Low Traffic Neighbourhood

Transport for Humans: Are We Nearly There Yet?
by Pete Dyson and Rory Sutherland
Published 15 Jan 2021

Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life. London: Random House. Table 8. Three examples of counter-intuitive transport (CIT). Smart motorways ‘Stand on both sides’ escalators Low Traffic Neighbourhoods Policy details Variable speed limits (often 50–60 miles per hour) and use of hard shoulder At peak times, requiring standing on both sides; no walking allowed ‘Filtered streets’ reducing through-traffic on residential streets Counter-intuitiveness Go slower to go faster?

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Doctoral Dissertation, University of Southampton (https://eprints.soton.ac.uk/413955/). ** C. Harrison, N. Kukadia, P. Stoneman and G. Dyer. 2016. Report on Holborn pilot for standing on both sides of escalators. Report, 6 January (https://liftescalatorlibrary.org/paper_indexing/papers/00000115.pdf). † R. Aldred and A. Goodman. 2020. Low traffic neighbourhoods, car use, and active travel: evidence from the people and places survey of outer London active travel interventions. Working Paper, 1 September , SocArXiv (https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/ebj89). Safety on smart motorways is a case in which outcomes can be statistically improved for the average but, for each user, it feels like things have got worse.

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Messengers Advertising executives are at the bottom of the charts of trusted professions; transport operators and government officials are much higher. Ordinary people can be the most effective messengers as they have no vested interest. Knowing this, Hackney Council in London promotes the views of new walkers and cyclists to explain the merits of its own CIT: Low Traffic Neighbourhoods. Patience Steve Melia, an expert on transport and planning, analysed ­sixty-three cases of road management across ten different countries and found that 80% of the schemes led to traffic decline.27 His experience shows that maybe it is best just to be patient. It takes several years for local opinion to swing.