Brixton Liveable Neighbourhood and LTN schemes - improvements for pedestrians and cyclists

[thebackrow]

Also, with regard to the Low Traffic Neighbourhoods and the Public Sector Equality Duty | Rook Irwin Sweeney - Public Law. Human Rights. statement this section seems to cover what can be appealed -

She had asked the Court to decide whether, when making the experimental traffic orders, the Local Authority had complied with s.149 of the Equality Act 2010, or “the public sector equality duty.” She argued that the Local Authority had failed to consider the impact on disabled people prior to creating the LTNs, and as such had failed to discharge this duty.

In his judgment, Mr Justice Kerr decided that it was lawful for the Local Authority to perform its public sector equality duty on a “rolling” basis, that is, by monitoring the impact on disabled people and those with other protected characteristics, during the roll-out and operation of the LTNs.

So it sounds like the appeal is solely about the bits in bold - ie does the LA have to complete its considerations under the equality act up front or can it do so on a rolling basis (much like the comment in the onesies traffic report - you may actually get much better information if you do it on a 'rolling basis' rather than up front).

The equalities act itself is a process duty, not an outcome duty - which this case recognises. If something disadvantages a protected group the LA can still do it, they just have to understand the impact. So if the council believes there is a need to reduce traffic volumes overall, or just through one neighbourhood, in order to improve air quality and reduce carbon emissions, they can do so even if it does impact on disabled people who drive.

So the case is still about the minutiae of process - nothing at all to do with whether the LTNs stay in place or not.

 

[teuchter]

and they also say that congestion has risen on some boundary roads despite lower traffic volumes. I can't see how that can be blamed on LTNs and goes against the constant claims of increased traffic volumes.

I think they actually say "recorded lower traffic volumes" which I assume is deliberate wording.

The point that lower traffic volumes doesn't necessarily mean lesser congestion is a valid one I think. And I think that I agree in principle with the point that ideally you want to get an idea of how quickly vehicles are passing along a stretch of road as well as the number of them. I would prefer the Systra/Lambeth report to have gone into some more detail on this.

None of that necessarily means that there are major problems that are being ignored. As per my earlier post I like to go and have a look at reality for myself. This is not an entirely scientific method but it is a quick way of getting some idea of whether certain claims are very much exaggerated.

For me one piece of data that seems to be missing is direct measurements of air quality (before and after, at a wide spread of locations). I don't know if that's because of cost or because it's so much subject to external factors such as weather that it's difficult to compare it meaningfully over anything except quite long timescales.

At the moment, traffic volume/congestion is being used as a kind of proxy for air pollution. To the antis, if you can show increased congestion somewhere, you then can automatically claim increased pollution. I don't think that's valid though. The points made about volume not being the same as congestion don't necessarily work in the anti-LTN arguments' favour because, for example you can imagine two relatively swiftly moving but constant lanes of traffic (high volume, low congestion) vs one lane of slowly moving traffic (low volume, higher congestion). In that case, from the point of view of someone living by the road, you are comparing two lanes of constant traffic presence with one lane of constant traffic presence. I don't think you can say that the latter means higher air pollution just because things are moving slowly.

It would be much better to have direct measurements of air quality. We do seem to have those for very limited locations, and I've posted up comparisons of those twice now, where there doesn't seem to be indication of things getting any worse. But I've received no comment on them.

 

[edcraw]

For me one piece of data that seems to be missing is direct measurements of air quality (before and after, at a wide spread of locations). I don't know if that's because of cost or because it's so much subject to external factors such as weather that it's difficult to compare it meaningfully over anything except quite long timescales.

There’s ongoing monitoring across the borough and is detailed here: https://www.lambeth.gov.uk/sites/de...eth-air-quality-annual-status-report-2019.pdf

But as you say, there are other factors, particularly weather, that make any short term comparison difficult to know if LTNs would have an effect. The monitoring is more useful to see long term trends I believe.

The council is carrying out air pollution modelling and have said they’ll included this in their future reports.

 

[alex_]

I see that they are some way off the funding target which may ultimately decide the issue:

Donate to OneLambeth LTN Appeal Challenge, organized by One Lambeth

OneLambeth Anti-LTN Court Appeal Fundraiser On Tuesday 5th April 2022 the Appeal Court ju… One Lambeth needs your support for OneLambeth LTN Appeal Challenge

www.gofundme.com

Only 300 quid donated in the last week.

 

[alex_]

London of course being famous for its free flowing traffic before LTN’s arrived

pretty sure it was all fields around here until Lambeth built the LTNs

 

[alex_]

The Police will do noting -

And I think a sign posy looks like this

 

[Jeanette Moo]

Intriguing to know which 'we' is referred to by that tweet as I'm sure the traffic engineers wouldn't have done this out of charity so who funded it? I can't see that it has any relevance to the legal case, which is what the crowdfunding was meant to be for. Whoever posted it has redacted the name of the commissioning person or group which is odd...

I don't think its odd. All the stuff flying around and vendettas you'd be mad to do anything in yuor own name

 

[Jeanette Moo]

Only 300 quid donated in the last week.

I don't think it is even been up that long at all

The question is how long until the funds are needed for appeal? Is it a month? four? Six+? I dont doubt they will raise the money.

 

[liquidindian]

I mean, I would believe this is true, unfortunately after reading retweets from a group called "One Lambeth Justice", I now think these sorts of things are just random attacks and nothing to do with LTNs, or are actually false flag attacks.



(Maybe there's more to come, but if there's vandalised signs and slashed tyres, why is this the damning evidence?)

 

[Jeanette Moo]

Agree. I mean thats a screw in a tyre. What is someone going around with a power drill and drilling tyres?

 

[Gramsci]

Sheakh, R (On the Application Of) v London Borough of Lambeth (Rev1) [2021] EWHC 1745 (Admin) (28 June 2021)

www.bailii.org

Had a first look at the judgement.

As I've some experience of Lambeth in court re housing I know what its like. Law in this country is adversarial. This is not conducive to dealing with issues around LAs and residents.

The winner takes all is not imo the way to learn in case of public law.

The Judge made clear he was not going to say whether LTNs are good idea or not.

Reasonable position. He was looking at consultation and Equality.

My experience in court taught me that the Judge one gets is either pro LA or pro resident. In this case looks like the Judge leant towards being pro authority-Lambeth.

This was a difficult case due to the extra ordinary circumstances of pandemic.

The judgement was more nuanced than Cllr Holland said.

He accepted that Lambeth was acting in good faith on rolling EIA. He didn't give Lambeth a carte blanche on this. How they deal with mitigation of for example the case of the disabled person like Sofia he left to the rolling EIA and hoped Lambeth would use adequate mitigation.

He did say on the specific case of Sofia her particular disability was shown to be affected.

He did say that use of rolling EIA was not a given and had to be justified.

What he thought was that given the extra ordinary circumstances the what he termed the more leisurely consultation that Lambeth had planned were justified in being shelved.

So my reading is that the Judge accepted that the Council was working in difficult circumstances, that central Government was directing them too do this and the Due Regard to equality had to be considered in these circumstances.

In other circumstances he would not have taken this position.

So my reading is that this is not satisfactory but the best in a pandemic. He trusts the Council in future will mitigate.

Here's hoping. Fairly generous judgement imo.

So its a judgement call in a unique situation.

Where I do find issue is when he supports Council in saying the ETOs are genuinely experimental. I dont think they are.

My first thoughts on the judgement.

Given what he says about the Sofia case itself I'm still wondering why Lambeth haven't after this judgement come out and promised Blue Badge holders and disabled people like her who need to use cars some kind of mitigation instead of sounding triumphant that they won.

I also note the officers justification for LTNs is about stopping through traffic and rat runs. They don't go on about making it difficult for people inside LTNs.

To add I don't think local residents are always opposed to stopping specific rat runs.

I don't think many would necessarily oppose reducing through traffic that has no relation to the area. Ie just goes through without stopping.

The other thing is LJ. Whilst the Council insist they had to do this LJ has been left out. Arguably the through traffic problem is the same as Railton. Pavement widening in LJ has been quietly dropped with no reason.

 

[madolesance]

I mean, I would believe this is true, unfortunately after reading retweets from a group called "One Lambeth Justice", I now think these sorts of things are just random attacks and nothing to do with LTNs, or are actually false flag attacks.



(Maybe there's more to come, but if there's vandalised signs and slashed tyres, why is this the damning evidence?)

Also there are not many signs being displayed on the outer roads that claim to be congested and practically none with in the rat runs.

 

[Gramsci]

Sheakh, R (On the Application Of) v London Borough of Lambeth (Rev1) [2021] EWHC 1745 (Admin) (28 June 2021)

www.bailii.org

On consultation.

I'm quite surprised to learn that under law Councils don't really have to do much to comply.

For example surprise surprise the Council only actively consulted disabled groups that would agree with they wanted to do. DASL was not included. Under the law the Council can pick and choose which groups it wants to consult prior to implementation.

The rest can use the channels that the Council set up afterwards. Charming.

 

[edcraw]

I mean, I would believe this is true, unfortunately after reading retweets from a group called "One Lambeth Justice", I now think these sorts of things are just random attacks and nothing to do with LTNs, or are actually false flag attacks.



(Maybe there's more to come, but if there's vandalised signs and slashed tyres, why is this the damning evidence?)

Like you say they’ve got zero credibility after all their tweets but this will get traction. Cristo’s retweeted and bound to mention it on its show so loads will just take it as fact.

Of course I’d condemn any of these attacks but really can’t see how it’d be true,

Maybe it’s time chowce5382 had a word with the person running that account to calm things down.

 

[chowce5382]

Like you say they’ve got zero credibility after all their tweets but this will get traction. Cristo’s retweeted and bound to mention it on its show so loads will just take it as fact.

Of course I’d condemn any of these attacks but really can’t see how it’d be true,

Maybe it’s time chowce5382 had a word with the person running that account to calm things down.

Unfortunately we’re at a point where no-one on either side believes anyone on the other side. The people mentioned in the tweets are all in the group who originally set this up, they are also the ones who have been vocal, public with their opposition and this seemed to happen over a 24-36 hour period on the weekend. Having said that, there is much more construction going on at the moment but one set of tyres were slashed.

 

[liquidindian]

Unfortunately we’re at a point where no-one on either side believes anyone on the other side.

Gosh, how did that ever come to happen? Just One of those things I guess.

 

[chowce5382]

Gosh, how did that ever come to happen? Just One of those things I guess.

Yup, neither side listening to the other from the start

 

[liquidindian]

I dunno, you've listened carefully enough to lock your Twitter account and add a panicky "retweets are not endorsements" disclaimer.

 

[chowce5382]

I dunno, you've listened carefully enough to lock your Twitter account and add a panicky "retweets are not endorsements" disclaimer.

Yup, stalkers are a nightmare

 

[liquidindian]

Do you think the person who wrote them was racist or that those tweets were racist?

Yeah, imagine someone digging up old tweets and going on and on and on about them. Enough to make you regret setting a certain standard. Resigning yet?

 

[chowce5382]

Yeah, imagine someone digging up old tweets and going on and on and on about them. Enough to make you regret setting a certain standard. Resigning yet?

I didn’t dig anything up, as you well know. I was replying to a post which had already mentioned them.

 

[liquidindian]

Got it, so you'll resign if someone else demands it, just not the person who originally mentioned your appalling bigotry?

 

[chowce5382]

I didn’t dig anything up, as you well know. I was replying to a post which had already mentioned them.

Irony being is that this is exactly what you did and I didn’t do. Petard comes to mind

 

[sleaterkinney]

I mean, I would believe this is true, unfortunately after reading retweets from a group called "One Lambeth Justice", I now think these sorts of things are just random attacks and nothing to do with LTNs, or are actually false flag attacks.



(Maybe there's more to come, but if there's vandalised signs and slashed tyres, why is this the damning evidence?)

Bit of a coincidence it happened after the oil dumped outside a school thing a few days ago….

 

[chowce5382]

yup

Bit of a coincidence it happened after the oil dumped outside a school thing a few days ago….

there are people taking this way beyond what anyone would think is acceptable behaviour, on both sides I afraid. I’ve had DMs from recently set up Twitter accounts telling me that it would be easy to find out my house number

 

[liquidindian]

You've had threats to your locked account that someone's going to look up publicly available information on Companies House?

 

[edcraw]

Love how people try and "both sides" everything. I have seen no mention of vandalism or targeting individuals among any local LTNs supporters, quite the opposite in fact. It would be horrible and achieve nothing. One supposedly local supportive Twitter account named someone they suspect of the vandalism with no evidence, LTN supporters called this out and reported.

OneLambeth Facebook group have actively encouraged, endorsed and downplayed vandalism:

I'm sure there are some trolls but doubt they're actually local and sorry if you've been targeted chowce5382.

Bu the way the council repaired the Upper Tulse Hill signs yesterday with temporary stickers - they were ripped down overnight….

 

[chowce5382]

You've had threats to your locked account that someone's going to look up publicly available information on Companies House?

Yup, about a month ago before it was locked. I’m well aware that my info is on CH. I think, what I’m trying to point out, and seems like you don’t think this is an issue, going through the process of finding my name, going on to CH, then setting up a one time account (no followers etc) and then sending me a message basically trying to tell me ‘I know where you live’ is really not acceptable. Proper stalker behaviour

 

[liquidindian]

You do know that open DMs, where anyone can message you, need to be switched on and is not enabled by default?

 

[chowce5382]

You do know that open DMs, where anyone can message you, need to be switched on and is not enabled by default?

I get it. This my fault