Meanwhile the fallout continues: after three incidents in April and May, when ambulances were delayed by the LTN, North East Ambulance Service has launched an investigation into the scheme’s impact.Ĭould the reversal of the Fenham LTN provide a blueprint for other areas of the city? Plans are afoot for more LTNs in Newcastle: the council lists four more proposed areas on the “Neighbourhoods” page of its website. “We need to try them out for a long enough period to see if they work.” She also points out that the council is working within the parameters of the legal orders that allow LTN trials to happen – and Fenham’s was about to expire, so they decided not to continue. Here, the council has shut off all the access roads in the eastern part of the neighbourhood underneath another trial LTN.Ī Newcastle City Council spokesperson insists that LTNs are “not the be all and end all” and that the city council is looking at them in the context of wider transport networks. The complaints, however, pale into insignificance compared to the furore currently going on in the more genteel neighbourhood of Jesmond, north of the city.

I had people complaining to me every day of the week.” “It’s not a case of just drawing a line on a map – it’s got to work for everybody.” This one, he says, was “ill-thought out and bounced onto people. “One thing local residents have that council officers don’t is local knowledge – they know how the traffic moves,” says Patrick ‘PJ’ Morrissey, a Lib Dem councillor in neighbouring West Fenham, who attributes his recent election in May to locals angry at the LTN being imposed by the majority Labour council. The council was bombarded with feedback from residents, the majority of whom violently opposed the trial scheme becoming permanent. But thwarted drivers didn’t pledge to leave the car at home from then on they just took alternative cut-throughs, clogging up nearby residential streets. When the council closed Nuns Moor Road in the south, the residents were delighted – average weekday traffic dropped from 2,032 to just 397 vehicles. Average daily traffic on the southern part of Queensway, one of the main roads through the area, jumped 154 per cent from 706 vehicles a day to 1,795 after a junction with neighbouring Kingsway was shut off.

These local councils are no doubt aware of the effect on traffic – and if not, they should cast their eyes over Fenham’s stark LTN figures. In May, the Government stripped central funding for all projects that involved creating car-free zones, and in July, Rishi Sunak ordered a review of LTNs, with Transport Secretary Mark Harper suggesting local authorities consider scrapping existing LTNs where they were unpopular and were implemented with insufficient consultation of local residents.īut the inexorable march of the LTN has continued: Hackney council in east London has declared its intention to make 75 per cent of its roads subject to LTN regulation two more LTNs are set to be implemented in Lambeth and, outside the capital, councils in Exeter, Bristol and Bath have all been trialling LTN schemes. Post-Covid, the country has seen a rash of Low Traffic Neighbourhoods – where streets are closed off or restricted to cars in a bid to reduce rat running and improve air quality – popping up in some of its busiest cities.įrom Oxford to Canterbury, Exeter to London, councils have closed roads, diverted drivers and sent blood pressure soaring as locals clash over the schemes. Or change the speed limit – take it down to 15mph – at least that keeps the traffic moving.” If you want to move people around the city, get better public transport.

When they put the LTN in I had to turn left and sit in traffic. “I used to turn right at the end of my road to go to the shops. It was “horrific”, says Fenham resident Ian Smith. Newcastle City Council has since removed the scheme after transport officials deemed the 18-month trial unsuccessful, concluding that it had increased traffic on other residential streets by more than 100 per cent, had not prompted more people to start walking or cycling, and made “little to no impact” on reducing school traffic in the area. It’s a far cry from a couple of weeks ago at the start of term, when Hadrian Road saw cars queued along its length as drivers were forced to take complicated routes to get around the area, thanks to an experimental Low Traffic Neighbourhood (LTN) order, which put much of this part of east Fenham out of bounds to drivers. Although it’s a busy time of day, traffic beetles purposefully along Hadrian Road. Cars pull up, load up and head on their way, parents push prams and field dogs, and older children chat and walk, dodging older kids on bicycles cutting along the pavement. School pickup time on a sunny September Tuesday in Fenham, an area west of central Newcastle, and the streets surrounding Sacred Heart RC Primary School are bustling.

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