The campaign group Better Streets for Enfield is this week publishing its five main "asks", one per day. Ask No 1 is "A low traffic neighbourhood in every ward".
Low traffic neighbourhoods are whole residential areas where point road closures (eg using bollards) stop cars driving straight through the area, but allow people to walk or cycle through in safety. Experience with schemes implemented elsewhere (eg in Walthamstow) has shown many benefits:
- Children can play and neighbours socialise
- Any age can walk or cycle through the area
- Driving very short journeys is less convenient
- Traffic within the area reduces by 50% or more, and overall by 15% or more
- Air pollution, noise and danger drop dramatically.
Better Streets for Enfield want to see low traffic neighbourhoods benefitting every ward in the borough, especially the most polluted and/or deprived areas. They recognise that Enfield Council's Fox Lane Quieter Neighbourhood scheme is a serious attempt to reduce through traffic, but are asking them to go further and trial ‘point closures’ in the Fox Lane area, to remove through traffic and create a truly quiet, low traffic neighbourhood. If successful this could be a model for other areas across the borough.
How point closures (in green) could remove through traffic from the Fox Lane area
The traffic and speed counts carried out in the Fox Lane area in late 2018 show how badly residents suffer from rat running along their streets - for instance, over 40,000 vehicles a week along Fox Lane, 29,000 along Meadway, 25,000 along Amberley Road, 23,000 along the Mall, not to mention widespread disregard for speed limits and some horrendous top speeds (see this article for summary data for each street in the area).
Better Streets' proposals for a Fox Lane low traffic neighbourhood (see the map) would remove most of this traffic. Residents would enjoy peace and quiet, while people would be free to walk or cycle across the area unimpeded by the point closures.
