Objections to active travel infrastructures are now picking and choosing data to fit the narrative
I’m starting to wonder if anyone is ever going to make an honest argument against cycling and walking infrastructure again. They do exist. People used to say things like “I want to drive and park wherever I like”, or “why should cyclists and pedestrians inconvenience my much more important car journey?”.
Those are still the basic objections, but these days most prominent opponents realise that it sounds a bit politically incorrect. You need some higher public interest ground, however shaky, to pitch your tent on.
With low-traffic neighbourhoods (LTNs), which use motor traffic restrictions to boost walking and cycling, the top choice used to be claiming that they increase pollution. But that has now been so thoroughly debunked that it’s losing its magic.
So a new variant appeared recently in the Times, claiming that “councils that implemented LTNs during the pandemic have seen bigger increases in car use than boroughs that did not”.
This was based on adding up the total increase in traffic returning after Covid across “10 inner London boroughs that introduced LTNs in 2020” (11.4%) and comparing it with the total increase in “two inner London boroughs that did not implement LTNs in 2020” (8.9%).
In a leader, the paper cited its “investigation” as evidence that LTNs were an “expensive and infuriating failure”.
The two inner boroughs that didn’t introduce new LTNs were...
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