Forum menu
I lived in a trial zone that was revoked at the end of the trial period. Drivers managed to make enough noise that councillors voted against, despite the results of the analysis showing that it was truly successful at reducing traffic both inside the ltn and on surrounding roads. Yay...
The LTN discourse is a crystallization of that line by Yeats:
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
The supporters are busy and have better things to do than attend council meetings and write long, angry letters to all and sundry. It's just not taking up much of their brainspace.
The opponents, to be frank, don't have much else going on in their lives and can therefore devote vast amounts of bandwidth to it, as you would if you genuinely thought LTN's were part of a plot by George Soros and Bill Gates to lock you in your home and put nanomachines in your children.
It's all so very, very tiring to fight against.
@hatter That fits with the 'most people are quietly in favour, and even if they're part of the minority against, they usually don't care enough to change their vote' narrative?
I thought I was in favour of LTNs but when our area became one, traffic diverted from existing through routes started using my (previously quiet) road as a sanctioned cut through. Like any other traffic measure it's success depends on planning and consultation. Our council are notorious for a lack of both. For instance they failed to notice beer wagons could no longer get to the local pub after LTN .
That fits with the ‘most people are quietly in favour, and even if they’re part of the minority against, they usually don’t care enough to change their vote’ narrative?
I was talking to the local councillor where my Mum lives and said I was fully in favour of it. He said most people would say, privately to him, that they were in favour but they daren't show that favour in public because of the behaviour of a small minority of the anti-LTN people.
They'd intimidate, threaten and doxx supporters, vandalise property... And then claim that it was pro-LTN people doing it to cast aspersions on the anti- side!
Part of his reason for the house calls was to reassure "supporters" that they were actually a majority.
A lot of recent (and not so recent) housing developments are effectively LTNs, as they have limited access and provide little or no cut-throughs potential.
My local district only has 3 access points, plus one extra, for buses only, so doesn't suffer from congestion. It does, however, suffer from a seemingly high number of idiots in cars with pop-pop exhausts and a general preponderance to exceed to 30mph limit and/or indulge in creative parking,
I shudder to think what it would be like if there were cut-throughs.