quite sure where you’re from hi there yeah Andy Kelly I’m in Wilshire ah okay so yeah start I start with some local news um so very local actually to me um uh we had some uh

Traffic counters on the street that I live on put in um before Christmas results from that are in it’s a 20 M hour Street um and essentially it’s there’s a lot majority of people going along there are rat running and speeding um so I’m actually going to attend a parish council meeting tonight

Where they’re talking about putting in some modal filters at the end of the street to turn it into a low traffic neighborhood so um very interested in what Rachel’s got to say today very timely very pertinent um I’m hoping is wilcher um Wilshire is not really Renown I think for being particularly active

Travel friendly um but I’m hoping that we can get some uh some movement on that um and then slightly further a field some of you have probably seen in the news that Paris has just introduced uh was planning to introduce some quite Hefty charges for SUVs and defining

Those at any vehicle over 1.6 tons um I did actually hear quite a good phone in yesterday on James O’Brien on LBC at 11 o’clock if anyone’s interested it was very very good um one of his questions he was getting people to ring in who drive SUVs to ask them if they

Realize how selfish they’re being which I thought was really good um but apologies to anyone who drives an an SUV um but yeah um that was in that’s all my news this week okay terrific and um so we obviously have a had a quite successful ltn campaign in Oxford and I

Will drop into the chat a bit later um a link to some of the resources we created out of that uh there’s a kind of campaigners guide and timeline and a leaflet we created for residents um uh so anyway watch the chat a bit later a link to a coap website

With some resources uh that might be helpful for you here but I’m busy I’m busy introducing people right now so I’ll introduce Sally from uh Newcastle whose ltn story will not be we have terrible news terrible newscastle so H Newcastle um started developing a Citywide program of ltns and just before

Covid and in uh 20121 publici published that policy uh and it in 20 and last round about this time last year put in a number actually no it started the year before I think putting in low traffic neighborhoods in Heaton and in fenom about this time last

Year uh one went to jasond all of these are neighborhoods quite close to city center jasmond right next to city center um and it’s a it was a huge low traffic neighborhood I think probably couple of Miles by maybe half a mile something like that um and it um it’s so the the

Experimental order is due to run out in September and it’s just been taken out um and yeah and I guess this is sort of the the kind of it it doesn’t really matter what you do to support things if people keep changing so I’ve it worked out that we

In the time that this since this policy was developed actually no since 2021 we’ve had two leaders of the council four cabinet members with responsibility for transport at half of the local counselors in in the neighborhood have changed since it was first announced uh we’ve had two uh directors of transport

And we’ve had two principal transport planners who’ve been responsible for the scheme so um yeah it’s really really frustrating for us but essentially I think we think this has come right from the top Nick Kemp who is the relatively new leader of the council since May only since May

2022 um we think this is where it’s come from he’s wants these these things out so um yeah I think I think that’s that so difficult isn’t it just when you feel like you you’ve got things into a really good place and unfortunately the two most senior staff in your in the

Transport team leave to go to active travel England how dare they um yeah it all falls apart so we’re all kind of very depressed here and hoping hoping that hean stays in because he and the experimental order is due to run out in at the end of April so we need

Confirmation that’s going to stay in the next few weeks uh before the pre-election period starts good luck Sally with that one remaining one um okay Bob uh uh yeah super quick because I was going to mention both those things but um just on the SUV thing I think we have to trade quite

Carefully here because there’s quite a a wave of opposition developing and we have to Target it quite carefully um so we don’t just have a kind of lightning conductor of SUVs and we’re aware of all cars whether they’re EVS or whatever um and um yeah that’s uh you know also that

Only 5% of the Parisian public actually voted for it and um uh also residents are exempt but so you know have to approach it a bit gingerly I think yes I I think that’s very important point that is often missed in some of the cover ofits that residents it’s only a applied

To visitors and it’s not strictly SUVs either it’s Vehicles above 1.6 tons or two tons if they’re electric okay uh Sarah from Farber and older shot right um hi I just wanted to say that um our cycling UK funded big bike Revival um project intervention whatever

You want to call it is finished and it involved fix learn to fix and ride sessions and it was hugely well received um member ofy cycling UK came to one of the learn to fix events which were the most popular learn to fix was was more

Popular than going out for a bike ride and I just want to encourage people to use this initiative because it just gets everyday people coming along um I can share some Instagram posts with you if you want of the learn to fix sessions if

I can work out how to do that and that’s from me great that that’s really terrific I mean we in although we uh I live in a market town of 35,000 people um we have a group of about three or four people who do a monthly Dr bike

Session um at the market Hall uh in the Market Square basically and that is invariably popular there’s usually a queue of people um there with their rusty old bikes trying to get them fixed so it is a great way of building Community relationships uh H uh what do you have

For us uh this week no is that a mute problem I can’t see your you haven’t got video on so I can’t see if your mouth is moving but your microphone is off you’re muted okay no I’ll I’ll just St for a while by talk about um always post something in

The chat when yeah yeah um so um a couple of things if if you haven’t seen it yet um the national travel attitudes study wave n which I think was mentioned in brief last time is um it’s a survey run by the department for transport uh this wave it covered cycling electric

Vehicles and local bus travel there’s some interesting insights on all of those I think the interesting one on cycling um it’s it it basically said in an average week 30% of people cycle 70% don’t which is quite an interesting number although I’d probably trust the um National travel survey a bit more

Than I trust this survey what was really interesting is it asked one of the questions essentially have you ever cycled and only 7% of adults had never cycled so by calculation 93% of people have been able to cycle at some point in their lives um so most people um can of

Course some of them may not be able to cycle now but um essentially most a great majority of people can cycle and there’s a British Heart Foundation survey of a few years ago that showed that uh 87% of people uh can uh know how to cycle which is much more um than the

75% of people who know adults who know how to drive so more people know how to cycle than know how to drive uh which is useful to know at times um and the other thing from Oxford sheer is we have we had a pretty brutal uh January with eight people killed on

The roads um which is astonishing where our normal average annual death toll on the roads is 25 over the last 10 years on average um and the um uh the police have not been prioritizing Road Safety so we and the County Council very much on side have been calling for more police action

Uh We’ve also uh the County Council have also just launched their Vision zero strategy which um they’ve been working on for some time which is pretty good although it does have a gap where it should have more better enforcement um which is presumably because the police haven’t been as

Involved as we would all like them to be um and um so we’re generally going to be pointing that out and but otherwise supporting the strategy uh and of course we have a I don’t know how many of you also have this but we have a police and

Crime commissioner election coming up in May the two Rivals to the current candidate to the current incumbent both said they are going to put um Road Safety Road engine reduction I should call it here as a much higher priority um so the PCC elections might

Be a thing to keep an eye on um as between now and May and do some campaigning around uh will what have you uh hello there for us yeah Adam pipe is the esset County Council Ro safety officer and he is uh he attended one of our cultures

Campa meetings recently one of the figures he came up with for the increase in Road accidents is one in three of every serious incident or fatality now includes a drug driver so w we need to look at the video is the whole meeting is on um camera it’s it’s recorded So we

We can uh I po the link into the chat when I can find it but that was one of the big facts that came out of it and uh I I was um editing a story for the Irish paper um at the weekend uh the Irish

Paper that I work for and uh they hadn’t yet caught up with the drug driving um uh things yet so um you know kind of were blaming drink driving and I said look haven’t you got any drug driving figures and I said oh no we’ve not really been collecting the data until

About the last 8 to 10 months so I think they’re going to have a shock when all this comes in um the other thing just totally unrelated uh is I’ve put in an foi to esss County Council just out of interest to see how much money they reclaim from drivers insurances for

Damage to Street Furniture railings and things like that because if they’re not claiming it from drivers and they’re not claiming it from the motor Insurance Bureau which is for uninsured drivers who the hell is paying it and the answer is the the taxpayer you and me so that’s

Another way if that’s the case that drivers are being subsidized right right that’s really interesting will I’d be really interested to see that um video and the other thing that published actually in November was a um uh essentially going back over the stats 19 data for 2021 and updating the figures

After Pro full investigations are done and um changing the uh essentially updating the figures which found that the cause was somewhat different and actually speeding was more of a factor than previously thought and I’ll pop that link in the chat because that’s quite interesting um reading as

Well uh H do you have a your uh yeah you’re on sound again now this damned Android oh we’ve got Echo now running out time quick quick one ills on drug drivers um we’ve also had a little exchange where was a fun survey done of people who have vanity plates and then

Amount time they crop up in rtc’s in illegal parking and someone’s done some psychiatric analysis of people who drive vehicles with vanity tape plates and particular types of vehicle uh which was having some rather interesting results I wonder if anything more serious has been done in that respect so we can actually

Profile the type of drivers um because I know that some of the Fatal hgv cyclist crashes have involved vanity plate hgvs um you know with the company name and whether that’s sort of an indicator which can help us find the way on that and I’m also checking out the bus crash

At Victoria which is the second fatality at Victoria bus station in three years and whether the person was on the apron or whether they were on the bus Island it’s not very clear and that’ll be really interesting analysis to do I wish the government would crack on with its

Road investigation branch that it promised two years ago yeah right let us move on um because we’re uh uh we’re a couple of minutes late but that was a good news session um so we’ll move on to uh back to the topic of ltns and Rachel

Uh from newm in East London which for geographical purposes stretches from Stratford to London City Airport roughly uh so you have a cable cor a cable car in your uh Southern Corner which is fantastic uh Rachel do you want to uh kick off from there um sure very happily

Hello uh my name is Rachel um as has just kindly been said I’m I’m really pleased to be here um I’m a counselor for Forest Gate North Ward which is tucked right up at the top of newm which has has has been said um spread across part of East London um an incredibly

Diverse Ward an incredibly diverse burough and I think it’s a really interesting place to be because I think that the center of London is kind of Shifting East and I have a bit of a hobby horse that part of what I think we’re dealing with in newm is a kind of

Change in transport terms as people change from a kind of outer London mentality to a sort of inner London approach to transport and there’s a kind of Hump for us to get over there I think um I’m just going to share my screen and talk a little bit about my experience of

Trying to campaign for and support ltns in newm um share my screen beginning okay are you able to see that there not yet but we’re a hopeful it worked in the test but sometimes it takes a second okay let’s have another go um here we go I hit yes here it comes okay

Brilliant from the beginning right let’s try and do full screen how’s that yeah perfect okay so that’s me um I’ve specified a view a view from the back benches and I’ll come to that um I’m not asking you to get out the world’s smallest violin at this point but I did

Just want to start to say um it is a funny old job being a counselor sometimes people ask me why I do it um I’m never quite sure how to answer I think it’s a kind of compulsion that you either have or you don’t um there is

There is a lot of scrutiny and being scrutinized for what you do is entirely correct um but there is also a lot of abuse and particularly I’ve seen over the last nine years that kind of level of abuse really increase I have to say I personally haven’t really suffered with

A lot of that but a lot of my colleagues really have and particularly women and particularly women of color um which I think is just really worth bearing mind in this environment like who who would put themselves forward the scope of the role it’s absolutely enormous you could

You could absolutely do it full-time or more than full-time if you had the kind of the energy and the will um local government just has no money I don’t have to explain to anyone here the absolutely crippling social inequality that that in genders and the terrible

Things that happen um but also as a counselor of course um having no money is just really boring nobody ever entered local politics in order to do what I sometimes say to my friends is my job which is just to say no nicely like that’s that’s not a fun thing to do it’s

It’s part of my job I do it I’ll take it on the chin um being part of a political party has an awful lot of great stuff with it I’m really proud of the heritage of my political party um it also carries with it a lot of difficulties you know

Collectivism is our greatest strength but is also it can be can be really really hard um and I find as someone who represents the W that I live in one of the things that I love but that I also find hard is the fact that I’m always on

My daughter’s laugh with me that I can’t take more than two steps outside the house without someone saying oh Rachel while you’re here can I just catch you and grab you to ask you this um and again that is to a certain extent that’s quite right and I walk the streets that

I campaign on and cross the roads that I’m trying to make safer and make better um but it’s also quite intense so I think I wanted to start by saying it’s really easy and I have done this as well it’s easy to feel really frustrated with counselors um for not doing the right

Thing um like I said I share that frustration and I think counselors should be held up to high standards um but it’s also campaigning for active travel particularly campaigning low traffic neighborhoods is really intense um and can be and can be really difficult so I’ve already said when

People ask me why I became a counselor um sometimes I tell them I’m not really sure why sometimes I don’t feel very sure why um people do come to it with a whole variety of different interests um you know some some local counselors are really not interested in active travel

And to a certain extent if they have really Act interests in other things then actually fair enough there are lots of areas of local government that actually I say to myself as a back as a part-time back venture I say well actually that is great and I will be

Involved if a resident wants me to and I will represent them but as you can’t do everything it’s not possible but the biggest reason I think why people become a counselor is to make a difference and so I suppose for me one of the main kind of selling points of being involved in

Active travel is it is physical you can go out you can put your hand on it it’s lasting it’s discreet bits of infrastructure you can use and I wanted to illustrate this point by showing these pictures um which show the before and after of the local healthy School

Street um this is my local Infant School um all of my daughters have been there when it was implemented my two youngest I think were still there and there was a literal incredible difference and I still think that every morning when I walk my youngest to school to the junior

School around the corner the road is quiet there are people in the road I saw two people cycling along next to each other having a really Furious conversation in Spanish with their children on the back of the bikes um starting to see cargo bikes which we

Never saw you know sort of 15 years ago when I moved to Forest Gate um it’s made a really huge difference and the healthy school streets and I will come back to this later as well I think a really helpful thing to start to open people’s eyes to how incredibly dominated are

Public Spaces by cars and how it doesn’t have to be that way but it is hard I think for people to see it and healthy school streets um can help you to understand that so apologies in advance because I know a lot of this won’t be

Incredibly new to you but I just wanted to kind of put it through the kind of local counselor lens I always think with low traffic neighborhoods in particular that there is a huge spectrum of opinion and there are all the people sort of right over here who are in incredibly

Passionate and massively for them um and basically kind of whatever happens they will keep their opinions and then there are people right on the other side who feel incredibly concerned about them have a really often very intense kind of emotional reaction against any restrictions um on their car use and

Again actually you know are those people going to change their minds I would hope so but possibly not and then there’s this kind of broad saave of people in the middle and it’s really the people in the middle who I always think I’m most interested in talking to um and I’ve

Said here sometimes you’re aiming for me I I really do mean that I spoke to a woman on the doorstep and was talking to her about her Road and she said to me oh about those Planters over there she was literally about four doors away from a

Filter she said I didn’t like them to begin with but now I think they’re okay and that actually I’ve kind of mentally recorded that conversation as like one of the kind of biggest wins that I feel like I’ve had with with ltns she was really she had obviously been really

Skeptical about them to begin with she’s never going to be outside campaigning to have them kept she won’t be an advocate for extending them but if you ask her she’s like yeah yeah it’s okay it’s all right and I think I’ll take that the um I think it’s really important and you

Guys will know this as well to keep talking about walking um you know this is too short a session to go into now all the reasons why people on bikes seem to have become a particular Target of whatever culture war is Raging at the moment but I find you know talking about

People walking everybody walks talking about walking on the roads that they live on walking with their children walking to go and see their friends that really really helps me to kind of keep the conversations open and and I also find there’s something about not being too kind of religiously attached to ltn

As an approach you know I think my Approach with ltn is I really want cleaner air and safer streets and increased community connections and thriving local businesses um and actually ltns are the best way that we know to achieve that at the moment who knows 10 years time there might be

Another approach and if there was I like to think I would keep an open mind and listen to what that is and I find bringing that kind of spirit like this is the best evidence we’ve got at the moment and it’s imperfect but it’s an approach we know it works and this is

What we’re going to try keeping that spirit I find really helps to keep conversations really kind of open and collaborative um I’ve made the obvious Point here that speaking to people on their doorsteps not at meetings is really really helpful um I’ve rarely had a good conversation with people where

You’ve called them together it brings a kind of combative sort of air of rhetorical debate and winners and losers whereas actually I have had some really good conversations with people of all different idea ideas and all different kind of standpoints where I’ve actually been on their doorstep and when I’ve

Been out door knocking um with kind of local political leaflets um and then the idea about transport has come up those discussions have been really helpful I think there’s a point about when to step up and talk to people and when actually to step back some of the most useful discussions about low

Traffic neighborhoods in particular where there have been useful discussions online some of those haven’t been when I’ve stepped in and sort of started giving people chapter and verse about them if I found if I pause for a moment and allow other voices to come in in then sometimes sometimes those questions

Start to kind of resolve themselves and I think it’s tempting I think it’s tempting for everyone maybe it’s particularly tempting for local counselors to try to sort of charge in and start correcting people and actually I think that urge isn’t a helpful one um I’ve also said here the problem of

Evidence obviously we do have a lot of evidence about low traffic neighborhoods but you know for whatever reason at the moment that isn’t massively compelling and I always want it to be but I always find that it isn’t so I find it helpful to have evidence kind of in my back

Pocket if you like but not to immediately rely on it and I’ve already mentioned the idea about school streets and I would say also play streets and temporary closures as a kind of entrylevel way of getting people to understand the streets belong to us they shouldn’t be these kind of dangerous

Places they’re paid for by us we own them in many places Urban places there are only public spaces and so we should decide in a much more equ way about what happens to them and who gets to travel along them and how safe they are while they do

It I’ve just done a couple of notes Here relating some of the points I’ve already made I think a really good conversation for me about an ltn would ideally be in person but sometimes those do have to be online I think it’s really helpful to start with the specifics it’s really

Good to come with a detailed knowledge of the particular road that a person lives on the road that their children go to school on the road then Local High Street that is really helpful I think it’s also helpful to take those conversations from the specific out to

London as a whole and start to talk again just very gently about ideas like that way that the numbers of cars have increased so much over the last 10 or 20 years the way that modern transport policy is going all over the world I think that can be really useful every

Place is unique but no place is quite as unique as it thinks it is I find it really really helpful to give people a bit of space to express the frustrations that they have first um some people are really really worried and sometimes those worries are disingenuous but often

They’re not and often they are the same as the worries that people Express disingenuously you know access people who are disabled for example is a real concern but it’s also often used by some well I say often also sometimes used by bad faith actors so it’s really really

Important to hear those concerns to understand how disabled people can move around low traffic neighborhoods how we can make that easier and a lot of the the barriers that disabled people already face that might not have been might not have been considered in the way they should have been once I’ve done

That kind of listening once you’ve really heard it repeated back to the person what you’ve heard so that they really they really know that you know where they’re coming from I find it helpful to gently introduce a bit of challenge say well of course I see that

I know that people are concerned about the effect on Boundary roads and I often say so it is interesting though that where this approach has been taken in other places that incredible impact on Boundary roads for example massive congestion and disaster on the main roads isn’t necessarily what we see like

The evidence we have doesn’t really show that that happens um and then leave a bit of space and a bit of space and people may reject that and they may say well that’s what that’s what you say but that’s not actually the case you know

Fair enough um and leave a bit and leave a bit of space for consideration both on my part of what they’re saying U and on their part of what I’m bringing to them um and I wanted to finish here by saying it’s it’s a conversation not a

Conversion um which which I find really useful um and I think we we all like I feel so passionate about the safety of people who are walking and cycling and about the social justice as aspects of it and the way it relates to the climate emergency but I also think you know here

We are we have to have conversations with people people feel really strongly about where they live um and if we just kind of Rush in with all the evidence with a really firmly Health Point of View without the space people to talk to us then actually actually it doesn’t go as well

As it could if we just have a little bit more caution um obviously I’m sure the emotional power of the car is something that you guys have spoken about a lot I did read somewhere and I wish I should try to find it that um car ownership was

More closely correlated to the length of time that someone had lived in London than it was to other socioeconomic factors um and I found that interesting because it really tallied with my experience of speaking to people I found that people who’ve lived in yum a long

Time um have a a feeling about being able to park their car about the number of cars a household could have about access to the places they wanted to go which is not necessarily held by people who’ve moved more recently um car cars obviously can be a really important part

Of people’s identity and also I think for a lot of young people it’s really the only space that they can have that’s their own if you’re never going to be able to buy your own house if you’re living with your parents really in the

Long term um that you’re in in a sort of relatively successful professional job then actually you can buy yourself a nice car and it is your own space in a way that other places just aren’t um and I also wanted to mention the perceptions of safety um now we could debate how

Real they are but there is a very firmly held feeling that particularly among certain ethnic groups but also to be honest you know among among a lot of white people as well as other ethnic groups that women and children in particular are not safe walking and cycling and that those people should be

In cars either because of danger from other cars or because of danger you Danger from crime Danger from assault you know this this idea that in a car that one is safe um and I think if we’re going to combat that if we’re going to make Safe Streets we have to understand

Those feelings first so I just wanted to finish by saying that it’s easy to overestimate the power of a local counselor um I you I come across this a lot people you people saying that people must go into local politics for the the power and the money and I I kind of say

If that’s what I wanted I would probably do literally almost anything else you know you’re not as a local Ward counselor you’re there to represent people nobody is waking up in the morning wondering how they feel about low traffic neighborhoods and thinking oh well maybe I’ll I’ll ask Rachel

Perhaps she has an idea that I could adopt as my own um I also often think like me in the real world you Muggles if you will real people do they actually know who their counselors are like I spent a lot of my life not knowing who

My local counselors were um and I think that’s very that is very very normal um local councilors have really limited power especially in directly elected maril system that we have in newm um so I think that’s really important but also I think to end more positively you have

To not underestimate the things that you can do locally we’ve got or we should have as Ward counselors really good detailed knowledge of local opinion formers know goodness knows I don’t necessarily like online debate but if you asked me I could name probably the 10 people who would almost certainly

Take part in any debate online about Forest Gate um and I probably got their numbers in my phone and I could tell you how they would react probably to certain things um I’ve got good knowledge of the local businesses I think certainly from my point of view being really steadfast in

My support for active travel has to a certain extent insulated me from some of the backlash when we’ve made proposals I think some people have have gone out to try to change people’s minds try to change other counselor minds and have thought well there’s no point point trying to to convince Rachel because

She’s very steadfastly for active travel and so I think that has act that has acted as a certain amount of protection I think it’s been really interesting for me to think about how the things that we do in my ward can then show the way

Forward for the rest of the B we had the first ltn in my ward we had the first healthy School Street um we had the first play Street and I did all of those things not to show off about my ward or my work but but more to say actually we

Can have this here too like newm might be a borrow with an awful lot of challenge but that doesn’t mean that we can’t have nice things and actually the things that happen in Forest Gate can happen right across the burrow I think what I try to do in my relationships

With officers is to be really consistent and steadfast and not to be kind of rocked by the initial kind of feedback and concern you might get from people and I hope I’m sure the officers could tell you more lively than me but I hope that that really empowers officers to

Know that in my ward they can go ahead and do the right thing um and I hope also that gives some security to local campaigners to know that they have a group of voices within the council including mine but you know lots of others as well who will be really

Steadfast in their support for active travel and in what we’re trying to achieve and I think that brings me to the end there we go I think you’re on mute I am on mute making the classic mistake um that was a really good um run through from a

Different kind of very human non infrastructural perspective although I think we we’ve recognized a lot of uh things in there and uh I’ve I’ve seen one question so far and I I wrote down a similar one and I think that’s a good one to start us off on and I’ve got a

Couple other Rel reled to it so actually actually I’ll start off with um in in the move towards ltns in newm specifically who who started that move was it was it people was it the council I mean yourself you described yourself as a counselor and a campaigner was it

Was it people like you who were a bit of both I think it was a combination of things we had a new Administration um still labor but a new mayor so that made a big difference there was a space for officers who I think had had some ambition around active travel for a

While that they felt previously might not have been possible or palatable um I think that there was particularly in the north of the burough a kind of rising sense from residents that um particularly because of our proximity to W and Forest the sense that actually you only had to travel quite a short

Physical difference to be somewhere that had a very radically different approach to how people move around and obviously you travel that short distance you crossed the bar boundary um but the actual kind of demographics and the makeup of the types of buildings and the you all the stuff that there already is

Still the same um I was um only for about six months the cabinet lead for highways and in that point I went and met with um Clyde LS from Mor and Forest and we kind of dreamed up um together with officers the idea about doing the

First crossb ltn um so I do think that relationship um which which I started other people carried on and implemented that was really important as well um so I think it was I think it was a combination of things right right and then and then

That kind of I the both and Forest is interesting because that was one of The Inspirations for us in Oxford as well we we have we took actually we arranged for counselors and officers to go to war and Forest as well as campaigners and it was

Saw Clyde and he came to Oxford it was it was an inspiration so the more General version of that which Rachel I think asked the other Rachel was um how to go from a a general position of I’ll call it car acceptance like it’s there’s always cars there’s loads of cars that’s

Completely normal to we need to do something about this we need to change this situation I if we could do that that’s a $64,000 Question it is isn’t it it’s worth much more than that I feel like for me it’s been you it’s it’s been a really it’s been an

Incremental approach and there have been several important steps I think for us as a London burrow implementing burrow wide parking restrictions um was really hard to do but was very important because that starts getting the idea that actually there is no automatic entitlement to put your private vehicle out on the road and

No automatic entitlement to park anywhere that you want for free and that starts to introduce the idea idea that street space is a finite resource um I think similarly moving to emissions-based parking and charging for all parking permits um was the next kind of piece of that puzzle um and it’s and

And that was enormously controversial and very very difficult to implement and I don’t envy at all um my colleagues who were in charge of that when it happened but it was so very very obviously the right thing to do um so I think I think

It is it is bit by bit I think we have a lot of car-free developments now in newm where residents can’t have residence parking permits um again that’s that’s not uncontroversial but it’s a really important part of saying that to live in London to move around to get to and from

The places you need to go you don’t have to have a car um and in some cases you just can’t because there isn’t space to put it um but overall I’d say I don’t necessarily know the answer to that question um I’d love to yes I think

That’s if we knew all knew the answer to that that we would be we’ be doing it and uh a good question from um Martin Lucas Smith who’s um uh in Cambridge with the cycle streets team which is a fantastic uh set of resources um so uh how how what’s the

Best approach to deal with bad faith actors um so for example people who use um the disabled as an excuse for not doing anything and by which he clarifies not that we shouldn’t take account of genuine disabled access issues which are important but the people who are using

It as a as an excuse um not in a genuine way um and there are many other examples of um people who are essentially coming up with excuses non-factual approaches to try and delay or eliminate low traffic neighborhoods and and other schemes yeah I think that’s a really

Really good question some of the heat around debates about disabled access I find I can take out by focusing in really specifically on blue badges and actually that does undermine some of that does undermine some of the bad faith if people say oh but you know you’re saying everyone must cycle 10

Miles a day and not everyone can then you coming back to that and saying oh of course not everyone can cycle although some people do use their bikes as Mobility AIDS but you know people who really are unable to walk short distances um will have free parking

Available in blue in um blue badge provision that takes some of the heat out of it I think I think the difficulty with engaging with bad faith actors is there’s only a very small number of them but the effect that they have on the overall debate is incredibly poisonous

And actually there is something to be said for stepping back a bit and putting energies into dealing with people who are really genuinely concerned because people who are really stoking up the debate as I said are not going to change their minds and I suppose I feel

Particularly as a as an elected local representative if I’m seen to be really kind of furiously turning on someone who seems to be just someone who’s a bit worried about the end of their Road it just it just lends a kind of nasty air to the whole debate and so actually for

Me I have a finite amount of time and tlight amount of energy and I would rather spend that time talking to people who actually live within the areas that changes are proposed um and really understanding where they’re coming from and where they’re traveling to and from um and talking with them about what’s

Available to us and what the alternatives are yeah yeah and um and then if I go on about um your approach to dealing with people I was really interested in the way you described conversation and the so so a lot of us obviously have very strong held beliefs and passionate

Views about this and and you can see some of that in the in the chat um uh and and actually maybe with a because of that we’re the wrong people to go out and have those conversations or we need to Mellow our approach U because we’re trying convince people too

Readily and we need to think about our scripts um we’ve we’ve been having a lot of ation about this in Oxford um do you do you think that um let me ask a more general question about it do you think that campaigners can go and have the kind of

Conversations that you can have as a counselor um about kind of how should our streets be uh how should they be in the future I really do I really do and I actually think the more different types of people are having those conversations the more powerful they are I think it’s

You know it’s a shame when the only people talking about pedestrian safety in newm are members of newm cyclists but it’s also a shame when the only people who are talking about ltns are counselors I think actually if we if we can somehow harness the kind of concern

That everybody feels about the impact on Children’s Health from air pollution and combine that with the desire from people who cycle and people who might cycle or who don’t currently cycle for protected infrastructure and combine that with you all the other bits of impetus I think the more the more varied the

Conversation is the less it feels like one person on a soap box s kind of saying you know good news I’ve come to save you all from yourselves you need to give up your cars now follow me yeah yeah and um I’ve got the question from Paul in terms of that light

Challenge um I I think it’s a a question essentially between anecdote and the kind of observation and statistics different different approaches to um to what what’s the most effective I feel like this might be another question there’s no answer for but I think I think May You’ got to

Judge it according to the individual yeah and and judge it and like I say leaving space the conversation I found has always been so useful you know taking a step back and not charging in immediately to say well actually if you look at all the information about this

You’ll find that the things that you all think are completely wrong like that’s that that doesn’t help anyone um moving from the local to the general I think is really helpful so you know it’s it’s always helpful for me to point out well yet like congestion on say my local High

Street is a really big concern and actually do you remember when there were those Gas Works um up just north of here and all the traffic was backed up for days and that was actually nothing to do with cycling infrastructure or anything else it was just about Road works and

You know traffic goes up and down and perhaps perhaps there might be an impact on this perhaps we could look at that um but then coming back to you know and of course like I say the you the phrase this is interesting is a useful one then saying but also isn’t it interesting

That actually where this approach has been tried in exactly the same way in other places um the results aren’t the kind of worries that people tend to have you know people aren’t seeing local businesses shutting shop um only because people can’t park outside people aren’t seeing enormous amounts of congestion on

Boundary roads people aren’t seeing a lot of once it’s bedded in a lot of confusion about different routes and ways to get around and isn’t isn’t that interesting what if what if we saw the same things here what would that be like yeah yeah um okay and

Um there’s an interesting one about um house price values have you have you seen any have you seen any changes of house prices I mean I know there’s a there’s a more General issue about gentrification um and some places have been accused of gentrifying and other places say well that’s also known as

Making places nicer to live in um do you have a that’s really I think that’s really important I think it’s very hard to take a view on house prices because the housing market in London is so peculiarly overheated and so you know weirdly susceptible to different things

Um that said the the issue that the broader question of gentrification what that brings me back to really quickly is my firmly held personal belief that we mustn’t have systems that have exemption permits for residents you know people people say that ltns create boundaries between communities and I saywell isn’t

It interesting that you say that because I live just outside an ltn and actually the ltn which gesturing off sort of to the west from my desk from me actually feels more open and more porous to me since it was introduced because the streets are so much safer I cycle on

Them a lot more I walk through them a lot more I go to use the businesses there I think that whole argument really falls down if you start offering people residence permits I think if you take an area kind of draw an ltn line around it and say everyone inside this can move

Around however they want and you lot outside you have to avoid our area um I think that’s I think that’s really difficult and I think it is a really common question that people say to me oh yes well I agree with closing that bridge for example but obviously people

Who live on the road right next to it should have permits to get over it um I think that is the thin end of the wedge and really undermines everything that the whole that traffic reduction schemes are trying to do so I think I would I would generally be really really opposed to

Those right right and uh Martin’s another question uh which is which is a good one it’s um we often see ltns as a street by Street issue but actually is there are they not best summed up by a simple principle which is that we have main streets for through traffic and then we

Have local residential streets which are for accessing the houses and U and then we use that as the principle for describing them and and that’s how we organize our streets and you can explain that to people you explain whether they drive a car or not um and I think it’s a

Really really good point and sometimes when I’ve been when we we had some new proposals out for um two further ltns um and the reaction to them was let’s just say very strong and when I was feeling particularly browbeaten by reactions which in many cases were from you know

Friends and neighbors and people people I’ve walk past and people I see all the time I would just try to think to myself actually this is based on a really simple principle which is that through traffic should go via main roads and residential streets should be people

Trying to get to those streets whether they’re visiting or you know and that is and that that that’s what this Bas that’s what this really comes down to um and I think trying to hold on to those kind of simple principles can be really really important yeah yeah

I see Rachel then notes another Rachel notes that um uh you then oppose you then meet the argument that some people do live on the main roads and you’ve got the question of whether traffic goes up on those main roads and those people are exposed to

More traffic to which the answer is of course we then try and reduce traffic on those roads as well Le make sure it’s no worse and yes and saying that the ltn saying that the ltn and filters are a starting Point as well you know I always

Say to people you know the the Planters in the road obviously we can see those very beautifully Illustrated behind you you know that is that is really a starting point for making the roads into the kind of places we want them to be you know we then need to move on and we

Need you know better funding for local government so that the Pavements are a better More Level surface for people who have wheelchairs and push chairs and we need more cycle storage and we need more pedestrian Crossings and we need lower speeds and we need all of these things

But the the ltn is the starting point that then allows us to start reclaiming that space and make further changes as well good um right I think that’s uh that’s all with the question would anyone like to come in with a last minute comment I think there

Was a really good uh Journey around oh Gram’s uh uh friend greme from Oxford uh let coming up with a question uh so we have a historic pinch point in Oxford um okay I think that’s a statement more than a question uh are there other places for

That Cur yeah yeah I think that’s probably a bit more of a statement we we’ve been looking for other similar places where we have this pinch point or whether Oxford’s particularly unique in having this Adam you have a yeah um one of the things that I I saw recently was

I think uh was the the Declaration that ltns are twice as set in terms of making Road safer as just 20 M perh speed limits and and and there’s almost like an understanding that you put 20 m per hour speed limits in because it makes roads safer for

Pedestrians and cyclists but we don’t seem to have that sort of narrative seems to be lost with the ltns and I think is there a point where you see we get to where an ltn is seeing as a road safety intervention uh um effectively making an area much less L likely to

Have Road collisions Etc um or is that a narrative that at the moment just isn’t possible I really hope so I mean I really hope more broadly if you know not withstanding the kind of change in the evidence base I mentioned earlier that you know it’s possible you I really hope

We could get to a point where the idea of ltms as we said earlier residential streets not used for through traffic is just the default and that’s what we see in cities where the where the street design where the infrastructure allows it to happen and and we are at least

Broadly comfortable with the idea that doing that improves Road Safety as well as bringing all the other benefits that we talked about um I think we are a little bit away a little bit far away from that at the moment but you know we have to have to remain optimistic

Otherwise we’d all just go back to bed yeah and um I mean there is certainly data that ltns have the number of Road casualties within the area and I think the boundary roads stay about the same the 20 mph speed limit seem to reduce them about 20% but that may be a

Wider area so it might not be directly comparable but I can see where that 2 to one might have come from um but of course you could do both um most ltns should not be running up 30 m hour I would have thought that they’re residential areas um

Uh so uh but I think the the road safety the danger reduction um would be a significantly useful U thing to focus on um uh gra grae is your was your question a question you commenting in the chat Robin the point of I’m trying to make is that the network of streets that

We have in East Oxford focuses on one Bridge with a roundabout and it’s inevitable that the boundary roads will it seems to me unless there dramatic traffic reduction will inevitably carry much more traffic and the amount of congestion in off in East Oxford is is witness to that the only other place I

Can think of in the world or in Europe at least is Ronda in Spain where one Bridge joins two size of the of the city so if if the ltns in Oxford almost inevitably focus on one place and therefore induce massive well significant congestion to make the bus

Companies very very upset then we need a different solution don’t we ltms need to be approached much bro way than they have been we should learn a l more I think from the practice in Europe uh in the in the 70s and 80s uh we mostly don’t know what happened in Europe

Anymore I guess I assert but I don’t think the ltn in Oxford are actually good enough that wasn’t question that did become a mistake it wasit m are there any other Solutions um yes um a very good question um so I mean I think we we know in

Oxford we are not stopping at ltns but we we’re having traffic filters on on the main roads as well so uh and uh there were a few little gaps between the ltns to to fill in as well good well I I think i’ I’ve really

Found this fascinating as a as a kind of the communications part around um traffic reduction schemes and active travel schemes is um is crucially important uh um for all of us I think and I I think Rachel’s given us a really good Insight so thank you very much

Rachel for for giving us that point of view both as a campaigner and a counselor that was really excellent um thank you so much for having me you’re very welcome you’re welcome to come back at any time and um I look forward to next week um I cannot remember what we’ve got next

Week I don’t know if Adam can tell me um but it will be good we’ll have our normal news and then we’ll have a wonderful presentation from another wonderful person um and uh thank you all for coming and have a good week of active traveling around whichever cities

And counties you come from uh so enjoy your week and see you next week