Low Traffic Zones, Clean Air Neighbourhoods, take your pick, are the new favourites in my borough.
They play into the London Mayor’s storybook of reducing carbon emissions, improving air quality, improving health, encouraging walking and cycling, saving lives and never driving more than 20 mph. These measures all have a hidden purpose making them specially attractive to local authorities. They are implemented using Number Plate Recogniotion cameras – as the Central London Congestion and Ultra Low Emissions zones are. It is not expensive to implement and generates huge amounts in fines by drivers unfamiliar with the invisible lines excluding them from certain streets – usually the ones they are accustomed to use.
“The South Fulham clean air neighbourhood eastern project was launched in July 2020 and made permanent in December 2021.
Since the project began, traffic has reduced by 75 per cent in the streets to the east of Wandsworth Bridge Road (WBR) and by 12 per cent in Wandsworth Bridge Road.
Overall traffic in South Fulham is down by 23 per cent while the project has reduced the number of trips by motorists by 8,000 per day through the area. And it has contributed to the removal of at least one tonne of CO2 per day from South Fulham.” (London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham)
If you sense a whiff of cynicism here you are right. When residents’ parking permits were introduced on Margravine Gardens the stated aim was to make parking easier for residents by a permit scheme that would make a charge sufficient to cover its administration. It soon became a source of revenue for the council: today an annual permit costs £119 for the first car in a household and £497 for a second vehicle. Alongside Business Rates, fixed penalty fines, and all the hard to recognise zones, the council raises substantial funding making it easy to keep headline Council Tax Bills in check. This year (2023/24) it is up just 2.9% (£1,157.96) and, as the bill helpfully points out, this includes “a precept to fund adult social care”. Unfortunately the Greater London Authority is not so frugal adding £627.09 to my bill – a 9.7% increase. A total annual charge of £1,886.43.
In a way I am pleased that motorists are subsidising non-drivers in my borough and that a large part of the revenue they contribute is discretionary – that is to say they do not have to break the restrictions on speed, emissions and other violations. And of course, oh joy, many of the motorists fined will not even live in the borough. But there is another tool the council could deploy. In certain circumstances, easy to implement and effective – but it will not generate any fines so is not preferred or even mentioned by the traffic planners at the town hall.
Voila! A low traffic neighbourhood created by the road being dug up outside the William Morris Academy on St Dunstan’s Road this weekend. A permanent barrier here, to the east of the junction of Beryl Road and St Dunstan’s Road would solve congestion in Margravine Gardens and St Dunstan’s instantly.