Agenda item

Verbal Update

The Cabinet Member for Environment, Transport and Climate Emergency, and the Deputy Leader of the Council, Cllr Hakata, attended OSC to give a verbal update on his portfolio, followed by a question and answer session. Rob Krzyszowski, Assistant Director, Planning, Building Standards & Sustainability was also present for this item, along with Maurice Richards, Transport Planning Team Leader and Simon Farrow. Cllr Hakata’s portfolio update is summarised as follows:

• A key element of the portfolio was around strategic transport, which included the TfL Street Space programme which had replaced the traditional LIP funding during Covid for the maintenance and upkeep of the borough’s roads.
• One of the key drivers behind the Street Space programme was dealing with the issue of a car-led recovery from Covid. TfL modelling suggested that a 3% increase in traffic could lead to a grid lock on London’s roads.
• Haringey was committed to being zero carbon by 2041
• Respiratory illnesses were increasing and the primary cause of this was pollution.
• In light of wider health concerns, the Cabinet Member set out that he was committed to pushing people to walk and cycle more and that Haringey would be looking to disincentivise car usage, whilst incentivising cycling and walking. 
• The Low Traffic Neighbourhoods (LTN) programme was continuing and the Cabinet Member advised that he was committed to engaging with local residents on LTNs and ensuring they were part of the process. The first consultation would begin on 8^th July, with the others to follow shortly afterwards. This consultation exercise would feed into the decision making process for implementation in the autumn and there would also be a rolling process of consultation to ensure that LTNs achieved their stated purpose.
• LTN’s were identified as being just one part of a wider toolkit of interventions, with the examples of School Streets and the Walking and Cycling Action Plan (WCAP) noted. The Council had originally committed to undertake 15 school streets programmes over the 5 period of the WCAP. The Committee was advised that this would in fact be 26.
• The Cabinet Member committed to ensuring a depth of engagement with residents across all the schemes and that he would also be looking to roll out other traffic interventions across the borough as-and-when possible.

The following arose during the discussion of this agenda item:

1. The Panel welcomed the Cabinet Member’s goal of trying to win the hearts and minds of local residents around LTNs. The Committee queried when the WCAP would be in place, in response it was noted that the original implementation of summer 2021 would now likely be delayed slightly to Autumn 2021.
2. The Panel queried whether in addition to the three proposed LTNs, there was also scope for rolling out smaller self-contained schemes. In response, the Cabinet Member acknowledged that a whole raft of traffic and transport interventions were needed and that a number of bids had been submitted. The Cabinet Member advised that the priority for bids submitted would be pedestrians first, cyclists second and public transport third. LTN micro-schemes would be a part of the overall work programme going forward, if it was feasible.
3. In response to a question around how schemes were prioritised and what the criteria were, officers advised that the School Streets action plan was agreed by Cabinet last autumn and this set out the detailed criteria used. Officers also advised that the draft Walking and Cycling Action Plan set out the criteria used for determining LTN proposals going forwards. Officers advised that these criteria for prioritising LTNs were developed after the emergency TfL bidding window for new schemes last year and so the current schemes were based on existing proposals and feedback received from residents
4. The Panel queried the inherent assumption of increased traffic levels, given the impact of the pandemic and also raised concerns about the displacement effect on traffic to surrounding streets and neighbourhoods. It was also suggested that the impact of LTNs was disproportionately on working class communities who needed to commute work and, in some cases, may have two or three jobs. In response, the Cabinet Member acknowledged that the pandemic had resulted many people working from home but that traffic levels had been increasing steadily since lockdown as more people returned to work and that this would continue as the recovery continued. Within this, pollution levels were continuing to rise and that this had a disproportionate effect on poorer and more vulnerable residents. It was suggested that only 40% of residents owned a car, and this was overwhelmingly more affluent residents. However, less well-off residents, most of whom did not own a car, suffered the most as a result of air pollution. The Cabinet Member also highlighted the prevalence of road traffic accidents in London and the links between this and traffic volumes.
5. Following a suggestion from the Chair, the Cabinet Member agreed to provide a written answer to the Panel around the impact of LTN’s, traffic displacement and the extent to which they disproportionately impacted working class communities.
6. The Panel cautioned against the law of unintended consequences and residents feeling that this was something that was being foisted upon them. The example of a pastor in Islington was raised and it was commented that the Council needed to consider the detailed impacts of its schemes on adjacent areas. In response, the Cabinet Member acknowledged that LTNs took time to bed-in and that examples in other boroughs had shown that initial negative impacts on traffic volume were not sustained and that these got better afterwards. Long term behaviour change was what was required, and it would take some time to bring this about. 
7. The Panel sought further clarification around attempting to disincentivise drivers and cautioned that a lot of car traffic in the borough was people travelling through the borough, rather than those that lived or worked here, and that this tended to be concentrated in the main thoroughfares. In response, the Cabinet Member advised that whilst disincentivising cars played a role, incentivising other modes of transport, was the most important factor in reducing traffic levels. The Cabinet Member acknowledged that making transport accessible to all was crucial. It was suggested that a lot of traffic in Haringey was being displaced from main roads to side roads, with the resultant impact of big increases in traffic on residential streets. LTN schemes in Walthamstow had seen a reduction in overall traffic and residents moving away from cars to public transport.

RESOLVED

Noted.