Exeter’s low traffic neighbourhood scheme to be scrapped within weeks
https://www.itv.com/news/westcountry/2024-06-03/controversial-low-traffic-neighbourhood-scheme-to-be-scrapped
Posted by Anony_mouse202
Exeter’s low traffic neighbourhood scheme to be scrapped within weeks
https://www.itv.com/news/westcountry/2024-06-03/controversial-low-traffic-neighbourhood-scheme-to-be-scrapped
Posted by Anony_mouse202
9 Comments
> People will still be encouraged to walk or cycle where possible.
Well, no not really. It just encourages more people to drive because trying to encourage people not to makes people immensley butthurt.
These things are only good if you improve the alternatives which they havn’t done. Not everyone can walk or cycle where they need to go
82% of residents against the scheme. That’s conclusive.
>It was introduced with the aim of cutting pollution and encouraging safety and public health
>Residents will still be able to drive to and from their homes, but may need to use alternative routes to get around the restrictions
Ill thought-out schemes like this just become anti-environmentalist fodder for the Murdoch rags. I mean what was the actual logic applied here? To cut pollution in a couple of streets, by diverting traffic down other roads and have people sat in their cars for longer and consuming more petrol. Encouraging safety? Fair enough, why wouldn’t speed bumps work?
They must have actually thought that in order to achieve the goals of ‘cutting pollution, encouraging safety and increasing public health’ that a decent percentage of local people would be willing/able to abandon their cars and take up cycling/walking and if they actually thought that was a realistic prospect, then they’re completely divorced from reality.
This kind of thing needs calling out by pro-environmentalists, because the optics of attempting to introduce these types of schemes make it look as if the most passionate proponents of environmental causes, don’t have any common sense.
In essentially any town across the world that’s not huge like London or NYC, having a car is always going to be a tremendous quality of life upgrade because friends, family, work, basic errands, day trips etc are all partially going to be done via car even if some of them can be done via walking/cycling/public transport.
There is no realistic scenario in which you get the residents of a small town to give up their car without impoverishing them in the process. They are more likely to just move to the outskirts of the town, or another town, because you’re just making their lives harder on an ongoing basis for a very small benefit.
Even somewhere like London where it’s naturally a pain in the arse to drive most people who can afford it still have a car because visiting their friends on the outskirts of Reading with your kids or whatever is never going to be easier via bus regardless of how many LTN’s you add in. They get the tube into town, and use the car for everything else.
There is a bias in thinking on this online because a lot of Reddit users are 20-30 somethings who seem to live to work at home/their office job on the other end of the bus/tube line. In the real world, even on the council estates the first thing anyone gets as soon as they can afford it is a car/van for work and errands.
It was probably ill thought out and just away for the council to not invest in roads. I know I wouldn’t trust my local council to implement one.
Turns out you can’t force people to cycle everywhere.
Why don’t they just do what Birmingham did and make it so no-one wants to go there unless forced?
Zero traffic. Sorted.
I find it interesting how many of the people who need to drive any distance greater than the length of themselves because they’re so busy all the time are also the people who seem to have the most time to spend fannying about on here