Is Greater Manchester where LTNs go to die?
‘Everyone is resistant to change, it’s human nature’
Dear readers — since Manchester City Council introduced planters to restrict the movement of traffic on a leafy street in Withington, the area has been consumed by bitterness. Three weeks ago, the council abandoned the “low traffic neighbourhood” (LTN) scheme after a consultation found mass public outcry against it. Why did this LTN fall apart, and what does it tell us about why these schemes keep getting scrapped across the UK?
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Is Greater Manchester where LTNs go to die?
By Mollie Simpson
Tahir Jeffrey is immediately suspicious when I tell him I’m writing about the Withington Low Traffic Neighbourhood (LTN). Jeffrey thinks this experiment in reducing road congestion has infringed on his rights as a motorist, and his wider group thinks it was organised by a group of “holier than thou authoritarians” who believed they knew what was best for the area. The scheme came unceremoniously to an end this week after the conclusion of a six-month trial. The verdict? It won’t be reinstated, except for two filters on the corners of Parsonage Road, Wilmslow Road, Burlington Road and Heaton Road. It should be a win for Jeffrey — but he’s not in the mood to gloat.
“This has divided the community beyond repair,” he says, identifying “the three evils” who have “caused nothing but separation and animosity within the community”. Those “three evils” are Withington’s local Labour councillors: Chris Wills, Becky Chambers and Angela Gartside, who the anti-LTN group says were trying to appease a “hostile, extreme and vocal minority” of local residents by introducing the scheme. Their decision led to months of bad blood, accusations of physical assault at a protest and an unofficial road traffic survey, designed to prove the council was lying about the benefits of the scheme.
Now that the scheme has fallen apart, Jeffrey is proud of his win — there’s even a little party at Ladybarn Community Hub this Sunday. But he is still concerned that I will take the side of the “pro planters”, and finishes our interview opining about the importance of impartiality in journalism.
Angry residents, hastily scrapped schemes — you’d think the LTN was a disaster from start to finish. What’s surprising, then, is that of the ten schemes piloted across Greater Manchester as part of a £2.8 million investment from the Mayor’s Challenge Fund to reduce car travel and create more active neighbourhoods, Withington’s LTN was the most successful of all — at least based on the council’s assessment of it. If it were a game show, Withington would be walking away with the cash prize (with a wooden spoon for Rochdale, whose residents set fire to the planters within a day of them being installed).
So just why was Withington’s scheme scrapped? And does it sound the death knell for traffic calming schemes across Greater Manchester?
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