The most hated 50 yards of road in Britain: A baffling sign has helped land drivers with fines totalling £6 million — and counting — in a Low Traffic Neighbourhood
- Low Traffic Neighbourhoods in Hackney bans cars at certain times of the day
- The restrictions are in place during peak school drop-off and pick-up times
- A Penalty Charge Notice (PCN) can require drivers to pay a fine of £130
- The Labour-run authority has introduced an extensive network of LTNs
The man behind the wheel of the red Vauxhall doesn’t know it yet but he — and a number of other drivers — are about to get an unwelcome surprise in the post from Hackney Council.
The Labour-run authority has introduced an extensive network of Low Traffic Neighbourhoods (LTNs) in the East London borough, which means that cars are prohibited during certain times of the day.
The Vauxhall has just entered one . . . at the wrong time. It’s 3.28pm on Wednesday and the vehicle has been clocked by an automatic number-plate camera in Lansdowne Drive, near London Fields.
Two minutes later, at 3.30pm, a black BMW is caught.
Only bicycles and local buses are allowed to pass through Lansdowne Drive between 7am and 10am, and 3pm and 7pm, Monday to Saturday.
It’s 3.28pm on Wednesday and the vehicle has been clocked by an automatic number-plate camera in near London Fields, two minutes later, at 3.30pm, a black BMW is caught
Only bicycles and local buses are allowed to pass through Lansdowne Drive in Hackney between 7am and 10am, and 3pm and 7pm, Monday to Saturday
The restrictions are in place during school drop-off and pick-up times.
So in a few weeks, a Penalty Charge Notice (PCN) will drop through their letterboxes requiring both drivers to pay a fine of £130 (£65 if they pay within 14 days).
Even those who live in Lansdowne Drive are subject to the same constraints.
Such fines have become a frustrating fact of life for motorists — including parents on the school run or people trying to get to work — all over London and in an increasing number of towns and cities outside the capital.
But few roads can be as controversial as Lansdowne Drive in E8.
Only a small section of the road — about 50 yards, in fact — falls within the LTN, which has an array of what have been described as dizzyingly confusing signs at each end.
It must be the most unpopular 50 yards of road in Britain for drivers, and the most lucrative 50 yards for a local authority.
In the first month of becoming an LTN in February 2020, Lansdowne Drive earned nearly £500,000 in fines; by the fourth month the figure had risen to more than £1 million.
How much income do you think this stretch of road has now generated for Hackney Council? Answer: a staggering £6 million.
Many LTNs were introduced with £250 million in emergency Government funding to make walking and cycling more attractive, in the hope of encouraging residents to use their cars less and promote active travel during the pandemic.
The Low Traffic Neighbourhoods restrictions are in place during school drop-off and pick-up times
But many of the schemes, critics complain, were rolled out without proper consultation or monitoring and have become convenient ‘cash cows’ for councils. Could there be a bigger money-spinner than Lansdowne Drive?
What cannot be disputed is that the controversial traffic measures have resulted in battle lines being drawn all over the country, dividing communities and turning neighbour against neighbour.
In Oxford, residents have prevented vehicles entering restricted areas after bollards were vandalised.
New proposals to split the city into zones, with strict rules limiting the number of times drivers can leave their neighbourhoods in their cars, will do little, metaphorically speaking, to lower the temperature.
At the entrance to one LTN in Manchester, heavy wooden planters with flowers and shrubs were dragged off the street under the cover of darkness and sprayed with graffiti.
And in Brighton, proposals for the first LTN in the city have been met with fierce opposition from both residents and businesses.
There has been widespread support, the council insists, for LTNs in Hackney. But not among many of the residents we spoke to.
Many LTNs were introduced with £250 million in emergency Government funding to make walking and cycling more attractive
Nineteen LTNs have been introduced in the borough since 2020. This amounts to some 70 per cent of all ‘eligible roads’ — no, this is not a misprint — identified as appropriate following analysis by Transport for London.
It’s by far the highest proportion of any London borough.
‘We call them “check points” or “road blocks” and there is now one on nearly every street corner,’ said Peter Smorthit, who stood as an independent candidate in the local elections in May.
Hackney says that across 388 monitoring sites, air pollution had improved at 329 since the introduction of LTNs. It hired an external consultancy firm to estimate air quality levels through modelling using ‘complex computer software’.
The evidence differs dramatically, however, from the findings of the Labour-controlled borough Ealing, 13 miles to the west.
Over there, nine LTNs were analysed — where residential roads such as Lansdowne Drive were closed to through traffic — but seven of them saw ‘no material change in air quality’ a year after they were created. They were then closed at the start of October.
Hackney says there has been a 38 per cent fall in traffic inside the biggest LTNs, and traffic had also reduced by 2 per cent on boundary roads.
This is based on traffic compared to the last available counts that took place before the pandemic.
Yet, Department for Transport figures for LTNs launched in ten London boroughs during the pandemic show they experienced traffic rising an average 11.4 per cent above pre-pandemic levels last year.
Such fines have become a frustrating fact of life for motorists — including parents on the school run or people trying to get to work
In Westminster, and Kensington and Chelsea, on the other hand, which did not establish any LTNs, traffic rose by an average of just 9 per cent.
Hackney says that LTNs are clearly signed, many have been in place for two years, and they feature on most satnav systems.
A YouGov poll, though, found that motorists struggle to understand one of the main signs used to mark out zones — a motorbike over a car surrounded by a red circle —which is in the Highway Code.
Only 50 per cent of drivers can correctly identify the sign, and 29 per cent think it means that only cars and motorbikes are allowed on a road.
It took the Mail two visits to Lansdowne Drive to work out how the restrictions work. Drivers, for example, are met in one direction with one sign that could persuade them to turn left at a roundabout (and incur a fine) and not right (when they wouldn’t).
Philip and Jackie Vandergucht, from Greenwich, helped move their son into his flat in Lansdowne Drive last month.
‘There was parking space outside and we didn’t think any more of it,’ said Mr Vandergucht, a retired managing director of an events and exhibition company.
But their blue Volvo was picked up with ANPR (automatic number plate recognition) technology, both when they pulled up outside the flat and when they left.
The ultra low emission zone in London expansion came in last October and is 18 times larger than the original zone. The latest extension proposal would make it four times bigger still
On November 4, the first fine arrived, followed by the second. Mr Vandergucht has paid the first but not the second. A third was subsequently issued to the couple’s son.
‘The signs are not at all clear,’ Mr Vandergucht added. ‘The satnav on our Volvo brought us that way and took us through the camera.’
Jack Hanmore, 28, lives off Lansdowne Drive and has picked up around nine tickets — three in Lansdowne Drive, he says, and six in others parts of Hackney.
‘I am a local guy and used to taking this route but even I make mistakes reading the signs,’ he said. ‘It’s a nightmare. Trying to avoid restricted roads causes a traffic build-up in other areas.’
Jack Hanmore, 28, lives off Lansdowne Drive and has picked up around nine tickets — three in Lansdowne Drive, he says, and six in others parts of Hackney
Critics say that LTNs displace traffic onto larger arterial streets, while depriving local companies of potential customers.
One shopkeeper said that the detour to and from his premises added at least 20 minutes to the journey, while the boss of another building firm said that his business was suffering.
‘None of my plumbers want to come out because it takes one-and-a-half hours to get in and one-and-a-half hours to go back home and it’s not worth it for them,’ he said.
Claire Gallimore, 28, a professional dressage rider, adds: ‘The restrictions make it difficult to get around.
I have had one ticket so far — hopefully no more. I travel a lot. It makes it hard when you have to find alternative routes and the signs are hard to understand.’
It will come as no surprise to learn that Labour mayor Sadiq Khan has been a vocal advocate of the zones.
In London overall, nearly £100 million in fines has been raked in, with £19 million generated in Hackney in the past three years.
Stoke Newington’s Church Street and Pritchard’s Road — a short walk from Lansdowne Drive — were the next biggest earners with £2.8 million and £2.1 million raised respectively.
Claire Gallimore, 28, a professional dressage rider, adds: ‘The restrictions make it difficult to get around
By law, income from LTNs is ringfenced and can only be spent on transport schemes, which is the last thing opponents would want. For many in Hackney daily life has become a farce.
‘I have seen people driving with their vehicle boots up to try to stop cameras catching their number plates,’ one local told us.
Peter Smorthit is a Blue Badge holder. ‘I have to go to Homerton Hospital twice a month,’ he said.
‘There is no way of going to the hospital without driving through LTNs. It’s not like I can use a bike. I have no choice, I’m paralysed and I have to use a car.
‘It’s now a mile-and-a-half journey to reach my local leisure centre which I can see from the end of my road and used to take two minutes.’
In Ealing, between 63 and 79 per cent of those living inside the schemes are opposed to them, climbing to 67 to 92 per cent among those residing on the boundaries (Protestors marching to Ealing town hall in April 2021)
There is more. Individuals such as Peter, a para triathlete, can obtain a secondary disability permit to enter LTNs.
He got his last year, but says he was still hit with nine fines, and only two have been cancelled so far. The council said it could not identify his case unless provided with a registration number or PCN number.
The London experience is being replicated in cities around the country such as Manchester, Sheffield, York and Bath.
In Brighton, the process to introduce an LTN in the Hanover district to the east of the city is expected to cost £1.4 million after the council ripped up the original plans.
‘Everyone in Hanover is looking for positive measures to improve our environment, but this isn’t it,’ said campaigner Chris Beaumont.
The scheme is being pushed through by Green idealogues, residents say, and would have a devastating effect on businesses.
Carol Archer runs Archer’s butchers in the city, with her husband Brian. ‘We get deliveries by lorry which wouldn’t be able to stop here,’ Carol said. ‘How are we supposed to get stock?
‘This is a family-run butchers which has been open since 1936 and I’m not exaggerating when I say it could force us to close.’
A spokesman for Brighton Council said: ‘The consultation process was completed at the end of the summer and the results are being used to make amendments to the original design.
Motorists in London were clobbered with more than £33million in fines over the last year for breaching new road rules as part of low-traffic neighbourhoods (LTNs)
More information will be made available in advance of the design being brought back to committee in the New Year.’
Back in Hackney, even the local vicar — Father James Westcott, of St Chad’s Church — has written to the council expressing concern that ‘roadblocks’ are stopping his parishioners, many of them elderly, ‘from getting around’.
Eight in ten of the fines issued, the council points out, have been to vehicles registered outside the borough.
‘This can’t be right and demonstrates we’re an importer of traffic,’ said Councillor Mete Coban, cabinet member for energy, waste, transport and public realm.
‘We’re not trying to discourage people to come here to shop locally, to see their family and friends.
But we know that Hackney has one of the worst pollution levels in London. So, it’s not acceptable that residents in Hackney have to suffer with bad air pollution.’
Might the millions the scheme raises for the council also be an incentive for putting a ‘roadblock’ on almost ‘every corner’, to quote Blue Badge holder Peter?
Either way, be prepared: a Low Traffic Neighbourhood could soon be coming to a street near you.
Additional reporting: Tim Corkett and Tim Stewart