Review Of Low Traffic Schemes 'Risks New Rat Runs'

Thousands of England's quiet residential streets and housing estates risk being opened up as rat runs under the government's review of so-called low-traffic neighbourhoods (LTNs), campaign groups fear.

- Peter Walker

Two weeks after Rishi Sunak announced he had ordered an inquiry into LTNS amid opposition to what he termed "anti-motorist" policies, the Department for Transport (DfT) is still refusing to say who will run it or when it will begin work.

However, officials have confirmed their working definition for LTNS, a term coined during Covid to describe modal filtering, a longstanding traffic measure in which some streets are kept as through routes for pedestrians and cyclists but motor vehicles can only access them from one direction.

The DfT says it considers an LTN to be any scheme where through motor traffic in residential streets is prevented either by camera-enforced signs or physical barriers such as bollards or planters, with no date limit given for when they were installed.

This takes the scope of the review well beyond the 200 or so LTNs created in Britain from 2020 to 2022, raising the possibility that officials could order the removal of bollards, gates and other traffic-reduction measures in place for decades.