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Motor traffic down around Railton LTN, says Lambeth

London Cycling Campaign | 4th March 2021

Lambeth council has released the first results of traffic monitoring around the Railton Low Traffic Neighbourhood (LTN) it installed in June 2020. And motor traffic levels have plunged across the area following implementation, including on nearby main roads, and taking into account a new “baseline” for Covid.

Obviously, Covid and associated lockdowns are having all sorts of impacts on car use and motor traffic levels across London, but the approach Lambeth has used to create a new baseline based on traffic counters in use constantly across the borough shows it’s possible, despite the pandemic, to show that schemes are successfully resulting in getting more people walking and cycling, and cutting car use and car traffic volumes in the area. Again – the evidence mounts that LTNs particularly are not the cause of traffic chaos and are hugely positive overall for Londoners.

The results

The results, according to Lambeth’s monitoring page, so far are:

Within the LTN, traffic volumes versus Covid-adjusted baseline:

  • Car: -58%
  • Cycle: +51%
  • Goods Vehicle: -43%

On the edges of the LTN, traffic volumes versus Covid-adjusted baseline:

  • Car: -21%
  • Cycle: +17%
  • Goods Vehicle: -14%

Overall, across the area, traffic volumes versus Covid-adjusted baseline:

  • Car: -31%
  • Cycle: +32%
  • Goods Vehicle: -23%

The ‘new normal’

The baseline was calculated to eliminate the impact of Covid on motor traffic across the borough in general and was “calculated for each [count point] based on the difference between current background data and historic background data, both of which come from TfL-owned [counters] which have collected continuous data since at least January 2017.

Negatives?

Rattray Road was the only of the 17 sites counted that experienced a significant percent growth in motor vehicles – a 101% increase in cars, but from a very low base (602 cars daily baseline), and nearly the same percent rise in goods vehicles, from an extremely low base (51 baseline daily), but an even higher rise in cycling (also from a very low base). Coldharbour Lane saw one site counts rise slightly overall, but overall counts for two points on Coldharbour appear slightly down.

Since monitoring, further changes have been proposed including a no entry on Rattray to deal with displacement there.